U of C is more than just The College

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Chicago ✅
1

Disclaimer: this is totally an opinion piece, a rant more than lawyer’s brief or Workshop discussion :wink:

This is the latest statistics on the composition of the UChicago student body:

https://registrar.uchicago.edu/sites/registrar.uchicago.edu/files/uploads/Autumn%202017%20EOQ.pdf

The University Registrar actually publishes the quarter to quarter statistics on total students enrollment:

https://registrar.uchicago.edu/page/end-quarter-statistical-report-booklets

The reports go all the way back to 2001.

Currently, the 6,286 undergrads constitute around 38% of the total student body of U of C. As compared to 2001, the 4,064 undergrads then made up only 31% of the entire university student body. This is a fairly significant increase of undergrad population over the last 17 years.

I graduated from GSB in mid 1980’s. My perception then was that The College was relegated to almost entirely an afterthought within the university community. You enrolled at U of C for the graduate academic research and the professional schools. And even professional schools had a very scholarly reputation. You came to GSB to worship at the altar of EMT and learn about options pricing theory developed there in the early 1970’s (JPE 1973). Instead of studying cases (which the finance professors at GSB then would universally disparage) you might need a quick review of Ito’s Lemma to derive Black-Scholes. With no disrespect to college grad in that era (apologies to @marlowe1, @ThankYouforHelp and others) I felt U of C in the 1980’s most certainly put The College on the back burner.

Fast forward to today: The College has been on USNWR top 5 list for the last 5 years. In 2017 Andover had more students matriculated at UChicago than any other school. Stuyvasant sent 29 seniors to the Class of 2021. There are brand new dorms like Campus North and Woodlawn Commons in construction. The College certainly has reached popularity unheard of in the 1980’s.

That said, The College is NOT the U of C. Its percentage of total population of the University is still relatively low. For the USNWR top 10, here is a comparison.

(Another disclaimer: I am using USNWR ranking just as a random yard stick. I personally do not put much significance into any ranking and so please do not shoot at me for picking an arbitrary ranking :wink: )

Princeton: 66%
Harvard: 32%
Yale: 44%
Columbia: 30%
MIT: 40%
Stanford: 43%
UPenn: 48%
Duke: 43%
Caltech: 43%

(Source: Wikipedia of the Fall 2016 entering college class)

My point is that most students come to U of C for graduate or professional degrees. Research has always been and is still the main focus of the university. Without the research focus, U of C will lose its soul.

I do understand this website is called College Confidential, not University Confidential. It is mainly populated by concerning parents and their anxious high school kids. Still I think it would be a mistake to think that the University sole focus is on The College. I continue to be a U of C fanboy not because of The College but because of the intellectual tradition of the University as a whole. Let’s not lose sight of the big picture.

2

I don’t know…UChicago, the college, has fairly comparable numbers to all of the above except Princeton.

3

“My point is that most students come to U of C for graduate or professional degrees. Research has always been and is still the main focus of the university. Without the research focus, U of C will lose its soul.”

True. And if the grad and/or professional schools slip in prestige, the College will as well. They tend to be correlated over time for any research university. But what exactly is your concern - that the College is growing too big and diverting focus and even resources away from the grad programs?

4

@JBStillFlying The short answer is yes. I am worried Zimmer is too concerned about The College and forget about what makes U of C special, namely, the research focus and the relentless intellectual tradition.

The bigger point is that despite the constant bickering I read here in CC, in my biased opinion it really doesn’t matter whether ED1/ED2 affects the fundamental quality of the undergrad student body. If the graduate divisions and professional schools start to deteriorate in terms of research quality, then to me U of C is in big trouble even if The College were ranked No. 1 in the nation.

5

^^ Couldn’t agree more with some of #3. I argued this same point several months ago. The college won’t maintain it’s top ranking if the research side doesn’t keep up - especially given the competition.

I wouldn’t say that Zimmer has forgotten about the rest of the university - he’s been the biggest fundraiser in the history of the university by a long shot. And fundraising is where the president adds the most value. No university can run on fumes in the present competitive environment and remain top 10 in terms of research. It needs to regenerate and renew the talent so that it’s always on top (and new talent wants to go there for research and grad school). It’s money that will make that happen. Now that the College is in good shape, he can focus on finding the UChicago equivalent of the Knight-Hennessey endowment and direct it to the research (PhD) programs. Not sure $750 mil. is even needed. You can fund a lot of grad students on half that much. They also need money to dole out to promising stars who are itching for grant money to get their work done. Zimmer would need the cooperation of the division/department heads - people who are willing to improve the department rather than let it languish. No expert here, but it seems MIT has 30% fewer graduates and about twice the endowment of UChicago (mind you, no idea how much of the endowment is allocated to grad programs) so the latter has some catchin’ up to do. Why MIT? Well, because it’s USNWR ranked #1 in everything UChicago should be! Math, Econ, Physics, Chem, Earth Sciences, CS, Bio . . .It’s even ranked higher than UChicago in Poly Sci. and Psychology - those are Social Sciences, so that should NOT be the case.

