U. of Chicago: Is University Strength Declining?

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Chicago ✅
121

Give me a break!

BSD/Med School not being top 5 means that UChicago is not a top 5 Research Uni? That is a load of bs.

This whole obsession about the BSD and Med School is overblown. It’s fine. It is not that important. And no BSD/Med School is not worth half the University. Proof? remove all of BSD and Med School, and UChicago will still be a top school - maybe even a better school. Look at Princeton. It has no Med School, no Law School, no Business School and yet it is a top research university. In comparison, UChicago has top Law and Business schools.

122

I would bet more bucks that it is the lack of Engineering that is hurting UChicago, not because it has a tier 2 med school.

If UChicago has a couple of billion dollars lying around somewhere, it should put it into Engineering - where the faculty are creating cutting edge research in nanotech, the return on investment is super high both in acclaim (publications) and actual dollars (tech monetization). And it already has all the big name affiliations with private, quasi-governmental and government institutions.

Investing that same couple of billion on the BSD/Med School/Hospital is comparatively low ROI

123

@FStratford

Sure ok - if you want me to specify to bsd/med, the school’s hey day was when it was also top 3 in wealth. Most of its nobels in physiology of medicine and chemistry came before the late 1960s. It’s late so I’m not going to dig for rankings now, but how do you know it was never top 5 in this area? You said it so definitively in your post, but how are you so sure?

As it was wealthiest in the mid 20th century, and had the best overall reputation then (top 3 in the country), that was when bsd/med was at it’s zenith. I’d be surprised if it had lower than a top 10 plant at that time, but if you have the data, please show me.

124

@FStratford

Wow, for the first time ever, you made so many points for me!

Re engineering, I completely agree - Chicago doesn’t yet have the infrastructure to compete with the big boys, and that’s because of its short sightedness decades ago, when it believed, as @marlowe STILL argues, that certainly technical fields should NOT be points of focus for the school. To do cutting edge research now, you need translational facilities that incorporate engineering, bio, medicine, Etc.

To truly compete, they’d need a couple billion for the new engineering school, and maybe 1-2 billion more to firm up bsd/med (increase size of faculty, lure top flight faculty to Chicago, increase starter packages for rising talent, Etc.)

Re Princeton - it’s great you brought Princeton up. Let’s be serious, the pace setters - the archetypes - for global leading Us are Harvard and Stanford. Princeton is a niche school. It’s great for what it does, but it’s not comprehensive enough to be the world’s best university. Remember, Princeton used to have, and then closed,a law school and business school. Shutting down those schools have come back to haunt them. Just look at all the great synergies between Chicago’s econ and sociology and law and business programs. Interdisciplinary work is the way to go, and Princeton’s infrastructure isn’t expansive enough to ever let it compete to be global #1.

So Chicago has an option - it could consolidate resources and try to be more like Princeton, but it then takes itself out of the truly high stakes, big game - to be a top 5 comprehensive research U, which is the ultimate brass ring.

And with no engineering and a middling bsd/med plant, make no mistake, it’s not top 5 now - no other true contender has such a laggard major division.

125

By all measures and rankings, Princeton is a top 5 in the US. Enough said.

Stanford and Harvard are only two schools. Threre are 3 spots left on the top 5. A university does not have to be in anything and everything to be top5, despite your insistence.

126

The Med School was NEVER top 5 in the US or in the world. Never in history. Dont make stuff up.

127

@FStratford

Where did I say med was top 5, ever? I said its hey day was probably earlier in its history, when Chicago was still top 2 overall (and the school had a great run in producing nobels in medicine).

And if you read my post, I asked you - how do you know Chicago med was never top 5 in the us? How do you know this definitively? I haven’t gone back to check, but you state this as fact. My hunch is it was probably close to top 5 at some point. Maybe not right there, but also not #32 in funds brought in. But please use your definitive, commanding voice to put my analysis in place.

You did know that for most of Chicago’s history, it was a top 2 research u in the country right? Please don’t tell me you always thought it was a scrappy underdog.

Similarly, how high was med/bsd at its zenith? Do you know?

And yes, a university doesn’t have to be anything and everything, but hey, it’s the best way to go. look at Harvard and Stanford, they seem to be the most dominant archetypes. Not Princeton. This is also why Harvard and Stanford are firmly entrenched in any discussion about US top five, whereas you could make arguments for and against Princeton. Where would Chicago rather be - in an entrenched place, or on the margins? Surely you’re not going to argue that it would prefer to be in Princeton’s spot.

My goodness your reprimanding tone is a sight to behold!

