President Nikias is ruining USC, which used to be around 15,000 students at the undergrad level in the 90s. It now approaches 20,000 souls, with no end in sight. He’s diluted our brand, single handedly destroyed the smaller, private school vibe, transformed USC into a public school size, wrecked the intimate student faculty relationship, and angered tens of thousands of alumni in the process.
USC is not SUNY Buffalo!
The student/faculty ratio is still around 7-9 to 1, which is still light years ahead of Berkeley and UCLA, to say nothing of the Cal State system.
The USC of the pre-2000s was an overpriced, mediocre school. Most people are happy to not go back to those days. And let’s not forget about the grotesque lack of housing, which the USC Village is going to do a nice job of emphatically answering.
The majority of that growth - and I don’t disagree with you there - is on the graduate level, in the form of master’s degree students, many of them full-pay international students,which gives the university lots of tuition money and lots of research aides for its many labs. The university’s research budget has probably quadrupled (if not quintupled) since the 80s and 90s. USC is a real school nowadays in a way that it wasn’t when you were there.
The other thing is that the country is going through the demographic bulge of the Millennials now, meaning that there are more kids applying to more schools, and it does the country and the world no good to keep schools small and under-educate a generation in the name of snobbery. By that logic, schools should’ve turned away all of the returning vets after World War II going to college on the G.I. Bill.
And a lot of graduate students are also doing online learning, which is something that, not surprisingly, USC is out in front of. It’s a school that’s definitely poised to help lead that revolution.
USC was a better school in the 80s in many ways, and USC owes its present greatness to the 250,000 plus alumni who were students decades ago. Nikias is a misguided, public school oriented hack who doesn’t give a hoot about anyone other than engineering and international students.
“USC is not SUNY Buffalo!”
This makes me wonder which is worse-an excellent university like USC expanding without keeping an eye on excellence and therefore potentially ruining it or the rapid expansion of an already mediocre (at best) university that was decades behind the times before the rapid expansion where administration could care less about the academic experience of students as long as they can stuff them in efficiently and move them out quickly without adding any academic resources, and still claim “Premier Budget U”. Oh, who needs seats in the library as long as PR and admissions have spanking new buildings. Advising? what’s that? And I’m not talking Buffalo LOL but…
You make a good point but I implore you to consider that many alumni and administrators – decades before Nikias stepped foot on US soil --were intent on taking USC to the next level academically. President Norm Topping was truly USC’s greatest president who started the ball rolling in about 1960. He graduated from the college and was a VP of Penn. But the most important metric of USC’s rise was its fundraising prowess that started decades ago. You are witnessing the fruits of the labor of countless alumni and supporters from the 60s to the present. Nikias is just a baton holder who might be carrying USC toward the next lap of excellence but likes to take undeserved credit. His legacy is harming USC at the undergraduate level.
USC was a lousy, mediocre, overpriced and not worth it school until around the time I got there. I chose USC and its film school over Berkeley and the University of Chicago, and took a TON of flak for it. I made the right decision, but you can see the generational difference in the quality of students whenever you go to a football game - a lot of those older alums really are fat, drunk,and stupid C students from Orange County, and the reason why so many of them are upset is because they’ve been going to football games for years and are basking in the higher level of excellence that the university now has, yet are shocked that their own children can’t get in. Quite frankly, the people who went to USC decades ago have children who would now be going to Arizona State, not the USC of today.
I have some issues with Nikias but overall the trustees seem happy with him, and, more importantly, USC does not owe its present - borderline - greatness to the 250,000 alumni who were students decades ago. It owes its present greatness to Steve Sample, period. Without Sample, USC continues to be a rambling, mediocre school no different from SMU or Miami (Florida) that isn’t taken seriously by anyone with a brain.
Lol, yep, and I got into Stanford in the 80s, who cares? Those same fat and dumb alumni have succeeded in business and given hundreds of millions to USC, especially those frat boys and sorority girls. And guess what? Chicago had a 50 percent acceptance rate in the 80s and Stanford was easy to get into in the 50s. That doesn’t make their alumni any less successful. Sample did great things but without alumni support he was nothing.