Perhaps they should remove Bio from the above and focus on that in the context of Medical research (currently #16 with Bio #14 on USNWR). Pritzker seems more of a niche med school - the focus in HP on medical research might be beneficial, while expanding to other campuses elsewhere to boost their much lower primary care ranking. Unless they are committed to HP which they seem to be (given what I saw last fall!). Therefore, they might have to accept never being able to compete with Harvard’s myriad area “teaching hospitals” nor the sprawling medical campuses that can just offer more - more specialized treatment, more interesting research, more doctors will to teach there, and more students and patients willing to show up. They are good at what they do and they’ll be there for the south side as it (hopefully) improves economically. But in any case, no reason it can’t excel at the research side of things (both bio and med).

6

4

@JBStillFlying We are all the same page: GSB grads think alike :slight_smile:

http://time.com/money/5116456/college-endowments-returns-2017/

One thing about Zimmer’s management of endowment is disturbing to me. Nominally speaking U of C endowment is at US$7.5 billion - not too shabby but nothing at all to be proud of as compared to the top 15 USNWR schools. But I read somewhere in Bloomberg that U of C has taken on a lot of debt in the last 5 years (to the amount of $2 to $3 billion) in the expansion and construction. If that is really the case, the net endowment is a far smaller number and that really worries me ;(.

In the low interest rate environment like last 10 years, borrowing is not a sin. Apple borrows over $100 billion despite having $285 billion cash overseas. I am not a fixed income guy but I for sure hope that U of C borrowed at a fixed low rate where there was QE a few years ago. At least they don’t need to worry about rising interest rate payment.

7

@85bears46 - not going to pretend to be able to read a university’s financial statement, but their long-term debt increased 2 bil. from 2010 - 2017 (June 30 FYE). Their investments increased about the same amount (2.2 bil) and their “net assets” - proxy for “endowment”? Not sure, too lazy to check the notes - also increased about the same (2.3 bil). Are they leveraging against their investments to get cash? Possibly. BTW, 2/3 of the increase in assets is in the “restricted” category. Anyway, if I’m using my TI-30-XIIS correctly, that’s about a 4.7% return per year - about right for an endowment. Not sure how it’s allocated or what the restricted funds pertain to. Probably in the notes.

Not sure who the current financial guy is. About 10 years ago, during the Great Recession, they put a Chicago Econ PhD in there but he left after a couple of years :-j

8

I think the general perception is that Zimmer doesn’t give a crap about the College. As far as I can tell, he spends little or none of his time on College issues, other than to pontificate about freedom of speech in a university context. His main impact on the College has been (a) not replacing John Boyer as Dean, (b) replacing Ted O’Neil with Jim Nondorf, and © letting them build two new dorms and a new arts center, which constituted less than half of the major construction around the university during the Zimmer era. One of the new dorms was essentially dictated by a decision not to repair and to sell what was then the College’s largest dorm, which was literally falling apart, and the second replaced a hodgepodge of dorms that did not show well and were not consistent with anyone’s vision for the College. The direction of the College has basically been Boyer’s bailiwick. Zimmer has supported him, as he did before going to Brown and then coming back.

Debt: Yeah, Chicago borrowed a ton during the period of historically low interest rates – negative real rates – and used the money to build a bunch of buildings during a massive real estate recession. As the recession ended and recovery picked up steam, they started a huge capital campaign. The strategy was impeccable; you really can’t argue with it. (Since 2010 or so, they have also had great results with endowment investing, much better than just going along for the ride with the stock market.) The issue is execution: they need to raise enough additional endowment now and generate enough additional income to service the ridiculously cheap debt. I have no doubt they are trying, but I haven’t seen a victory dance yet. (Is it a huge surprise that the target class size for the income-generating College has increased by about 300 students over the past 10 years? Largely filled with ED admits whose demand has low price elasticity? No!)

9

JHS - I normally agree with and enjoy your posts. But to say Zimmer doesn’t give a crap about the college is ridiculous. C’mon. You have to admit that.

10

@kaukauna In this rare instance I would red-pencil @JHS 's submission as somebody once red-penciled one of mine: “Overstated. You shouldn’t rely on scatology to make your point.”

11

OK. The general perception is that Zimmer does not pay a lot of attention to or spend a lot of time on the College. He has been frying lots of other fish, including, of course, the capital campaign (which, thanks to the University’s history of poor support from College alumni, is probably less College-focused than most).

I think he cares a lot about things like Becker-Friedman, and the Harris School expansion, and the Molecular Engineering program, and the University’s relationship with Argonne and Fermilab, and the Medical Center, and expansion of the University’s footprint in India and China (not to mention Hyde Park and Woodlawn, and River North, too). It’s not that he doesn’t think the College is important; it’s just that other things have required more attention.

12

I’m going to side with @JHS on this one. He cares in the sense that he’s in charge of hiring and keeping Dean Boyer. But day to day stuff is Boyer’s deal - that’s why the college has a dean. If Boyers’s doing a great job, he stays. If not, he goes. Just like any dean.