128

There’s room in my pantheon of greatness for Harvard and Stanford, but it irritates me to see them held up as the “dominant archetypes” and in effect be used as clubs to beat all lesser institutions or, to alter the metaphor, to be the heads of a monolithic pecking order under which gigantic grants, endowments, hospitals and physical plants proclaim the winners in a Darwinian war of all against all. If you love the University of Chicago you will certainly want to see it change and adapt - I have no problem with that attitude - but to want to make it over root and branch in the mold of these or any other schools betrays, as I believe cue has frankly admitted elsewhere, an aversion if not a detestation of the place. Why can’t Chicago be something different from those places? Or why can’t Princeton or Yale for that matter? I suppose the answer to that question is something like, “if you want to play with the big boys you got to be like them”. But what if you don’t particular like those boys and would never want to be like them? I give them their due, but I don’t like them, and I do like the University of Chicago. The University has always been a bit out of step with other mighty American universities. The maverick spirit is part of its character. If it was transformed into a version - no doubt a lesser version - of either of Harvard of Stanford, it would be forsaking its genius, and I would cease caring any longer about it.

129

@marlowe1

I hear what you’re saying, and for a long time I agreed with it. The problem is the Harvard and Stanford archetype is so phenomenally successful - and that success just can’t be ignored. A long time ago, when Chicago and Harvard were top two, Chicago crafted a model that deviated from Harvard’s. Chicago was more progressive (in admissions decisions, institutional emphasis, Etc), it experimented more (eg allowing brilliant 15 yos to enroll), and it leaned away from the power base that gave Harvard its allure. 70 years later, and look where we are. The Harvard model is THE model for university success, and its the envy of the whole world.

Chicago’s prior model was proven to be inferior. It was undoubtedly a top 2 uni 100 years ago, but certainly not any longer. Harvard maintained and improved its standing. Chicago has not.

130

Just wondering, @Cue7, do you consider MIT a top-5 college?

131

@hebegebe - MIT is more of a niche school - like Princeton. For pretty much everything it does, it’s top 5 - just like Princeton. So, like Princeton, in some conversations, it could be considered top 5, in others it just doesn’t have the infrastructure to be in the conversation. Like Princeton, it’s just concentrating on what it does well - MIT has no plans to open a med school or law school.

So, if you really like engineering, it’s top 5 for college. If you really want to major in English, and wouldn’t mind have a top 5 computer science program at your school, well, MIT aint the place, and that’s why Stanford is a juggernaut.

132

So aside from Stanford and Harvard, which colleges would make top 5 overall? Out of the HYPSM, only 3 have medical schools, and Yale’s is not particularly strong either. Which colleges would take the place of YPM?

133

The one top school that has been on a clear downward slope is Columbia. Law school bottom of top five now. Business school barely top 10, when it used to be top 5. Teachers. College no longer the very top education school in the nation it used to be. Many departments declining.

134

@hebegebe

Top 5 R1 research Unis would be Harvard Stanford Yale Berkeley (with UCSF med) and Columbia. Then UPenn, then maybe Chicago. (Harvard and Stanford lead this pack by some distance though - there’s never been as much separation between top 2 and rest as there is now.)

(Places like Hopkins, Princeton, and MIT don’t make the cut for top 5 because they aren’t comprehensive enough - none could qualify to be the leading overall university - any in my top 5 could.)

For top 5 college, Harvard Stanford Yale Princeton MIT (if you want stem), then Columbia.

@Chrchill - you say Columbia is dropping, and that may be true. Point me to any of their major departments that’s ranked #32 in a major ranking, though. Yah sure maybe Columbia b school is bottom of top 10, maybe their law school is slipping, but being 9 or 5 is very different from #32.

135

@Cue7 I see you finally found it, the it being it depends on what you want to study.

136

@Cue7 I agree with you that chicago’s has a glaring weakness in life sciences. The medical school of UChicago is 15. Not 32. Big difference. Now look at where Uchicago is in physics, astronomy, math, statistics and chemistry compared to Columbia.

137

@Chrchill - no, Chicago’s nih finding rank is #32. I ask you to find me any ranking for any of Columbia’s major divisions that puts it at as low as #32. There’s nothing at Columbia that’s as low as what Chicago has here. And this isn’t some minor ranking - NIH funding is still a big, big deal to major research Us. Private funding hasn’t yet replaced NIH adequately.

@CU123 - guess which schools have the most “it” (that is, excellence across the broadest array of subjects)?

138

Reposting from the other thread, as I finally found some time to do analysis on many rankings over time… The data points much more toward decline rather than improvement.

