Reed is the true Maverick school these days; UChicago is just moving into the space vacated by HYP. Smart move IMHO, although it will be interesting to see if taking more than 50 percent of the class craters application numbers. If it does not, then expect Penn et al to follow and and take increasing amounts of their class ED. We could end up with a system whereby most of the top 10 schools are filled with ED in a few years. <>
No UChicago is not declining … Top Nobel prizes this century:
- Stanford
- Columbia
- Berkeley
- UChicago.
- Princeton 6..Howard Hughes Medical Center 7.UC Santa Barbara 8.MIT 9.Technion Israel Institute of Technology.
- Max Planck, Germany
- Columbia and UChicago consistently have been dominating Nobels both in the 20th and 21 centuries.-- with much less money than Harvard and Yale.
-Stanford is the new 800 pound gorilla,
-Berkeley remains eminent even with all the budget problems
-Oxbridge, which were Nobel super powers in the first half of the 20th century, have vanished. -Israel is backing up its technological and scientific leadership with Nobels and 200 companies publicly traded on NASDAQ -Germany is back in scientific leadership after the extended post war hiatus - Where are Harvard and Yale ?
@Chrchill - Harvard and Yale are off in the corner, counting their money and laughing at Chicago affiliates who still point to Nobel production as a key barometer of school success.
Every once in a while, they’ll then poach a Chicago professor or two, just to remind the Chicagoans who is on top.
Not a key barometer. But one of several salient metrics that show no decline … By your standards, money equals academics prominence.
@Chrchill - Money is one of the most helpful factors to push forward academic standing, yes. Can school’s punch above their weight and do more with less? Sure. Is that a precarious position to be in? Absolutely.
The BIGGEST sign of decline has been stagnant endowment - it hadn’t kept pace with its peers, and has fallen behind. No Nobel production metrics can combat that big worry.
What school do you have more confidence in - the one with $25B in the bank and connections to lots of wealth, or the debt-ridden school with $7B in the bank and far fewer connections to power?
I mean, really?
Stanford “created” Silicon Valley in the same sense that MIT and Harvard created Route 128. A bunch of things came together, some of which had lots to do with Stanford and some of which – Reagan’s expansion of military tech, the surprising success of Apple – had nothing to do with it. The proximity of Berkeley didn’t hurt, either.
@DeepBlue86 had me just right. I think Chicago is a great, world-class university. I was proud to send my kids there, and thrilled at the quality of the education they and their friends received. In a few weeks, I will have a Chicago-alumna daughter-in-law, too, and I am pretty happy about that as well.
I have friends on the faculty at Chicago. I have enormous respect for what President Zimmer has done, although I don’t think the final word on his legacy will be written until the current capital campaign is closed. It’s impossible not to have enormous respect for what Jim Nondorf has done, too. I met him once, 15 years ago, long before he came to Chicago, and I thought he was charming and smart. I still think that. (Plus, of course, he has some credentials I respect: Yale, Whiffs, Bones.) I think his heart is in the right place. I am 100% sure he is not engaged in political engineering of the student body. I just think that he went a bridge too far this past year.
And I get annoyed at some of the triumphalist woofing that goes on around things like Chicago’s USNWR ranking or its low admission rate. If Harvard or Stanford wanted to have a 2% admission rate, they could achieve that with a lot less trouble than Chicago took to go from 9% to 8%. Same thing for SAT scores. Admission rate and SAT scores are not the same thing as quality. Chicago has quality, and it debases itself when it pays more attention than it should to things that are not really substantive.
UChicago raises fundraising campaign goal by $500 million to a record $5 billion
https://www.philanthropy.com/article/US-Colleges-Raise-40/235059
U of Chicago fundraising ahead of Yale and MIT for 2015
@Cue7 I re-read the Maroon article to see whether there was anything in it to support your assertion that Chicago has changed its policies to game the rankings - as opposed to simply correctly reporting data. Nothing. That whimsical statement at the end of the piece about not telling competitors how Chicago has done this doesn’t say that anything was “modulated”. Perhaps some of the stats are matters of interpretation. Big deal.
Now in your noble statement of true maverickness in the fourth paragraph (beginning “Being a maverick in this climate…”) you and I are singing from the same hymnal. However, I don’t believe you really want Chicago to be a maverick in that way in light of your many posts calling for Ivy-league-like transformations, which if brought about to your heart’s content would achieve the essence of the moneyed establishment ideal. You sometimes add to those posts, as you did again above, a statement that you want to see the maintenance of a traditional Chicago education, but that is hardly where your heart lies. I speak as one who has been a devoted reader of you now for a number of years. In any event you usually end on the despairing note that it is now all too late anyhow and that Chicago, deprived of all the resources of Harvard, will never be Harvard. Sigh.
