The University of Chicago has quietly launched a massive campaign to attract students from Texas. Demographics and economics are big decision drivers. Texas now has 30 million residents, is growing rapidly, and is the 2nd youngest state in the USA. By contrast, New York has 19 million residents, and is shrinking and aging. California, for the first time in history is also shrinking. Economically, the flight of capital, jobs, and companies played a major role in the decision. Targets in Texas are rural students, students with military backgrounds, first to college students, and Hispanic students. Of course, intense activity will take place in the typical well off public and private school districts. Now that Chicago is done with its last $5.5 billion capital campaign, the ability to launch a $10 billion (whisper goal) campaign will require a major Texas push. Chicago internals show it has overwhelming advantages in Texas over the 5 Ivy league schools that are not HYP. As relate to Chicago’s peer schools of MIT/Stanford, & HYP, the plan is to use the Booth School of Business, and David Booth’s cloaked (relative to Blackrock, for example) Dimensional Advisors in Austin, TX, to work head to head peer competitions. The thinking is that the longstanding and positive views of peer school brands by those in New York and California are not as prevalent in Texas, and, in some conservative Texas circles, the peer schools have controversial brand value. The expectation is that Chicago has a major and wide-open lane in Texas. The primary competition is the flagship honors program at the University of Texas at Austin-- valedictorians tend to stay in state unlike New York and California. This will be interesting to watch in next few years.
This makes sense-U Chicago just held a community wide info meeting at our school last week. It isn’t really on the radar yet, but it would be appealing to many.
This is very interesting to me as UChicago grad who began life in Texas. There was at that time hardly any knowledge in those parts of the existence much less the excellence of the U of C. Many things have changed since then, including preeminently the general rise in popularity of the University and the renaissance of the city of Chicago but perhaps also the greater cosmopolitanism of Texas itself. The state is full of fine high schools and ambitious students. It should be natural for some of them to look northward up the central time zone to the metropolis of the Midwest and its great University at a time when, as you say @BronxBorn , some of the bloom has come off California (the promised land in my own youth), and the great schools of the eastern seaboard are both too far away and too alien culturally and perhaps politically. This is the first I have heard of this initiative, but it seems both logical and promising. I would expect that a real opportunity exists there. Hook ‘em, Maroons!
I hope they resurrect the special Texas Train like they had during the early years of the university.
That is really great news, and some compelling reasons to have the the campaign in Texas.
Rice is U Chicago’s only one true peer in Texas. It has similar prestige and financial aid so it won’t effect them.
UT Austin will loose more aid eligible to U Chicago but it’s huge and auto-admits so they can absorb some loss.
For undergrad, I don’t really see much reason for students to leave Texas but for grad/professional schools, U Chicago is a good option.
I like this plan. I think it will work. The UChicago alumni network in Austin is darned strong. (at least when I was there… they had so many events, and all of them are super fun)
This is an excellent idea. Recruit in a burgeoning area with pockets of massive wealth. @BronxBorn - most importantly, what can you tell us about this whisper portion of a planned $10 Billion fundraising campaign?
It’s pretty clear what Chicago needs, probably more than any other top ten university: money.
If the road to texas is mined with gold, by all means, Chicago should head in that direction.
As @marlowe1 said: hook’em.
That’s how it works, you wave financial aid in front of applicants & families so more apply, it gets traction, more high achievers and paying customers take notice and apply. Texas is booming and U Chicago wants a piece of that KitKat bar.
A nice gal like you shouldn’t fall for Cue’s cynicism, Cupcakes. What OP is getting at is the potential for the U of C to mine the intellectual riches in the high schools of the Lone Star state. If so many of Texas’s gifted athletes have for years been recruited away from the state to play football at Notre Dame and such northern places, I don’t see why some of its brainiacs couldn’t be recruited to come to the Mecca of the Mind in Hyde Park. If memory serves there were fifty such Texas kids in this year’s first year class, so the word has already gotten out. For some reason all those kids passed up Rice.
@BronxBorn , could you tell us in a little more detail what you mean when you say there is a plan to use Booth to “work head to head peer competitions”.
@marlowe1 - no cynicism from me for this particular initiative! The texas plan seems like a way to check many boxes - to mine the state for its intellectual riches, and also boost fundraising.
@BronxBorn - again - can you tell us more about the $10B campaign? That seems like a magic number I very much hope Chicago can hit. They just finished a campaign which raised $5.43B - a nice sum, but fairly average amongst top schools these days.
Finally, marlowe, do you remember what the board of trustees composition was like when you were a student at Chicago? While we may be at odds at times, it seems pretty clear now that the Board is one thing first: all about the green. Hard to ignore that. I’m curious if governance - and the composition of the governors - looked different in the past.
@Cue7: there are a lot more alums on the board than in the past. UChicago traditionally started more with civic leader types, likely due its relatively newer beginnings back in the day. Not to out Marlowe’s age, but there have been a couple of generations floating through the place since his time.
I think the Chicago Board of Trustees – just like the boards of trustees at all of its peer institutions – has always been primarily about “the green.” It used to be composed of the local Establishment – Chicago business and mainstream community leaders. In recent decades it has gotten more national, more finance-oriented, and I think more full of University of Chicago alumni, especially as more of those have made it into the top 0.01%.
