<p>i totally agree. I was thinking of about the same, that within 10 years USC can be ranked as high as cornell. Thanks to the large endowment. However, I think the culture of USC will be changed slightly in order to achieve this cause my frds who went there just two years ago got wasted big time and i hope that will improve shortly.</p>
<p>USC’s $endowment has been consistently impressive in recent years,
on Stanford and Harvard level at least in top-10 and as high as to top-3 levels,
and that’s positive because money has to be the kickstarting catalyst for
any school scheme plans.</p>
<p>But despite that so far it has not yet changed very much of the school’s age-old
public perception as the mere “U$C” image.</p>
<p>School is heading in the right direction though, and perhaps some time in
the future a true leaping point will come to truly lift the school to new level.</p>
<p>The only thing really holding USC back is its academic reputation in sciences and humanities. The foundation and elements are in place (facilities, money, great undergraduate students)…it just needs a more critical mass of top faculty. This will boost reputation. Unfortunately, this process takes much longer than it does to become more selective for undergraduates during a rising demographic boom.</p>
<p>Great point, UCBChemEGrad. USC has definitely took note that it must hire strong faculty in the humanities and sciences. In fact, an article was just published titled Defying the Humanities Crisis where USC was recognized as #11 in the nation in te most recent Gourmet Report, 3 spots above your alma mater actually, due to its aggressive hiring of renowned faculty. So I do believe USC academic reputation will improve in those areas. As you mentioned, if that is the ONLY thing holding USC back then the potential is limitless ;)</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-southern-california/1485876-defying-humanities-crisis.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-southern-california/1485876-defying-humanities-crisis.html</a></p>
<p>USC still cares about its sports and film more than academic research…</p>
<p>the football coach gets paid more than the president. ROFL. can USC realistically ever be in the same league as HPY when that is the case? comon…get a grip on reality</p>
<p>Also, USC is as big as state schools if not bigger. USC needs to seriously shrink if it is to catch up to other “elite” schools. Stanford was never state school size and still pumped out world leaders. USC has to produce more top scholars while reducing in size…</p>
<p>^ Seriously? Football coaches salary? Kiffin’s yearly salary is inline with other major conference D-1 football programs (and much less successful programs like Vanderbilt- 2.7M). ND, Stanford, Cal, Michigan all pay their football coaches in the same range as Kiffin is paid (2.5-3.3M range). John Hennessy, Stanford’s President, made significantly less (est. at around 1.2M) than head coach Shaw (2.5M). Stanford is certainly mentioned in the same “elite” circle as HYP.</p>
<p>Tedford, before he was canned after last season, was the highest paid UC employee.</p>
<p>In the next 10 years, I fully expect USC to be somewhere around 16-20 in U.S. News. The key, as UCB ChemE Grad has said elsewhere, is growing the university’s research facilities. USC has already become a known quantity on the undergrad level and now has to grow the WHOLE university - not just the undergrad program and not just the professional schools. That means the medical school, research in the hard sciences, etc. I think the big key will be making the university completely residential in the next 20 years.</p>
<p>BTW football coaches are always grossly overpaid (IMHO) but that’s market rate. Unfortunately market rate for football coaches is more than for university presidents. I don’t think that’s right and obviously I’m not alone. However, I do believe that USC is right to believe that you can be competitive both academically AND athletically. In fact, that’s one great strength for the university - plenty of top athletes who want a REAL education come to USC and other schools (Stanford, UCLA, Cal, Duke, Northwestern, Notre Dame, etc.) because the Ivies don’t offer athletic scholarships. USC is third in NCAA championships, behind only UCLA and Stanford - schools that also reject the false dichotomy between academic and athletic excellence.</p>
<p>I also agree about shrinking the school. That’s one thing that’s driven me nuts because the student body used to be around 28,000-30,000 students - already plenty big enough. They haven’t grown the size of the undergraduate student body (and shouldn’t) and take too many CC transfers but but the ballooning of the graduate students is ridiculous and IMHO dilutes the perceived quality of the school. I didn’t sign up to go to Arizona State and would like it if they not adopt that school’s business model.</p>
<p>The U$C image is also not quite dead but on its way, as the only people who claim that are usually CA natives who never bothered to explore financial aid programs, as it’s a way to paper over their own bitterness and shortcomings by convincing themselves that everyone who goes to a top school is loaded rather than high achieving… drives me insane. Beyond that, what I hear most of the time is along the lines of, “WOW… that university has <em>really</em> changed.” So that much has sunk in, but the university still has a long ways to go to get to the HPYS level.</p>
