<p>All this Wake and BC hate is poor sportmanship :p</p>
<p>I’ve followed this subject for a long time as a Wake alum interested in making sure my Deacs don’t get left out of the top tier of sports if there is a major shuffle (see the SWC orphans). People have expected a major shakeup in conference affiliations for years because of the direction of TV contracts, conference championship games, and the instability of the Big East (only 8 schools, little loyalty, lowest revenue) and the Big XII (Big 8 and Texas schools don’t get along, uneven revenue sharing, low TV revenue).</p>
<p>This most recent round of Big Ten expansion has been for Texas. In the preceding years it had been rumored that an unexpected name was being targeted, and if there is a wildcard candidate in play Texas makes the most sense. Texas is as good as get as ND potential revenue wise, so much so that they can have their pick of any conference (Pac-10, SEC, or Big Ten). They’re most interested in the Big Ten for being the combination of athletic excellence, academic excellence (eliminates SEC), and TV revenue (eliminates Pac-10).</p>
<p>The Big Ten made some contacts gauging interest, and Texas has said they’re interested if they can bring A&M along. This is two fold: the legislature won’t let Texas leave A&M behind, and they don’t want to have to schedule OOC games vs A&M and Oklahoma every year. Expansion to 12 makes sense because of the conference championship game, but more than that is a tougher sell for the Big Ten presidents. Right now the Big Ten is assessing whether getting Texas is worth going all the way to 14. When expansion was first announced they said they were evaluating multiple options including 12, 14, or 16 (they did say they wouldn’t have an odd number again). Now its just a waiting game. I don’t have a clue what the president’s think about other potential candidates, because right now they are concentrating on Texas first. Once that is decided, many dominoes will start to fall. Conference expansion is like Congress making a law, its crazy behind the scenes to where its almost unpredictable what the final result will be.</p>
<p>The Pac-10 doesn’t really want to expand, but could be forced to for fear of losing their potential expansion candidates. They have offered Colorado in the past, and if the Big XII is in the process of collapsing, the Buffs might jump if offered again. (the 12th team likely being Utah with an outside shot at less qualified Colorado St given the conferences partner system).</p>
<p>ucb,
I don’t know how many top private undergrad colleges you are familiar with, but the resources that many of them dedicate to their undergrads is significantly higher than the top publics in things like academic advising and career counseling and need/merit financial aid. Some may not care or think that smacks of “hand-holding” but I kind of like it. Maybe it’s my mother hen instincts. </p>
<p>Nice to see you write almighty and undergrad in the same sentence. Boy, is that a rarity. From much of what I read on CC, you’d think that colleges were set up only for research purposes and to confer prestige on their graduates because of what happens in their labs rather than what happens in their classrooms. A place like Wake really does think of the undergrad as “almighty” and that is an extremely refreshing thought for a student or a family that wants to get good value for its money.</p>
<p>barrons,
If U Michigan is so rich, then why can’t they do what U North Carolina does with so much less, ie, meet 100% of the need for ALL of their students. Why discriminate against OOS students who are already paying the highest OOS tuition & fees of any public university in the USA?</p>
<p>Because they don’t have to. Why give away what you can sell? You don’t build an endowment by giving it away fin fin aid. UM is not run as a charity. UNC does not even offer many high cost majors like engineering.</p>
<p>barrons,
Are you serious? Do you think that HYPSM and the 25 other top colleges that meet full financial need have to in order to attract students??? Of course not. Their brands could easily attract plenty of folks willing to pay the full price. </p>
<p>As I’m sure you know, but perhaps others do not, engineering in the state of North Carolina is channeled toward NC State. Is it bad that U North Carolina does not also have an engineering school? IMO, no. It’s a smart use of state resources.</p>
<p>The fact remains it is cheaper to teach English majors than mech engineering. </p>
<p>I really dont’ care what and why HYS do what they do. They have their own agendas. Why don’t they expand and have 15,000 undergrads to make that great education available to more people? They purposely create scarcity to maintain exclusivity. They could educate far more people if they ran things more efficiently.</p>
<p>Why don’t HYS and the other top privates expand? I think that they value the student experience that they deliver and don’t want to dilute it. They have a different mission that creates a different environment and usually a different student experience. </p>
<p>For the record, some publics (U Virginia and U North Carolina) don’t discriminate between IS and OOS students for need-based aid and meet 100% of the need of their students.</p>
<p>Hawkette, almighty is spelled with a little ‘a’… ;)</p>
<p>
The bulk of it is probably in need/merit financial aid. Academic advising and career counseling wouldn’t seem to command a tremendous amount of overhead.</p>
<p>Arguably, if you took away financial aid, tuition costs would decline…when you subsidize something, it hides the true cost.</p>
<p>Getting back to the original purpose of this thread, it is my understanding that the Big XII does not have a revenue sharing agreement (except for bowl games) like the Pac-10 and Big Ten have. If that is true, with Texas being a top dog program, the revenue sharing would have to significantly outweigh what it can currently garner by trucking (relatively) alone.</p>
<p>Yes and UVa can’t put together a good science and engineering program worthy of the school’s name. Everyone has limited resources and must make choices. Uva put fin aid first as they figured it would cost too much to actually bring their science and engineering programs to the top 15 level. With more cuts coming from the state and the endowment down I wonder how long they can keep up the aid. Are they need blind or just offering aid to the group they admit?</p>
