@Chrchill - isn’t the problem larger than just the medical school, because NIH funding (where Chicago is ranked poorly) applies to the bio sciences division more broadly?
I’d say, outside of some small pockets (like evolutionary bio, which is superb at Chicago), the general life sciences offerings are NOT similar in stature to the Social Sciences Division, the Law School, etc. No?
Yes. I agree. But everything is top notch except bio/med. Law, Business, Physical Sciences, Math, Area studies and humanities (English for example in first in nation with Berkeley.) are all tippy top.
Just how big is the med/bsd?
Pritzker (top 10/15) school only takes in 80-90 first years every year while the BSD (top 14) accepts <20 new grad students per year.
Compare those low intakes to Law School (180-190 per year, top2/4 per ATL/USN) and Booth School (550-575 per year, top1/3 MBA per Econ/USN).
Maybe Pritzker should do a Harris… (100 per year, with no fanfare rose up and is now known as top 5 in Public Policy Analysis. Still weak on other public affairs specialties (top 10 ish) but it has found a niche.
The rest of the other divisions are not bad either. Here is a smattering
Econ (#1 according to Sweden! who cares about USN)
Divinity School (#1 per NRC)
English (#1 USN)
Math/Statistics (#5 USN)
History (#6 USN)
Physical Sciences (#7 USN)
Sociology (#8 USN)
Chemistry (#12 USN)
Political Science (#12 USN, but that is fine since well… Law School!)
also top in many area studies, including near eastern studies, anthropology, astrophysics. Check out various world university subject rankings.
@FStratford and @Chrchill
Med/BSD, by some measures, utilizes about 40% of the university’s human capital:
https://biologicalsciences.uchicago.edu/departments
900 faculty fall under this umbrella, out of about 2350 faculty total at the University.
If you take into account post docs, researchers, support staff, etc, it’s a huge chunk of the university.
It’s a fairly big chunk, I should add, that is noticeably inferior to the rest of the university. No one realistically has the hospital as top ten in the nation, or the bio division overall as anywhere near the departments listed above.
Improving this massive chunk of the U is going to be really hard and will probably take billions just on it’s own.
So you measure it based on input (faculty), not output (students)? Interesting viewpoint. I guess we have to agree to disagree on that one.
BSD is ranked 14 tied with Columbia, so not a bad place and it looks like when it comes to Ecology / Evolutionary Biology it is top 5 (#4) so they have already a niche.
Med School is top 15…
Digging deeper, both BSD and Med School are Top 1/2 in the Midwest, the only school ranked higher is WashU which benefits from Genentech, ExpressScripts, Centene,Emerson, Monsanto, Edgewell and the huge Healthcare/medical device/genomics industry in St Loius… so Northwestern’s edge in NIH funding is not working. That metric is important but it looks like its not the end-all… Based on WashU’s performance, I suspect that ties to cutting-edge industry is more strategic, hence UChicago’s burgeoning ties to Abbvie, Google, Merck, etc still gives it an edge over Northwestern.
The trend of decreasing government funding of any kind of research overall means that money goes to the biggest and bestest… The first logical step for UChicago then is clearly to buttress industry funding and joint research and build joint research centers (like it is doing now), to tie/topple WashU… NIH can follow later when the joint research centers become big and dominant enough in their specializations to compete for funding vs the big 3 (Harvard/UCSF/Johns Hopkins).
Northwestern just got some potential future donors…
www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20170531/BLOGS11/170539971/outcome-health-raises-over-500-million
For the med/bsd wing, why would you focus more on the number of students to gauge overall size? That’s much too narrow, because science tends to require a lot of support staff/additional researchers/help. For example, a faculty member running a lab might only have a few grad students, but will also have a bunch of post docs, admin support, research technicians, etc. Leading science faculty tend to have (and need) MUCH bigger staffs/support than most other parts of the University. (A leading law professor, for example, might only need an administrator and maybe a couple research assistants. A major PI [science prof] at Chicago, on the other hand, could easily have a lab of 15-20 people.)
Through that lens, here are some facts about UChicago Medicine:
http://www.uchospitals.edu/about/fact/hospitals-sheet.html (it employs 9,000 people - at least 40-50% of the University’s overall employment roster.)
Re your neat plan to topple Wash U, a few points:
Wash U’s hospital system, btw, has been well ahead of Chicago’s for some time now - for decades, perhaps. Northwestern’s hospital system, as well, is now in front of Chicago.
I’m not sure how Chicago makes up ground, with so many other schools pouring investment into SCI/Med. The investment from the Midwestern schools is considerable - and when you look at the juggernauts on the coasts, well, it appears very hard indeed for Chicago to make up ground against such hard-charging schools.
But, let positivity reign! As you said, a #14 BSD rank isn’t that bad. If Chicago’s econ, law, business, etc dropped to #14, no one would bat an eye. As you say, #14 is “not a bad place.”
@Cue7 By any measure, both Chicago Law and Business are already safely in top 5 nationally and so is the College.
I absolutely agree. Some of those schools (law, biz, college) might even be in the top 3. Moreover, that’s Chicago’s general goal - to be top 5.