You are mixing a lot of apples and oranges.
I think that USC with its President and the Board of Trustees have made their decision on the school’s direction in light of the changing dynamics - growing student population, international students, competition, etc. I think we should respect that. And in the event it turns out to be negative, mechanisms are in place to change what is wrong and to continue what is right.
As parent, I am happy that my kid got into USC. There will always be concerns and the best option is to know how to adapt quickly.
Thank you and good day to all!
I believe that alumni will always bring their own recollections and personal perspectives into any such current comparative analysis. I went to Hopkins in the 80s, and I know that I now view the campus and improvements at JHU over the past few decades much more favorably than how I recall the college experience there back then. I see JHU as better now… but I am not there as a current student or even a parent of a current student, so my judgment could be very skewed.
To the contrary, I can understand how some USC alumni may feel that things were better before all of the recent changes. But when prospective students and their parents now analyze USC as a potential college selection, such past comparative factors are not really relevant - unless the parent is an alum. In our family, we started with a list of probably around 65 colleges and universities under consideration initially. We researched them all, visited roughly 12 and eventually narrowed down the list to my D’s top five… or her “wish list”: USC, Stanford, Brown, Princeton and Yale. She attends USC now (will be a junior next year) and has nothing but positive things to say about it.
She is very thankful that she made the decision to travel from FL to USC. The opportunities at USC and within the greater LA area are almost endless. The USC alumni network is also amazing. My younger daughter, now a HS junior, has already decided that USC is her first choice. And I am very thankful regarding her decision. As a parent, my impression of USC has only grown over the last two years. They are excellent IMO at all of the things that are important to parents… from communication to financial aid to all of their various online portals related to registration, assistance, tracking, housing, etc. They are just quite simply a well-funded and well-oiled machine. USC has mastered the college experience, in my opinion, including everything related to the exchange of information. So, from our perspective, the current USC administration seems very well-suited to their roles. We have experienced no reasons to doubt President Nikias’ leadership.
If you are a prospective student considering USC, my suggestion would be to look at the survey details provided by students themselves at https://colleges.niche.com/rankings/best-colleges/ I have found their rankings and parameters to be far more useful than other college ranking services. But mainly, I would tour each college or university you are considering in person. Ultimately, choose what is best for you.
Both of my daughters have chosen USC, and now we simply have to hope that D2 gets in as well.
I would only add that USC does a brilliant job making a large school seem small. My two sons benefited so much from personal attention (such as invitations to dinners and other social events, and informal mentoring). Most of their classes were also small, reflecting the low student to teacher ratio.
On a positive note, USC has the highest paid athletes in the PAC-12 and alumni seem very supportive.
And Sample was the Buffalo guy, not Nickias.
I stand corrected. Nikias is a Buffalo grad. Interesting.
USCalum05 writes:
“USC was a lousy, mediocre, overpriced and not worth it school until around the time I got there.”
“A lot of business is common sense which is why super smart people find it boring and why a lot of C students succeed at it,” and “a lot of those older alums really are fat, drunk,and stupid C students from Orange County.”
“Without Sample, USC continues to be a rambling, mediocre school no different from SMU or Miami (Florida) that isn’t taken seriously by anyone with a brain.”
As a USC alumnus, I am embarrassed by your conceited, self-righteous tone and your total disrespect towards other institutions and alumni. You obviously didn’t learn anything while at USC. You don’t deserve to be called a Trojan!
Tucker, I’m one of the people that Sample helped lure to USC and which helped give the school its current reputation, which it DID NOT have in previous years. When I first came to the school, I took a LOT of flak from people in the L.A. business community, just like I did from my school advisors back east - I was told point blank by a partner at a top 5 Hollywood talent agency that I “should’ve gone to a better school,” and in more recent years many of those same people have said, “Wow, that school has REALLY changed.”
