What is Tulane’s niche and is research a cornerstone of it? Correct me if I am wrong the International rankings feature top research institutions.
Tulane is huge on research. In fact, Tulane is a member of AAU-Association of American Universities (click this for details: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_American_Universities). AAU is a very exclusive group and very prestige and it is on Tulane website too. Also, Tulane has joined in some other research universities. Also, my Son has done REU in Physics at Tulane and one of the benefits is he has been able to be accepted at Aerospace company as engineer (with high paying job) after graduation. REU is research for undergraduate and it is showing that any kids participating in REU has the skills to do job (especially engineering job). Also, REU is good if any kids wants to go to graduate schools. So, yes Tulane is big and huge on Research and any under graduate kids can participate. Anyhow, I just want to highlight about Research at Tulane as follows:
Tulane is a member of the prestigious Association of American Universities, a select group of the 62 leading research universities in the United States and Canada with “preeminent programs of graduate and professional education and scholarly research.” Tulane also is ranked by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching as a university with “very high research activity.” Of more than 4,300 higher educational institutions rated by the foundation, Tulane remains in a prestigious category that includes only two percent of universities nationwide.
And top research institutions have FAR FAR more to do with what is happening at the graduate school and post-doc level than the undergrad level. Tulane has excellent, world-class research. I define world-class as many papers published in the top publications in the field, widely respected researchers, and would point to its membership in the Association of American Universities, which is based on the depth and breadth of research going on at a school. It is not a rubber stamp. IIRC, they recently dropped the University of Nebraska mainly on the basis of lack of breadth in their research that was being published at a high level. If you want to call Tulane’s research something less than “world-class” because Tulane is not likely to have a Nobel Prize winner on their faculty any time soon, so be it. But again, remember we are talking about undergrads here. The number of undergrads that affects or that even care about such things is extremely minimal. Undergrad is far more about getting the basics of a field of study, not being heavily involved for years in Nobel winning research.
Now having said that, I will repeat that Tulane is, in general, not going to be competitive with Harvard, Michigan, Berkeley, Duke and others with large pools of money allowing them to spend the millions it takes to attract a single researcher in some cases in some fields, especially the sciences. I heard last year of Duke “poaching” a top talent in one of the sciences, I think it was molecular biology, and after adding up the salary and support money for her staff along with a complete rebuilding of the better part of a floor in one of their research buildings, they spent over $10 million in year one just on that one person. Tulane generally cannot compete with that.
But that doesn’t mean that Tulane’s professors don’t do excellent and interesting research that gets published in the top journals. Just because most research anywhere is not Nobel level work certainly doesn’t mean it is crap, either. In fact they do fantastic and important work in many fields (environmental research of the Gulf and bayou areas being but one example in one scientific area) , and they do it in part by including top undergrads intensely in the real lab/field work. That same Duke professor is not required to teach undergrad courses and is so busy running a large research team, writing grant proposals, and consulting with major pharma that no undergrad is likely to have a relationship with her. I did my grad work in chemistry at a top 5 ranked university. I saw this first hand and continued to see it as I traveled to universities as part of my career.
A Tulane undergrad, on the other hand, can get very close to their professors. This is not theoretical. I experienced it in the lab (3 publications in the top ACS chemistry journals from my undergrad work with 2 as lead author) and personally (I invited 5 of my professors to my wedding in St. Louis, and 2 were able to come. These were people I talked with on nearly a daily basis and had shared many meals with). These kinds of relationships are not unusual at Tulane, but are rather unusual at the Nobel Prize type schools.
But the main point is we are talking about undergrads here. Being able to do real research is great for many students, not important for others. You can learn everything you need to that wasn’t taught in a typical undergrad lab course when you get to grad school. It happens with students from LACs all the time and they eventually do as well as their Tulane or Michigan counterparts. They just might not get off to as quick of a start. But to talk about Tulane not ranking highly in these international lists and acting like it affects undergrads? It is all just so much nonsense.
I guess I am still confused. Doesn’t Tulane have 5,000 graduate students? Are these rankings for just undergraduate studies or the university as a whole?
From what I understood, the rankings were for the natural sciences. I don’t know the details beyond what I posted earlier, nor do I care. Tulane has a very healthy grad school, but this discussion was about how the list affects undergrads from Tulane.
I am only here to bring up some concerns and project the danger for Tulane in the future. I mentioned about Natural Index because Natural science is the strongest area of Tulane. This area in general is the most favor to Tulane because not only we have medical school but also strong at Chemical and Biomedical Engineering and also Neuron Science. Also very strong at biology in some niche areas.
However, the cut of many important engineering disciplines and small physics program is what makes Tulane drop sharply in science ranking.
Here’s another most recent ranking that focus on scientific research:
http://nturanking.lis.ntu.edu.tw/DataPage/OverallRanking.aspx?y=2016
If looking at social science. Tulane is in a even more worse situation. We maybe very strong at Latin American studies but this area counts too little.
http://www.shanghairanking.com/FieldSOC2016.html
Economic science is what matters. It is the locomotive that lead the social science. However, Tulane’s econ is too small to be significant. And Tulane econ faculty is known to have high jump ship rate, possibly for family reason, for example, wife can’t get good job in NOLA, etc.
Ideas/Repec Econ dept ranking: https://ideas.repec.org/top/top.econdept.html
In Business, Tulane and many regional universities are declining significantly because of rising Asian universities who now have equally strong and even better resources in terms of curriculum, software, hardware, and faculty.
Tulane’s b school strategy is to focus on accounting and corporate finance in which these two used to be among world’s top 20~30. However, due to flight of super stars, Tulane is now losing ground in these two fields substantially.