<p>Agreed ^…USC is becoming more massive in size while Nikias games the system to achieve a higher ranking. He maintains the status quo by stratifying USC into at least three classes of students: an uber selective fall class (the elites), less selective spring class (justifiably angry kids who should either be accepted into the fall class, waitlisted or rejected), and the thousands of cc transfers who dilute the selectivity and quality of the student body, while causing resentment among the fall classes of those who worked hard to matriculate from high school. USC erroneously believes anyone who really, really, really wants to attend should be able to attend, eventually, and they are all given multiple options to do so. Not one elite private school replicates USC’s backdoor admissions policy on such a massive scale. Unfortunately, USC’s elite fall class cannot carry USC into the top ranks; until USC closes back door admissions and reduces the size of its student body, it will rise no further in the rankings than Cal.</p>
<p>USC is a private Berkeley in terms of the overall quality of the student body, except that USC’s demographic makeup is more ethnically diverse. But hey, that’s okay to many Trojans, except those like I who expect more…</p>
<p>Sent from my SGH-T989 using CC</p>
<p>[Top</a> universities by reputation 2013 - Times Higher Education](<a href=“http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/2013/reputation-ranking]Top”>World Reputation Rankings 2013 | Times Higher Education (THE))</p>
<p>As example of slow-moving age-old public perception,
the newest 2013 reputation ranking here of last month, Berkeley, Stanford, UCLA
all in Top-10. but USC still 60-70. Only Brown, BU and WashUStLouis are worse
as they’re in 80-90 (In fact I’m surprised why Brown and WashU are ranked so low?
Are they really worse than USC in academic research and reputation?)</p>
<p>This ranking is based mainly on “as-claimed-invited-expert” yet
subjective peer senior reputation on academic, and
almost zero on $money-endowment and such (so even a Top-3
$endowment with Harvard/Stanford should count nothing…)</p>
<p>On the positive, SC is ranked within its World Top-100.
If it’s 10 years ago, SC most likely be in 100s-300s range…</p>
<p>Seattle, I agree with you up to a point about backdoor admissions. The thing you have to remember is that even top schools have flunk outs and transfers meaning that, from a university and business perspective, that leaves them with empty seats to fill. I agree that they take too many CC transfers (and I was one of them, although I was also admitted to other schools that only take 10 transfers a year) but ultimately what transfers and spring admits are are ways for a university to fill the seats of students who flunk out and transfer out. Nothing more, nothing less.</p>
<p>I just find the ballooning of the graduate student population to be offensive because so long as they don’t have enough housing, they’re being disingenuous in admitting all of those students, especially when they come from out of state, let alone foreign countries. Not everyone who comes there is loaded, and to be a broke student far away from home not knowing the local turf is hard enough without the housing issue. This is where USC is in transition from a local commuter school to an elite private school but still has a ways to go.</p>
<p>Also, in the case of me being a CC transfer, I understand your frustration. My frustration is with the mediocre public high school that wrote me off when I had academic problems because my family life was falling apart. I scored in the 98th percentile on the Catholic high schools entrance exam but my mother didn’t like one of the private schools in the area and wasn’t impressed by the other one, so by default I went to public school for high school, which we all know now was a mistake. The school writes me off and leaves me for dead, and then I buck the trend and transfer to an elite school. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. USC has gotten some fantastic students from community colleges, although they are definitely the diamond in the rough. It’s just frustrating, because as you know our public schools are mediocre at best by global standards (even though they were #1 globally as recent as the 1970s) and the high schools are the worst performing part of the public school system. I know that all now, but having lived it was another experience entirely. I am extremely grateful that USC took a chance on me, although my grades and extra-curriculars were fine but not for those 3 lousy semesters in high school when things really were bad.</p>
<p>^ I’m not fundamentally opposed to transfers, because even schools like Stanford’s take them. My problem is with the sheer numbers that USC accepts annually. USC accepts an entire class of transfers every year, at least 1000 to 1500! That is enough to comprise the freshman class size of most colleges in America. (And surely not all of them have the extenuating and remarkable background that you have.)</p>
<p>I’m not a fan of President Nikias because he comes across as one of these “my friend” peddlers one can see roaming the streets of Beirut or Cairo or Manhattan. He waxes on eloquently about the ancient Greeks and the destined reign of Troy in describing his vision of USC in the future. But behind the patina of his Southern European folksy charm, the metrics do not sustain his vision. He and others like him in the USC administration simply do not get it. To propel USC to the top, USC must become more exclusive at the undergraduate level, not less so. And to do that requires cutting the transfer classes dramatically.</p>
<p>Furthermore, having a four-year USC alumnus/ae as president of USC, or someone who graduated from a prestigious private university, would help in convincing the administration and board of trustees that our transfer classes are simply too large. I am deeply concerned that the current president has not addressed publicly the problem with our transfer classes in the foreseeable future. There has been no meaningful discussion of reducing the transfer class size in the next 10 years, for example, and relying more on endowment and other sources of income.</p>
