What is worrying me is that Tulane is leaning toward the likes of
liberal arts college rather than self claimed "world class university’.
Tulane is out of the game in many world university rankings because of relative low research impact and investment compare to other USNEWS top 50 colleges, not to mention many of uprising Asian competitors in China, Singapore, and Hong Kong.
It looks like Tulane is now investing more money in football program than research. I think low research score is hurting Tulane’s reputation internationally and Tulane has never mentioned how it should move up in world university ranking. Can anyone explain?
I could be wrong of course, but I don’t think Tulane is worried about trying to move up in every ranking system out there. IMHO, they shouldn’t. Chasing rankings is a fool’s game. Tulane is one of only 62 research universities accepted in the Association of American Universities. In order to remain in that group, Tulane has to meet certain standards regarding research depth and breadth. I think it was the University of Nebraska that was recently uninvited from the group due to lack of investment in research outside of agriculture.
To get into the multitude of reasons for the way Tulane shows up in such rankings would take many hours and pages. There is no question that Tulane is more undergraduate oriented than, say, Harvard or Stanford. But at the same time, it offers far more research opportunities and areas of exploration that any LAC. It is, again IMHO, the best mix of both worlds out there, with the benefit going mostly to undergrads. Tulane may never compete with Harvard, Duke, Michigan, Cal, etc. in graduate research reputation, with the exception of a few notable departments. But they are solid in virtually every area, and that is why undergraduates at Tulane are represented as authors on so many published papers and at research conference presentations. It was true for me 40 years ago, and it remains true today, possibly more so.
BTW, I do not believe Tulane invests more in the football program, or in sports in general, than in research. The funds for the stadium and many other areas of athletics are directed donations. Who knows if that money finds its way to Tulane if it were pitched for chemistry research instead. Also keep in mind that at all schools, much of the funding comes from outside sources, especially government agencies like NSF, NIH, etc. That won’t show up as Tulane doing the investing, I don’t think.
I don’t buy nor agreeing with any national/domestic or international rankings out there. WHAT I believe is that anyone who has received any Bachelor/Master/PHD from Tulane can and will secure a good job if not high paying job. To give a good real life example, my Son has dual degrees from Tulane and Vandy and now is working for a well known US Aerospace Company with employees around 65,000 people. He was accepted right away without any problems at all. So, the question is do you have a degree from Tulane yet? if not then work hard to achieve it with high GPA and/or some REUs so that you can get a better job. The goal of any students (I mean all students in general) is to get a job. Not just a job but high paying job. So, why worry about the rankings etc as those rankings will not help you in getting high GPA.
You both made good points and I somewhat agree. I raise this issue because I
found it surprised that nobody in any Tulane related forum has mentioned it.
I want to say that outside of America, these things matter.
In Europe and Asia, undergrad, grad, and faculty have consistent ranking.
Also in Asia, the media and all internet forums are very hyped about world university ranking. Even though they
are biased, most people have no idea and will believe in such ranking (asymmetric information).
I heard that in China, many top financial firms are starting to recruit only those study abroad from world’s top 100.
Then I checked some academic journals ranking or organization such as NATURE for science or ideas/REPEC for economics, Tulane is not even among top 500 in Nature index ranking. This might explains why Tulane ranks badly in world ranking by those commercial magazines.
Tulane could be in danger of being marginalized on a global scale. I believe that one can’t go much further without
strong research environment.
Personally, I believe this forum has raised some good points in general and I am hoping somehow the Tulane Admin or Management or Teaching Stuff will read and bring some of these to Senior Management of the school to elevate the school name to general public. However, I know also that money really matters and perhaps they need to allocate in their budget a special fund just for these things. That is just my two cents.
Somehow Tulane has managed to do very well for decades without being on these magic lists. It would be ridiculous to let this kind of thing dictate strategy. But by all means please donate a few billion so Tulane can have even 10% of Harvard’s endowment. I am not sure where Tulane is supposed to come up with the kind of money that would make a dent in what you are saying.