Given @Chrchill argument about a “meteoric rise,” let’s look at some rankings - the 1993 National Research Council rankings vs. the currrent US News rankings. This will show us change over time.

(Sources: https://www.stat.tamu.edu/~jnewton/nrc_rankings/nrc41.html and US News)

Biological Sciences

Biochem

1993: Chicago #24
2017: Not Listed in Top Ten (US News does not list beyond the top ten)

Cell Biology
1993: Chicago #14
2017: Not Listed in Top Ten (US News does not list beyond the top ten)

Evolutionary Bio
1993: Chicago #2
2017: Chicago #4 (-2 drop)

Genetics
1993: Chicago #11
2017: Not Listed in Top Ten (US News does not list beyond the top ten)

Neuroscience
1993: Chicago #22
2017: Not Listed in Top Ten (US News does not list beyond the top ten)

NIH Funding
1993: Chicago #18
2017: Chicago #32 (-14 drop)

Physical Sciences

Chemistry
1993: Chicago #11
2017: Chicago #12 (-1 drop)

Physics
1993: Chicago #7
2017: Chicago #7 (no change)

Mathematics
1993: Chicago #5
2017: Chicago #5 (no change)

Statistics
1993: Chicago #4
2017: Chicago #5 (-1 drop)

Computer Science
1993: Chicago #25
2017: Chicago #34 (-9 drop)

Earth/Geo Sciences
1993: Chicago #7
2017: Chicago #20 (-13 drop)

Social Sciences & Humanities

English
1993: Chicago #10
2017: Chicago #1 (+9 change)

History
1993: Chicago #8
2017: Chicago #6 (+2 change)

Political Science
1993: Chicago #6
2017: Chicago #12 (-6 change)

Psychology
1993: Chicago #18
2017: Chicago #17 (+1 change)

Sociology
1993: Chicago #1
2017: Chicago #8 (-7 drop)

Economics
1993: Chicago #1
2017: Chicago #7 (-6 drop)

Endowment Rank

1999: Chicago #13
2017: Chicago #14 (-1 drop)

(https://magazine.uchicago.edu/0204/features/run.html and current endowment rankings)

College

1993: Chicago #9
2017: Chicago #3 (+6 change)

(Source: US News rankings over time: http://web.archive.org/web/20070906213921/http://chronicle.com:80/stats/usnews/index.php?category=Universities&orgs=&sort=1993)

Law School

1993: Chicago #4
2017: Chicago #4 (no change)

(Source: Current + US News rankings over time: http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=213)

Business School

1994: Chicago #6
2017: Chicago #3 (+ 3 change)

(Source: Current + US News rankings over time: http://www.mba50.com/a-history-of-the-us-news-mba-ranking-1990-2013/)

Medical School

1998: Chicago #18
2017: Chicago #15 (+3 change)

WHERE IS THE METEORIC RISE?

From what I can see, College, B School, Med English and History have improved - but not by a whole lot. EVERYTHING ELSE HAS DROPPED OR STAYED THE SAME. Sociology, poli sci, computer science, endowment rank, etc. etc. - none of these have improved.

How can we say we have a meteoric rise? If anything, all the rankings back my previous assertion - that, overall, the university of chicago has DECLINED.

139

Silly. Because when people talk about the “meteoric rise,” they are generally talking about the College as seen by USNWR, and the vastly increased number of applications. And they are also looking at a time frame that is shorter than 1993-2017, because in the early 2000s the college was hanging around 11-15 in the annual rankings and had a ~35-40% admission rate. It jumped 5-6 places when it started reporting Hum and Sosc seminar classes as sections of a single large class vs. independent classes and limited each of them to 19 students. That significantly increased the number of classes taken by students with 20 or fewer people in the class. Together with some other changes in the way technical data were reported to USNWR, that boosted Chicago’s USNWR score, and then the increased selectivity and other factors boosted it even further. That plus a marginal but real gain in the reputation of the business school pretty much accounts for the “meteoric rise.”

On the grad school ratings, I don’t really know what USNWR is looking at, so I can’t tell what those rankings or changes in those rankings mean.

140

@JHS - the grad rankings are peer assessment scores, based on surveys sent to academics. They matter about as much as all the other US News peer assessments scores (which is to say, far from the be all-end all, but not negligible, either, and worth paying some attention to). I don’t believe I need to tell you about the NRC ranking - as that was fairly comprehensive and well-followed in the 90s.

So do you think the whole take on “meteoric rise” is silly, or what’s your point here?