<p>No argument that BC and Wake have stronger undergraduate student bodies. They are after all much smaller than most publics, and have no obligation towards educating in-state students. But that does not make them better schools. Nor will I argue that they are more oriented towards undergraduate education although here in Wisconsin several schools in the system have had their students voluntarily raise their tuition, which is SUBSTANTIALLY cheaper than BC or Wake to use the money for improving undergraduate education. See today’s article from the Badger Herald: [The</a> Badger Herald: News: MIU oversight bodies present 31 top ranked proposals](<a href=“http://badgerherald.com/news/2010/02/17/miu_oversight_bodies.php]The”>http://badgerherald.com/news/2010/02/17/miu_oversight_bodies.php).</p>
<p>barrons,
My sense is that U Virginia’s pipeline from the state’s coffers is pretty narrow and that they already don’t take much money from them. But I’m pretty sure that they were one of the schools that followed the Pied Piper and invested too heavily in illiquid assets that got squashed in 2008. So, you’re probably right that they are under some duress. </p>
<p>Re the cost of engineering and sciences, maybe Virginia should do what North Carolina did and funnel engineering students to another campus. Virginia Tech has long had a strong engineering program and, as you rightly point out, it’s darn expensive to create a top engineering or science program. The folks with the infrastructure have a tremendous head start, so it’s no surprise that U Virginia is having difficulty raising its status in that world and you’re probably right that the research dollars will flow first to the historical powers. </p>
<p>As you know, I care most about the student and the student experience and wonder if you think that there is a material difference in the undergraduate education that one could get in engineering or sciences at U Virginia vs programs with more history. My sense is that it’s not that great as this is heavily influenced by student quality/class sizes/faculty focus on undergrads/institutional resources for undergrads and U Virginia continues to attract a strong cadre of students and compares well on these measurements.</p>
<p>Yes and my point is students lack information and rely on things like branding and “prestige” and some are being duped into buying a Mercedes and getting a VW bug. Will they come out fine–probably because as has been shown the equally smart do pretty well no matter where they go to college. Also there are many science areas and some engineering that is not even in the catalog.</p>
<p>Engineering employment is regional and very egalatarian. Top programs will attract more national recruitment. However, engineers are in such demand that they can pretty much gain employment whereever they want to settle. The differences are on-campus recruiting…regional companies will recruit from regional schools.</p>
<p>You can see, regional employers recruit on regional campuses:</p>
<p>Defense and military heavy in D.C./Virginia.
Agricultural/manufacturing heavy in the midwest.
Technology heavy in California.</p>
<p>You can get a good job graduating from any of these programs…but if you want to work in an industry that doesn’t have its homebase nearby, you’ll have to go to them instead of them coming to look for you.</p>
<p>Source: 2007 National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO) Endowment Study</p>
<hr>
<p>Obviously, these stats were taken prior to the recession; however, I hope that they could still serve you guys another prospective in this grand scheme of future expansion.</p>
<p>Sparkeye, the Texas endowment you listed above is for the entire UT system and part of it is even set aside for the A&M system. UT-Austin’s share is worth less than half of that of the entire system’s endowment. Of course, Austin’s share of the endowment is still huge, worth approximately the same as Michigan’s endowment. The 5 largest public university endowments are Michigan ($6 billion, 6th largest endowment in the nation), UT-Austin (currently worth $5.5-$6 billion 8th largest endowment in the nation), Texas A&M ($4.5-$5 billion), UVa ($3.5 billion) and Cal ($2.3 billion). Wisconsin’s endowment stands at $1.3 billion, but it has a patent-related endowment that is also large. So if Texas and Texas A&M joined, along with Chicago, Michigan and NU, the CIC would have one of the largest combined endowment in the nation, second only the the Ivy League.</p>
<p>Alexandre - you are correct that the UT number represents the entire UT System, and that UT-Austin by itself is somewhere between $5-$6B. But just a clarification - the UT System number does not include A&Ms endowment since it is already broken down to include the UT System’s 2/3’s portion of the Permanent University Fund. It also includes all the other UT System assets managed by UTIMCO, so UT-Austin’s individual endowment is already included in the UT System number (I actually was never clear on that before). The A&M system’s number is the same in that it includes A&Ms portion of the PUF+ any additional A&M endowments (e.g., the A&M Foundation). The breakdown of the UT and A&M endowments have always been a bit confusing, but all the asset allocations and various endowment funds managed under the UTIMCO umbrella can be found here: [UTIMCO</a> - Home](<a href=“http://www.utimco.org/scripts/internet/index.asp]UTIMCO”>http://www.utimco.org/scripts/internet/index.asp)</p>
<p>However, to make it even more confusing, I’m still not clear if all the private endowments held by the various UT Medical Schools are all managed by UTIMCO.</p>
<p>“I don’t believe that you have included the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation endowment, which is over 2.0 billion, in the Wisconsin total.”</p>
<p>Is that right? The more the merrier for the Big Ten!! In case I screwed up other school(s) endowment number(s), feel free to correct and update it/them. </p>
<p>Incidentally, did I just misspell perspective with prospective?! Oh God, I must have done too many SOAP notes today…=.="</p>
</p>