I know Money really matters and it is not the root of evil if being put to a good use. I have seen a video about Tulane kid trying to come up with donation with his coins, etc. Perhaps, for every Tulane Alumni they will contribute at least five bucks or two dollar per month?..then how many Tulane alumni since 1970s that are willing to give just two bucks per month?..hopefully, this idea will help; who knows?
Some of lower ranked universities in China (non-981 league), UK (non-Russell group), and Australia (non-G8 league) who are not as rich as and don’t offer professor package as high as Tulane are now among top 500 Nature Index.
Our peers or even below like Miami, Temple, Drexel are also doing better in science research.
Well, I would have to see their formula, but most likely this just shows a fault in their methodology. I mean, just look at their disclaimer at the bottom of the table
Of course Tulane won’t compare to the huge foreign universities as well as many of the state universities that have faculties 4-10 x the size of Tulane. Also, Tulane is exceedingly strong in publications in Latin American Studies, History, and many of the non-science and non-natural science fields. So this is a very limited and not particularly well done index.
To me, this is never worth wasting time on because no ranking system can possibly fairly evaluate something as complex as the quality of a university, how proficient it is at research overall, etc. As I said above, personally I am proud of the emphasis Tulane puts on undergraduate education and the exposure to high quality research undergraduates can receive, if they so choose. In the end, there is always a trade-off between being the most high-powered of research institutions where the grad student groups are huge and the professors are chasing Nobel Prizes and large grants and always consulting. They are very esteemed, of course, but the undergraduates rarely benefit from it. Running a research group of 50 grad students and 8-10 post-docs is a lot like running a small company.
Tulane has chosen a somewhat different path, a balance between that kind of high-powered research in the sciences and the set-up of an LAC. Some of that is not exactly a choice; doing research at that level is an expense only the largest and/or most well-endowed (or hugely govt. supported in the case of China and many others) can afford. Tulane has a large endowment compared to the total universe of American universities, but it is nowhere near what would be needed to compete with Harvard, Stanford, etc. Hence the focus being where it is. It is a large part of what makes Tulane the school it is. Changing all that just to show up higher on some flawed index? Puh-leeeze.
Let me also add, and perhaps I really should have led with this since it is a crucial point, that a quantitative ranking such as Nature’s, even if it were normalized for size of institution and investment somehow, cannot possibly reflect the quality of research being done. Even if you want to focus on the natural sciences only, Tulane undergraduate students have been involved in exceedingly important work involving environmental studies over a huge range of issues, significant clinical medical breakthroughs, as well as breakthroughs in biomedical engineering. I haven’t kept up with publications they have contributed to in areas like chemistry and physics, but if it is anything like when I was there it is fertile in those areas as well
Whenever there are limited resources, it is important to keep one’s eye on the ball, where the ball in this case is what that institution’s goals are. I addressed that in the post above.
Just an FYI, Tulane literally just opened a new Brain Institute on the uptown campus for neuroscience research. I read Tulane is raising 50 million dollars for the new center. Also, I received another email that Tulane just opened a new campus called the River and Coastal center for research. Hardly sounds like an LAC. My daughter has only been at Tulane a short time, but she been impressed with the neuroscience dept. She had thought she would major in Cell and Molecular Biology , but she just became interested in neuroscience after attending an engineering open house and attending a faculty talk on campus.
Just to be clear, I meant the teaching attention towards undergrads leans more towards being like an LAC than what happens at most of the premier graduate student oriented institutions. The research opportunities are in fact just like those latter institutions, except they are even more accessible to undergrads. Like I said, best balance of both worlds, from the undergrad perspective. You are totally correct, @X22011, that Tulane has done and continues to do much to push forward in all kinds of new areas, especially since Katrina and the reorganization of the school. I would also add the opening of Flowers Hall to your list, a facility designed to foster innovations and entrepreneurship in taking laboratory work and turning it into commercial success.