<p>I recognize how hard working and focused the transfer students are in general. And I would be too if I had stumbled in high school and wanted a fresh start.</p>
<p>But if USC is serious about competing with the top private schools, and climbing into the top ranks, then it must reduce back door admissions dramatically. Doing so will increase the selectivity of the school in general, increase our endowment per student ratio, allow for USC to become a truly residential college, attract more high achieving high school students, and enhance USC’s reputation worldwide.</p>
<p>The time is now, not yesterday, to take meaningful and concrete actions to reduce the size of the transfer classes across the board. USC has the resources financially to accomplish this goal. In addition, serious but long-term steps should be taken to reduce the entering class size as well. Reducing the class size will make it easier to convert USC into a four-year residential college, especially after the village construction is complete.</p>
<p>Only someone who appreciates the four-year construct and who has the balls to stand up to the USC alumni (many of whom were transfers themselves) who resist this a systemic change, will be able to lead USC into the right direction.</p>
<p>Sent from my SGH-T989 using CC</p>
<p>SC will be in the top 20 soon, no doubt about it. Beyond that point I feel like we would need to completely change mentality in order to move up much more. SC has always been much more focused on the money majors, which is why so much wealth pours into the school, but cracking the top 15 will require boosting big academia subjects and reducing size, as other posters have mentioned. </p>
<p>For the near future, however, it seems like SC’s plan is to maintain the size of the school in order to build the endowment and to more quickly further a prestigious reputation around the country and the world (very important!). After all the fund raising, in a decade or so, I expect SC will significantly reduce in overall size and focus more on the hard science majors. Overall, I hope my kid/grandkid is a genius because 30-50 years from now SC could be top 10, if its done right.</p>
<p>I agree. However, I do believe that reducing the student body is a long term goal of Nikias. But right now the large student body is needed in order to fund the aggressive initiatives and sustain the university. I have a hunch that the online masters degrees students will replace (which will pay the same tuition prices) the large undergraduate student body. But before that, Nikias and the university need the large student body and their tuition it to beautify the university, hire top faculty, endow all schools, and build the UV. Once that is all done I suspect USC to drop the undergraduate student body to 10 - 12k total.</p>
<p>SeatleTW i agree with you. i have worked so hard during the final years of high school that I really feel those large amounts of transfer students accepted is diluting the overall quality of the student body. And apparently you can find people complaining about the backdoor admissions problem everywhere on the internet. As entering students we could make good use of the future four years and urge the USC governing board to make a change, like through a petition or sth?</p>
<p>I can see the point on USC accepting too many transfers. However, if you look at UCLA and Berkley, they accept many transfers as well and are still able to rank very high. I know they are public schools and not private, but I think USC’s problem is not the amount of transfers they admit but the type of transfers they admit and the type of students they admit in general. USC tends to admit students that are of an affluent background, has influential parents, or students that just want to get in, get the experience/degree and get out. The difference between USC and some of the other top universities is that USC is more looked as an “experience” type of college where students go to attend school to just get a degree and have the whole party, football, and fraternity/sorority experience. It is not looked at as a place for global awareness, progressive thinking, innovative researching, or academic rigor like other top universities. I will say though, in recent years (mainly in California), USC is slowing starting to gain the reputation of being more of a respectable university not just as an experience; but they still have a long way to go before they get nationally and globally recognized as one. . I commend them for staying in downtown LA to help out the neighborhood, but they do need to recognize that there are many students not from SoCal; so the whole housing situation at USC is also a big problem since the area around the campus is not as safe. They need to expand their campus to cover the surrounding area around it so they can provide more housing and attract more students. I believe in years time USC will rise to be one of the top universities so long they admit the right students, fix their core curriculum, and fix their campus safety problem.</p>
<p>USC’s “prestige” and rankings are less affected by transfer students than weaknesses in its graduate and professional programs. That’s what it needs to work on.</p>
<p>There’s more to a school than the high school GPAs and test scores of its students.</p>
<p>@simba9 I agree with what you are saying. There are a lot of things that USC need to fix and their graduate programs is one of them. </p>
<p>I agree with you on that there is more to a student than just GPA and test scores. That was what I was trying to say in my post before on the students they admit. They need to admit students that are willing to be global aware, think progressively, and involve themselves in innovative researching; and not just going to school just to be there and get out to make money.</p>