13

Don’t disagree^^

14

I agree with this proposition… however, I have this impression not having a college that is recognized by the general public as top-notch was still a drag on the reputation of the grad schools.

That’s why having the college “rise” in the eyes of more “ordinary” people, is a good thing.

15

@FStratford - actually, when it comes to research universities, grad students couldn’t care less about the undergrad program , and faculty tend to view teaching undergrads as a bit of a drag on their time for research and grad student advising (ymmv, depending on subject). Undergrad ranking and degree of selectivity can definitely follow reputation and prestige of the grad programs, however, especially nowadays when students are focused on a major before they even matriculate.

In terms of simple economics, tripling the size of your college will up-flow more funds to the grad divisions so that’s a good thing. Technically, you don’t need to increase selectivity in the process - all you need is more revenue. However, universities understand that benefactors like selectivity and prestige (esp the alums). So universities tend not to mess with that statistic if they can help it because it’s highly correlated with more cash down the road.

If the university fundraises for the undergrad at the expense of the grad programs, then the latter can easily decline in prestige. However, most presidents, being academic types themselves, are there in order to maintain or bolster the reputation of the grad divisions - even those who ostensibly have been given the marching orders to fix the undergrad. They may talk a good talk, but their long-term focus is on academic prestige, not undergraduate stuff. The latter is typically the business of the underlings (deans and so forth).

16

It is always Dean Boyer stated preference to have 70% of the undergrads staying in college dorms. Towards that goal is why Campus South, Campus North and the Woodlawn Residential Commons were and is going to be constructed. Those buildings aren’t cheap. Campus North was estimated to cost the university $170 million. There is no way Dean Boyer could make that decision by himself. I presume the Board of Trustee had to approve of such a large item. Assuming all three new dorms are going to cost more or less the same and you are talking about U of C spending around half a billion dollars on undergrad dorms within the last 10 years.

Does that mean Zimmer spent more on The College? That was my first impression until I looked into recent addition to U of C architecture.

https://architecture.uchicago.edu

The Center of Care and Discovery completed in 2013 cost between $500 to $700 million. If you add Eckhardt Research Center, Logan Arts Center and others in construction such as the Rubinstein Forum, the total expenditure can easily top $1 billion. I can see Zimmer does not just focus on The College in the construction boom for this decade. ,

Another proof of the title of the thread: U of C is more than just The College :slight_smile:

17

Remember, too, that South Campus and North Campus actually added a very small number of net beds, and so didn’t get the College meaningfully closer to the 70% target from the ~50% they had been at forever, taking into account that the size of the College has increased by about 800 students since South Campus was started. As far as I can tell, there are about 3,300 slots in university dorms, and 6,000 undergraduates. Tough to get to 70% that way.

Both South and North mainly replaced existing dorms that were sold or demolished – The Shoreland, Pierce, Maclean, Broadview, Blackstone, maybe one other. As of a decade ago, they represented over half the total available undergraduate dorm slots. Really, the only big increase in net rooms has come from making permanent the temporary conversion of International House to an undergraduate dorm, and that has a pretty short shelf-life given the amenity gap between I-House and the newer dorms. Woodlawn will get them to around 70%, but to sustain that they will have to replace or to do major restorations of I-House and BJ.

Of course, the new dorms were significant projects that required the backing of the President and the approval of the Board of Trustees. But South only cost about half of what they spent on North, and North I believe includes leasable commercial space at street level, so they didn’t spend the whole $170 million on dorm rooms. (Not that they couldn’t have done that. Yale’s two new residential colleges, which have about the same number of beds as North, cost over $500 million. Princeton’s Whitman College, built a decade ago, cost $136 million to house 500 students.) I believe a philosophical commitment to build new dorms was made long before Zimmer became president. The Shoreland was actually sold in 2004, five years before the College finally vacated it, and Dean Boyer’s agitation for more on-campus housing dates back at least two decades.

18

I think Booth Harper Center was north of 250 million, wasn’t it?

19

And Saieh Hall (Econ) was refurbished for 110 million, plus they paid Chicago Theological Seminary for the building, plus the new building that they had to house CTS in. Both Harper and Saieh, however were paid for by Donations from Saieh and Harper (eventually)

20

@JHS My Hyde Park friends (who are also real estate agents) told me that in 2016 U of C sold off almost all of their satellite grad dorms. My old hangout is now a rental property run by the infamous Mac Properties. Rumor was that U of C used up a lot of capital in building Campus North and the Administration did not want to spend more money in updating all those old buildings.

So while on the one hand, with Woodlawn Residential Commons completed in 2020, there will be over 60% of undergrad staying in dorms. That is good news for Dean Boyer. On the other hand, grad students right now do not have a single large dormitory dedicated to them. Frankly, I find this situation deplorable. . These students are U of C potential future Nobel Prize, Fields Medals, or Wolf Prize winners. They should not have to use their meager stipend to pay for renting a vintage (a polite way of saying decrepit) apartment in HP.