Note the remark about budget constraints not allowing full completion of the interior on the upper floors. As I said, resources are limited. Tulane simply does not have the endowment size nor the alumni base that can usually make the kind of single mega-donation to allow for a grand project such as this. By contrast, Harvard recently received a single donation of $400 million dollars, and USC (CA) a few years ago got $50 million (IIRC) to build a science and engineering complex with a similar purpose to Flowers Hall. There are only a relative handful of schools that are so blessed. Tulane is better off than the vast majority of universities, but cannot compete, at this time at least, with Harvard, Duke, et. al. when it comes to this particular area. Therefore they have to focus intently on certain areas of research and funding and make the most of that by doing very high quality work within those areas. Personally, I think they have done a superb job in that regard and the undergraduates benefit enormously, if they choose to take advantage.
Just want to bring the idea that Chinese GDP/person is lower than America, and almost all universities in China are considered goverimental institution, which means the salary is not determined by universities but by their proviences’ government. So this comparasion with China might not very accurate.
While I understand that we live in a world where we like to focus on all things “international”, the vast majority of Tulane’s students are from the United States, Tulane is thankfully an undergraduate-focused University, and I would assume the vast majority of its graduates go on to live and work in the United States. So why should Tulane admins worry about where some foreign ranking system places it? That would be working to satisfy someone else’s audience.
Don’t understand what you are saying. Despite the lower per capital GDP, China has been very aggressive in recruiting potential junior and established senior from the US with equally strong salary in real term compare to the top 100 US colleges in the past ten years.
It is statistically significant that quality of undergrad education is highly correlated and cointegrated with quality of faculty research.
Of course, there could always be some outliers like Tulane. However, if looking at undergrad alone, then Tulane is not among the top either. Many of top research universities are also shifting their focus to undergrad as well.
There is risk that Tulane undergrad don’t have chance to be taught by the best top-notch professors in each field. I point this out because it is the trend I observe.
I challenge you to prove this. Because for this to be true, LACs have absolutely no place at all in higher education. Yet several hundred years of experience and results show that is very far from the truth. I also challenge your statement that Tulane students do not have the chance to be taught by “top-notch” professors. That implies that undergrads at Harvard etc. do. This turns out to often be untrue, as the highest profile profs teach very little undergrad and are often unavailable due to dozens of pressing demands outside the classroom. Lower lever courses are often taught by TAs, while at Tulane this is far less often the case, like almost never.
I just find your premise to be wrong from the start, and it is like you don’t know and/or understand Tulane and its niche at all.
Lots of people want to come to the USA to improve their lives and lots of foreign students want to pursue their college degrees from the USA in general. Also, lots of those kids want to get education from Tulane. If anyone thinks that their home country universities are better than us then why not just stay in there right; rather than spending money here in the usa, getting home sick, learning english, etc.
More importantly, if Tulane does not have top-notch professors and does not have top-notch curriculums then my Son college degree from Tulane is useless and will not be accepted at top-notch aerospace company with high paying job as engineer.
Also, if Tulane is not considered top-notch school then no schools will hook up with Tulane for 3+2 program or other programs. Anyhow, top schools in the USA will not hook up with Podunk universities at all, right?
I agree. It is remarkable that such a mediocre university has students that are accepted at high rates to the top graduate and medical schools in the country. My oh my, how did my D get accepted to every grad school she applied to including Stanford (where she attended on full scholarship for her masters, which is very unusual), Harvard, Columbia, Princeton and Johns Hopkins, among others. The professors at Tulane may not be on the short list for Nobel Prizes in general (although Tulane profs have been associated with several in the past), but they are very knowledgeable, do top-notch research, and most importantly are extremely accessible to undergrads. As an undergrad, I would take that balance of accessibility and high-level research any day. Tulanealum seems to not only not get the Tulane niche, but also is confusing what is important to someone with a B.S. versus someone looking at graduate schools.
I think research is certainly a plus for the greater good and to give students some cutting-edge research opportunities.
But i don’t think it affects the quality of undergraduate education either very strongly, or for most undergrads.
LACs don’t do much cutting-edge research, yet they are known – because of small class sizes and 100% (or near-100%) focus on undergrads – for providing an outstanding education. Williams, Swarthmore, Amherst and others belong in the US pantheon in terms of quality of education.