Now Tulane’s accounting is way better than Finance. Finance is a huge area including asset pricing, derivatives, financial market, financial engineering. Tulane’s focus in corporate finance is not enough to make its overall Finance program strong. Therefore, in terms of curriculum, despite its well known equity research and fund management programs,Tulane finance program is not quantitative and mathematical enough to make its graduates competitive for high finance front office jobs as Finance industry is moving toward big data and tech driven space.
UT dallas world b school ranking: http://jindal.utdallas.edu/the-utd-top-100-business-school-research-rankings/worldRankings#20112015
ASU Finance ranking: http://apps.wpcarey.asu.edu/fin-rankings/rankings/results.cfm
Well, you are welcome to be a slave to rankings and get all caught up in what does or doesn’t mean and how others may react. However, Tulane is thriving and is in much better shape now that it was before Katrina, which is when those engineering fields were pared back. If anyone thinks UT Dallas is a better B school than Tulane, then by all means go there and see how the reputations stack up in the real world. This is demonstrates without doubt how flawed all these rankings are. BTW, Tulane is absolutely not a regional university. I also have serious doubts about some of your claims regarding faculty flight of “super stars”. I know they lost Melissa Harris-Perry, the former(?) MSNBC show host, to Wake Forest but Wake was her alma mater. Plus her husband was involved in MOLA politics and I think that went badly. I would like to see some proof of significant faculty flight.
Melissa Harris-Perry is neither Economist nor B school professor and I don’t know her research rank in her area. She’s a celebrity for sure but may not be a star in her own academic field.
The star I am talking about, for example, is Thomas Noe who ranked among the world’s top in corporate finance,is now at Oxford Said B School.
http://www.sbs.ox.ac.uk/community/people/thomas-noe
For Econ, It is too small and under-invested ever since most of resources has flowed into finance program at business school. There’s rarely a super star from Econ so I won’t comment who has left. Currently, Tulane Econ faculty has no influential presence in main stream fields such as Macro, Micro, Mathematical Econ, Financial Economics, and Econometrics, Only doing ok at some sub-fields like development.
However, before 1990s, it was quite strong in the main stream. Long time ago, Hullabaloo had already mentioned about high turnover rate at Econ dept.
BTW, I never said UT Dallas is better. I only shared the rank that they publish. However, UT Dallas is on the track to beat Tulane because it is uprising school or I should say it is already happened. For example, on USNEWS MBA ranking , UTD is 37th while Tulane Freeman is 68th.
In business school UTD might be slightly better, but on no planet does UT-Dallas have half the history or overall rep that Tulane has. Tulane is one of the top universities in the South.
One guy in finance, and then you go back to the 1980’s. Strong argument. Harvard, Yale, etc. has faculty poached to “lesser” institutions all the time, but in this case Tulane had someone poached by Oxford. Hardly a mark of shame. As I said from the start, Tulane will never be able to compete with such institutions if those institutions really want someone. That’s life in academia. Is he European born? If so going back might be a strong draw for him. I continue to say that you are creating an issue where none exists and for reasons that seem dubious and with little tether to real life. Not to mention be obsessed with rankings. For all you have said, somehow the results “on the ground”, i.e. empirically, is that Tulane is thriving as it relates to undergraduates.
Tulane’s undergraduate program and quality is first rate, an the results for people graduating from this track continue to be stronger than ever. Enrollment is at record highs, even with admissions continuing to raise the bar as demonstrated by higher average stats for each incoming class. All of this belies every concern you seem to have. These are solid actual results as opposed to vague claims dating back to the 1980’s. Your claims of lack of influential faculty shows, even if accurate (of which I have not been convinced), shows that you continue to confuse an institution that is focused on a top undergraduate research education with one focused on graduate students and Nobel-type recognition. That isn’t the only valid model in the world, nor, I would argue, the best one for undergraduates.
UT system and Texas A&M are among the highest endowed in the US. So no doubt that UT Dallas can catch up quickly while Tulane was recovering from Katrina. In fact, two of former Freeman professors moved to UTD not long after Katrina.
Thomas Noe is American born and got his PhD at UT Austin.
It is not because Tulane develops too slowly but others have grown at much faster pace. Some interesting convergences have happened in the last 10 years. It has to do with investment in research and endowment.
To be honest, the rigor of Tulane undergrad still has much room to improve. Given the current resource at Tulane, I would’t say Tulane’s under is first rate either. Also high grade inflation is very prevalent at Tulane and other private colleges. Not to mention that many classes have to compromise for football players. It is relatively good in the US but relatively weak compare to top tier research universities in China, Hong Kong, Singapore, France, Germany, and Australia who require much more quantitative and analytical education even for business, social science, and liberal arts majors.
Tulane lost a lot of faculty after Katrina. To use that as an argument is ridiculous and unfair. The university was shut down for a semester and for a while the financial recovery was unclear. Naturally some professors looked out for their own interests, and other universities took advantage. Hard to blame them for that. Tulane reloaded with many bright, young, energetic faculty members. It has made and continues to make huge gains at the undergrad level. Probably the grad level too, but I don’t follow that. I completely disagree with your last paragraph in its entirety. Apples and oranges to compare almost any US university for undergrad with foreign universities.
You clearly have some odd agenda, so I will just leave this discussion with the following: I have hesitated to bring up any ranking system because I believe them all to be garbage. But since you love them so much and you keep bashing Tulane as an undergraduate school, how is it that the most cited ranking system, USNWR, has moved Tulane from 54th to 39th just in the last 2 years, and that 39 is out of some 1,500 US four year research institutions? You want to live by the rankings? Well there you go. Looks pretty top level to me.