I don’t know exactly when the vogue began for having more than one or two people besides wealthy, accomplished alumni and wealthy, accomplished locals on boards of trustees of prestige universities, but I am pretty certain it happened during my lifetime. Some of it surely derived from the search for broader representation – there were not enough female or African-American centimillionaires to meet demand, so mere accomplishment became an acceptable credential. But the supply of centimillionaires of color (or other qualities in demand) has been increasing . . .
Sorry to disappoint you, Cue, but I don’t remember taking note of who the trustees were in my time (with one exception) and had only the foggiest idea of the role they performed.
The exception was Charles Percy, who had been a legendary undergrad at the College, who had lived in my own dorm of BJ and had made his first few thousands by running a laundry business out of it, then became the boy-wonder CEO of Bell & Howell, then a US Senator, and, many thought, a future President of the United States, and whose daughter was married during my second year to a Rockefeller with maximum ostentation in Rockefeller Chapel as I gazed from the Midway on the luminaries arriving there and at the reception in Ida Noyes. Him I had heard of and new that he was something called a trustee of the University. I figured that there must be others, that they must also be wealthy, and that they must all be stodgier versions of him. It all seemed remote from my life or my interests as a student. Indeed, probably antithetical to them (though I did admire the derring-do of Percy).
I am quite sure my friends were as clueless as me. Did you yourself actually think of things like university governance and the role of trustees when you were in the College, Cue?
In response to the question about the “whisper” number:
The endowment ended at $8.5 billion on June 30th, 2019. The peer totals (same date):
• $40 Harvard
• $30 Yale
• $27 Stanford
• $26 Princeton
• $18 MIT
Schools which U of C now considers in their “rear view mirror”, such as Penn and Columbia, have $14 and $11, respectively. Brown, Cornell, and Dartmouth sit in the mid to low single digit billions, well below Chicago.
The last campaign saw material increases in alumni participation levels. The University of Chicago needs to be “in the twenties” in the next decade. As a result, $10 billion is the logical figure coming off a very successful $5.5 billion campaign.
When deciding “how much and when”, two major topics will arise. The first is if the President has “another championship run” in him. The toll of the hugely successful championship run for the $5.5 campaign entitles Zimmer to “go out a champion”, or return for a charge at a $10+ billion run. At this stage in his epic career, this will only be a personal decision as he is already a first ballot “HOF” dude. The second topic is attracting “anchor” investors so as to announce with 25% of the $10 billion total already in the bag. There are so many loyal and passionate University of Chicago multi billionaires that is not helpful here to speculate which one(s) will step up with a record-breaking commitment, but importantly, many of them have taken the “Buffet pledge” so it is known they are giving away all their wealth. One interesting question would be If a certain U Chicago alumni were to become president would these billionaires hasten their giving pledge so as to direct their money to U of C vs. their rich uncle in DC. Clearly, continued success on incoming student profiles, rankings, and outcomes drive the shine of U of C. give to sanders or warren, or Chicago?
As for the “head to head” statement:
For those students who aspire a finance/Wall Street track, the sales pitch is to center them on “how to return” to Texas and leverage the University of Chicago degree. Two names at the top of this list are David Booth (of the Booth School of Business and Dimensional) and Ken Griffin (of the University of Chicago Department of Economics and Citadel). As two of the leading firms in the world you can find their major operations in Austin, Dallas, and Houston. This sends the message to aspiring “Wall Street titans” from Texas that they can attend U of C, be “hooked” at the best firms in the world, and not have to move to New York. They can come home to their beloved Texas and be at the top of the “Wall Street food chain”.
Of note, the Charles Schwab and TD Ameritrade’s decision to headquarter in Dallas post-merger is also a harbinger of things to come—“Wall Street” is becoming more figurative than literal each year, and Texas is getting a disproportionate number of these firms. Goldman now has the 2nd amount of front office personal in Texas after NY. On the private equity side firms like Vista are emerging as world leaders, and this is the Austin based firm whose founder you may recall paid all student loans at a Moorhouse commencement address last year.
My loyalties are with interests of Texas and Texans, not with interests of business corporations. Private colleges like U of Chicago are corporations not people. I don’t have similar empathy for them.
“My loyalties are with interests of my state not with interests of business corporations. Private colleges like U of Chicago are corporations not people. I don’t have similar empathy for them.”
- A "corporation" is a form of organization set up and run by people who make decisions for and on behalf of other people. Also, if UChicago is a "business corporation" then what does that make Rice?
@BronxBorn re: your post #14 above:
Do you know what the current endowment is for Northwestern University ?
@BronxBorn: Also re: your post #14 above:
"Schools which Univ. of Chicago now considers in their rear view mirror, such as Penn and Columbia, "
Are you serious ?
Gaming US News rankings is not the same as surpassing outstanding universities like Columbia & Penn in academic quality & professional success.
@Publisher The reference has nothing to with rankings, but where UChicago believes it’s sits with non HYPS ivies.