If you were truly able to show that chasing the rankings was a significant factor driving Chicago policy I would join you in howling against it. I believe you are generally attributing that motivation to the effect of actual policy changes, some of which you dislike (ED) and some of which (revival of athletics, recruiting rich kids, a more vibrant student life) you favor wholeheartedly and which I myself favor only halfheartedly. To my mind the substance of these and potential future changes make for the more interesting debate, not any futile attempt to figure out whether this is being influenced by gaming considerations.
Coming back to this suddenly talismanic concept of maverickness, the substance of that idea that we should all be concerned about here is the nature of the College, the curriculum, student life and the kind of student who comes to and leaves Chicago. In that debate the College has arrived somewhere in a middle position between what it was in the Hutchins era or perhaps even in my era (the mid sixties) and the Ivy model. Looked at in that light, Reed, as Zinhead says, is the maverick. But then Aristotle tells us to seek a median position between extremes. Chicago looks maverick only as measured against the Ivies. Of course we who speak of maverickness also have in mind the many bold and unconventional ideas pioneered by Chicago’s many great departments, something not directly germane to the College but nevertheless an attitude that seeps down into the instruction given in the College. I was certainly very aware of those traditions during my period in the College. I imbibed such thinking as a goal carried throughout life.
Most of us who went to Chicago - and those now going there - find a future life in the practical world. I myself continue to carry the Chicago spirit with me in my own profession (law), and I daresay a kid who becomes an investment banker can do the same thing. Even those who become academics have to get practical about building careers. The point of a liberating education is not to keep you forever an undergraduate but to give you a way of thinking and to establish the seeds of culture that can be built on forever. Most of the “Aims of Education” talks get around to some such formulation in the end. O.K. We all know that it takes “the green stuff”. Chicago is not likely to have as much of it as HYPS anytime soon. There’s nothing wrong with working on getting more of it. There I’m with you. Call me a maverick with nuance.
A lot of the disagreement on the direction the University is taking may come from the unique vantage point each person has in this discussion.
My feeling that is that if you are sending your child to UChicago or are currently a student and get little or no discount on attendance either through merit or need based aid, you would be deeply concerned about what the full sticker price at a school like Chicago is ultimately buying for you or your child.
Your perspective really changes when you are paying $72K per year vs nothing or $20K a year.
Ideally you would like that money invested in an institution with a “huge brand name” and in my eyes maybe 3 universities have such a brand: Harvard, Stanford, MIT. But maybe you or your kid did not make it into those schools, or maybe you think that given your “demographic” it is going to be really hard, even if you have a kid with super stats, given the social priorities of these schools now.
So you look at the other Ivies and a few other schools that merit spending $72K a year on a bachelors degree.
For such a student or parent, who lands in Chicago, everything that Zimmer and Nondorf are doing makes total sense, even the stacking of the class with mostly ED kids, because ultimately you are concerned not with the “quirkiness of the school” or “maintaining its unique educational status” as a contrarian university for intellectuals, but with it acquiring a brand value in the future that would justify a “full” or “near” full pay investment.
You want the University to have a rich and powerful undergraduate body which will give back generously to the school and support its endowment and help grow it. You don’t want the administration to waste any resources or time taking any project that will lower the “prestige” of the school or worse detract from it.
In other words, you want the school to become a brand juggernaut, which it is not today.
On the other hand, if you got or are getting a steep discount for attending UChicago or went to the school when education was a more reasonable investment, it is very likely that your priorities are very different and perhaps completely orthogonal to the priorities of a full pay parent or student. You want the university to expand opportunity for more needy kids, you want the administration to be deeply concerned with social justice issues and you definitely don’t want the administration to gerrymander the class profile by filling it with a lot of ED kids who would probably disproportionately be full pay. You are thus likely to see the current changes with dismay and disapproval.
Each is a valid perspective given the particular frame of reference, but neither is more moral or less despicable than the other.
Chicago is lucky that it had a robust professional education presence in business, law and even medicine. If it had been like Princeton, then without an engineering school and no professional school presence, Chicago would have been wiped out totally. Most of the big name donations that came into the university came from alums who went to the professional schools. They kept the university alive.
As distasteful as this may be for older alums and some students currently in Chicago, for somebody who would be paying full sticker price to attend UChicago, it would make perfect sense to recruit undergraduates who will graduate and go on to become financially successful and contribute happily to the school. If this means that 40% or more of the grads go into soul sucking professions like investment banking and consulting, then that is their choice. The school needs more alums in such professions and in hi-tech so that successful alums will then turn around and give back generously to the school. That is the only way, Chicago can grow its brand image. Otherwise it will just be a “bigger version of Reed College”, not disrespect to Reed here. Gone are the days when a few dollars here and there could sustain an endowment for a school with Chicago’s ambitions.