Med/BSD, by any measure I can think of, isn’t anywhere near top 5 - nowhere near the stated intention of the university to be among the top handful of research institutions.
Bus is certainly top 3 if not higher. Law is top 4.
@Chrchill - and where would you rank med/bsd, which is - by many different reasonable measures - a 40% chunk of the university?
Medicine is 12-14 I would think.
Are putting all hospital employees into the “university” bucket? A candy striper at the hospital is as relevant as the janitor at the business school.
@FStratford - your snarky comment about the relevance of janitorial staff and candy stripers aside:
Yes, to determine the footprint of a school/division, I’d look at size of student body, size of faculty, size of staff, and percentage of overall budget that goes to that division.
When looked at thru this comprehensive lens, it’s hard to conclude anything other than this: ~40% of the human (and other capital) of the University of Chicago are part of bsd/med. It’s the biggest component to the school.
Some historical context regarding Pritzker’s ranking:
In 2008, Pritzker actually reduced its class size from 112 to 88 students in order to improve its selectivity (median GPA, MCAT). Ranking shot all the way up to #10 a few years later. BSD’s strength (NIH funding) stayed relatively constant during that time but has deteriorated substantially since then. Pritzker’s ranking reflects this accordingly (dropping back down to #15).
Word on the street is that based on current projection, NIH funding at UChicago will plummet in the upcoming fiscal years. I expect Pritzker’s ranking to drop down to #19-20 - where it was 10+ years ago.
Take-home message here is that BSD/Pritzker’s core strength has been declining in recent years. Making superficial, cosmetic improvements is not a sustainable way to “game” the ranking.
Great analysis @Poplicola - and your analysis illustrates the difficulty for Chicago right now. While @FStratford may contend that private funding could buoy Chicago, it might be too little too late.
(And if the ranking continues to drop, who is to say donors don’t take their funds elsewhere - say to coastal schools or the medical plant that seems to be on the upswing in Chicago - northwestern?)
At @Poplicola - do you know why Chicago’s NIH funding has dropped more than its peers? I’ve heard some big time professors have left (to northwestern, actually), and they took NIH dollars out the door.
Anyway, it’s not a good luck, and seems like it’ll get worse before it gets better. Not good for one of the largest parts of the university!
@Cue7: I can only speculate based on my observations and the anecdotes I’ve heard:
Lack of an engineering school
Before creation of IME, the lack of an engineering school did hurt UChicago’s ability to attract talent. I know of one promising chemistry faculty member who left for Northwestern a few years back precisely because UChicago didn’t have the people he could collaborate on his research interests, which were related to engineering. This is not to say that UChicago hasn’t poached acclaimed scientists in recent years. Yusuke Nakamura is an excellent example of the kind of faculty this institution has been able to attract.
Deteriorating culture
Since Zimmer became President, there has been leadership change at every level of the University, not just the undergraduate admissions office which seems to get all the attention on this forum. The department chairs he brought in have all been the “corporate type” (i.e. focusing solely on revenue, cost-cutting, patient volume, accepting/welcoming only “lucrative” research with potential industrial or therapeutic applications). The new administration has unnerved faculty members across the board, especially those whose research doesn’t fit the profit-driven “vision” of these new chairs (PM me for specific examples).
Don’t get me wrong. I think cost-cutting measures are necessary in this health care/funding climate (see yesterday’s Wall Street Journal article about similar reform taking place at Mayo and other top hospitals), but if done wrong, they can do real damage to a department and even instigate faculty exodus. Disgruntled faculty members are vulnerable targets for poaching by competing institutions. I know of physicians and physician scientists leaving for Rush, competitors in Cali, Mayo, Penn, etc.
In the Zimmer epoch, there’s now increasing divide/tension between the administration and faculty. The two parties are no longer working cordially and in concert with each other. Us-versus-them mentality is evident throughout BSD, and this brings me to my next point.
This strategic mistake (negligence?) will haunt BSD for the years to come. Shuttered labs are commonplace in the hospital complex, and it’s a sad sight to see at my beloved alma mater. Vandy did a phenomenal job in providing institutional support, and their NIH dollars reflect that.
Well shoot @Poplicola - this sounds bad. What can uchicago do then to improve? Is there light at the end of tunnel, or do too foresee med/bsd just continuing to drop?
Unlike @FStratford more glib commentary, you point to some pretty critical issues that are worrisome.
I call bullshit. Too little too late? Too late for what? As a competitor that is not number 1 or top 5 and has never been, the strategy should never be to act like the top dog, but as the scrappy challenger. To rely on NIH funding to get to the top is to use the same strategy that got the current top dogs to where they are right now… there is that quote about doing the smae stuff, expecting the same result…
Still will not agree that BSD/Med School should account for half the reputation/ranking of UChicago. Measuring input (faculty, doctors, nurses, candy stripers, janitors, etc) as opposed to output is flawed. Output (student satisfaction, student success, future hospital employment, graduation rate, alumni giving, alumni salary, alumni reputation, alumni satisfaction, alumni advancement) is a way better measure of quality than the total number of janitors and doctors. Any day.