@marlowe1 - good post. Re your comments, here are some ways Chicago has changed its policies to improve its rankings in the past 10 years:
- All the application inflation (to drive down accept rate/drive up yield - there's no need to argue this, it's clear Chicago engages in app inflation)
- Appeal to rankings to increase alumni support (such as the "$10 for 10" alumni events a few years back- give $10 at an alum event to keep Chicago in the top 10)
- Promoting US News rankings in alumni council correspondences
- Cut many course sizes from 20 to 19, so less classes are 20+ (this was cheesy)
- Narrowing the SAT band (this creates less heterogeneity in the class - and less room for those that might not excel at standardized tests, but looks great for US News)
- whatever "secret" factors the Admissions Official noted in the Maroon article, but did not divulge - I imagine they bake a lot into the "financial resources" part of US News, as Chicago somehow finishes at #2 for this metric, which is absurd.
Re Chicago being a maverick in comparison to the Ivy League - if that’s what helps you sleep at night, great. I note that it’s almost laughable to say the school is a “maverick” in comparison to some of the most entrenched, tradition-steeped schools in existence. It really doesn’t say much…
Also, what do you mean about my heart not aligning with a Chicago education? We both are benefactors of this approach, and I’m quite sincere in my respect for it. I’m sure your Chicago education prepared you well for law, but let me ask you this: were Chicago undergrads as represented in the higher echelons of law as those from Harvard, Yale, etc.? Was your college network as useful in the corridors of power as these other schools? From what I know about law, your network matters - a lot. It’s not just about your acumen or ability. Along with the education, did Chicago offer you the same supplements as our peers in New England?
I hope one day that Chicago undergrad can train students just as assiduously for law school and law practice, but that the network also blossoms.
Finally, oh silly @sbballer - quoting and misusing old data, are we? In 2015, Chicago did indeed finish above Yale and MIT, to finish a whopping #14 in that ranking. (Yay, #14!) Chicago was (and is) in the midst of a busy capital campaign, whereas Yale and MIT are in LAY periods - in between campaigns. AND, MIT is only about 65% of Chicago’s size. So, in a year where they weren’t trying as hard, they both finished barely behind Chicago.
Oh, and in 2016, the more recent data, Chicago finished behind Yale, and once again finished #14 in fundraising:
http://cae.org/images/uploads/pdf/VSE-2016-Press-Release.pdf
What you really should have said, @sbballer is that Chicago’s fundraising prowess, even when spurred by a capital campaign, pales in comparison to the big boys. #14 ain’t nothing to applaud.
It’s all about the green, @sbballer - and Chicago doesn’t have enough of it.
U of Chicago wasn’t even on the list of top 20 fund raising universities in 2011
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/top-20-fundraising-universities/
now they are 14… that’s a big improvement capital campaign or not.
@pupflier - exactly! Chicago education with a Harvard brand - I think that’s what most constituents want, and what the admin wants.
What I DON’T like is the distorted cheerleading going on here. That somehow Chicago is a “maverick” when it wants (and pursues) what so many other schools covet and cultivate - a strong brand.
Can we please just call a duck a duck?!
and that is exactly what U of Chicago is doing now. its ranking, selectivity and brand is increasing… along with prestige and donations.
oh and btw… you’re never going to out Harvard Harvard or out Stanford Stanford… or out MIT MIT. so forget that.
U of Chicago is going to have to forge its own brand… to be unique in its own way that benefits the school not only in generating more economic activity for the region and its alumni but importantly grows donations to the school.
How is Chicago forging its “own” brand here, @sbballer ? It’s gluing in admissions practices that worked well - and started - ELSEWHERE (like ED/ED2), it’s increasing wealth on campus, it’s focusing more on sports, and it’s building more bridges to lucrative professions.
How is any of this forging its own path? Note, I APPLAUD most of these changes - but I see nothing unique about them. They are following tried and true paths.
The moment a feeder school for Goldman Sachs is called a “free spirit” is the moment I roll my eyes…
@Cue7 What actually are you arguing? That money is important and UChicago needs more of it? We all agree. We all agree that Harvard and Stanford are the top dogs. But these statements are completely consistent with UChicago rising – which it is. We can all agree that it is one of a handful of top elite schools in the world and that its brand at the undergraduate level is red hot. Finis…
@Chrchill said:
“We can all agree that it is one of a handful of top elite schools in the world.”
I don’t agree with that. That’s the basis of what I’m arguing. I do not believe Chicago is one of a handful (read: 5-6) elite schools in the world any more.
Further, the rise of the college is great, but it brushes over real concerns with the school, that are too often disregarded on this board.
I also raise smaller points - i.e. my disagreement with ways Chicago is trying to create a Harvard-like brand (such as ED/ED2, etc.).
@Cue7 I guess we’re into some personal stuff here, which will bore everybody else but here goes… Chicago grad networking didn’t help me at all, living here in Canada, where nobody outside the academy has ever heard of the University of Chicago. Now had I been undergrad from Queens University in Kingston, there you’re talking! --Look, you often have me with you for a while, and then inevitably you slide into an alternative universe which just seems so unChicago-like and causes me to cast doubt, perhaps unfairly, on your assertion of valuing your Chicago education. For example, in the preceding post, that stuff about networking, branding, corridors of power and leveraging your education through alumni networks - man, that’s essence of Ivy Leagueness, inconsistent with the Chicago spirit and just simply anathema to me. My very good friends from my undergraduate days all went in different directions from me, geographically and in their professions, and have had absolutely no bearing on my own professional life. Nor have any other Chicago grads nor, as just mentioned, the fact of being a Chicago grad myself. Sure, people in Canada would have taken note of a Harvard degree, and I reckon I may have missed out on some opportunities for lack of one. Call me perverse, but I would have hated carrying such a brand through life. I’ll go further and say that I’m not even very sure that my Chicago education particularly helped me in developing the tools for lawyering. Anthony Abbott called the idea that Chicago gives you unique skills into question in his Aims of Education address and cited some research in support thereof. No, a Chicago education as I experienced it is something good for its own sake. It affects your life, perhaps it civilizes you. That in many cases - especially if you pursue an academic career - it opens doors has a secondary importance.
On the subject of whether Chicago is changing its policies in the rankings game, the items in your bill of particulars above fall into several different categories. If some of these things are actually being done (artificially reducing class sizes to 19, changing the acceptable SAT band with rankings in mind), then I’m definitely against the motivation for them, though such things may be good or justifiable in their own right. As to inflating applications simply to drive down percentage of acceptances, well, whenever anyone says “there’s no need to argue this”, I know the evidence doesn’t exist for it. Appealing to rankings in raising money and marketing seems a little vulgar but it isn’t a change of educational policy but simply salesmanship - something Chicago has in the past been much criticized for being too lofty to stoop to. If the data that’s being gathered for U.S. News isn’t being falsified I don’t see a problem there. Are you suggesting that it IS being falsified?
There have been two models of brand building success in the Education world
HYP model
- Recruit a lot of kids with great family connections and wealth for a long period of time
- Move them through your undergraduate program
- Use them and their connections to grow institutional wealth
- Use institutional wealth to attract star faculty and build your research brand
Stanford Model
- Start off in a place far away from the established brands
- Pick a place with nice weather
- Help build an Eco-system which will generate tremendous wealth in your backyard
- Meanwhile, focus on the nuts and bolts undergraduate sector to generate revenues
- Tap into the backyard wealth to build institutional wealth
- Use that institutional wealth and weather to attract star faculty and build your research brand
Chicago tried a different model
- Start off in a place far away from the established brands
- Get a huge donation from a super rich philanthropist
- Setup in a city that is growing and shows promise
- Use your wealth to hire star faculty and build an academically rigorous institution
- Focus on graduate education and eschew anything that seems trade oriented
- Go only for talent, don’t care about race, religion, gender etc when recruiting students and faculty
- Don’t get too involved with the city that surrounds you. Maintain the ivory tower feel.
Chicago did several things right, but did two things wrong in a big way. It did not leverage the city enough. In hindsight it should have done more of what Stanford did. And it focused on the money sucking graduate and doctoral programs while ignoring its undergraduate program. Chicago’s model was a failure financially but it gave the school the reputation of being a research powerhouse.
So now, Chicago is following pieces of both the HYP and Stanford model.
- Focusing on its undergrad program while milking its grad program brand
- Bringing more and more well connected rich kids into the college (the ED1/ED2 switch).
- Taking a second look at practical/trade skills
- Trying to establish a closer relationship with the city and surroundings.
It will take a generation for things to turn around at Chicago. Luckily for Chicago, HYPS is now turning down enough rich well connected kids to fill up Chicago’s pipeline. And Chicago has decided that it is now going to make a play for these kids overtly.
It will be interesting to see whether de-prioritizing recruitment of rich kids in order to be more socially responsible will affect the endowment growth of HYPS in 50 years.Research seems to suggest that it is becoming increasingly difficult to go from the bottom tier to the top tier in terms of wealth in America, even if you get an education. Will the lower SES, minority and first generation kids being recruited into HYPS now, become successful enough to keep the endowment engine purring at these institutions? These schools are betting they will. Only time will tell if they are right.
@cue7 all world university rankings that matter in recent 2-3 years have Chicago at a top 5-6 university in the US and the College is third.