Schools develop reputations over a time for a reason. I don’t pretend to know you or your particular affiliation from USC beyond going to school there - what you studied and when you went there - but I stand by my comments about a good number of older alums fitting the longstanding University of Second Choice and University of Spoiled Children stereotype, most visibly at the Coliseum during football games. These are the same older alums who couldn’t get in to USC nowadays because the standards are much higher. SMU and Miami of Florida have had similar reputations although, to be fair, individual people do attend different schools for a variety of reasons. But you should know, if you’re not old enough to have been out in the real world for any length of time, that there are a LOT of people around Southern California who truly HATE USC, which is why I’ve taken a page from a lot of the Ivy grads I’ve worked with and just don’t mention it at all. It’s a double-edged sword that arouses deep feelings in a lot of people.
If you’re going to start singling out people who “don’t deserve to be called a Trojan,” then I suggest you start with Paige Laurie, the Walmart heiress who never went to class and paid a former roommate of hers, a girl who was a community college transfer from Riverside whose parents were migrant farm workers, to do her homework for her. It’s people like that who delegitimize the hard work put in by other people to even get in to a school like USC. Most top schools do socioeconomically sensitive admissions, which is something most of my friends and I are strongly in favor of.
One big thing I learned with time is that colleges are not the bastions of altruism that they put themselves out to be. They’re businesses, and their product is prestige. Too many schools don’t actually care about curing cancer or graduating leaders, they care about BEING PERCEIVED as the leading school to cure cancer and graduate leaders. That’s a huge difference.
USC is a very good school overall and has some of the very best programs in the world for all things related to communications - I went there for the film school and am tremendously grateful for the education I received there - but it doesn’t have the across the board excellence that would make it the Harvard of the West or Stanford of the South that it wants to be. It doesn’t have the research, doesn’t have the faculty who win 50 Nobel Prizes every year, etc. and that stuff can’t necessarily be bought.
Given the runaway cost of schools like USC, the questionable value of any top tier private school nowadays, and the fact that USC, for example, just had all of its students in its graduate MFA studio art (?) program quit last year… perhaps you should reconsider whether or not your school, or any other school, is all that it’s cracked up to be. The education system as a whole is long overdue for some creative destruction.
Nikias loves to bypass the ire of USC alumni and justify his back door admissions and increased enrollment policies by writing op ed pieces for newspapers in which he suggests all top schools should open their doors to transfer students and increase their enrollments. He also suggests only a couple of dozen private schools can justify their high ticket price. His writings suggest he cares little about the traditional, four year construct or crushing student debt. On top of that, he has gone on the record that he has “added value” to the USC brand. His hubris will be his downfall. Nikias thinks he walks on water. SUNY Buffalo, lol, yeah Nikias, that’s where your stupid ideas come from.
USC actually had respectable professional schools back in the 80’s. In fact, the undergraduate business school was considered quite good. The college (called Letters Arts and Sciences at the time) was not as strong academically and its high acceptance rate - I think around 70% - helped fuel the Spoiled Children reputation. But in actuality, USC was a good, if unremarkable, local university.
It takes a lot of money, effort and creative leadership to take a local university of USC’s stature and transform it into a respected global research university. President Sample, was able to take USC to the point where it was being mentioned as an up and comer and rising star in top tier academic circles. USC winning its first Nobel Prize during his tenure certainly helped as well.
But at the end of his presidency, USC had a ways to go before it was truly considered a member of top notch elite research universities. I believe Nikias has done a fine job taking USC from an up and comer to a series contender. When you consider some achievements under his watch:
Recent acceptance rate < 18% (around there)
Raised over 5+ billion in current campaign
Increased national academy members by 50% in last 5 years
Purchased University hospital and has established a foundation for a top tier health sciences program
Transformed the campus with new, top notch buildings and facilities
Building the University Village - with a focus on expanding the residential colleges model for all undergraduates
Recently ranked #14 most innovative university (http://stateofinnovation.thomsonreuters.com/the-worlds-most-innovative-universities)
I’m sure there are many more achievements, but that is just a sampling. Is he perfect? Of course not, but I do believe he does care about outcomes as much as he does about reputation. After all, how many university presidents still teach an undergraduate course like he does?
I wish USC didn’t cost as much, or could boast that all its classes have less then 20 students, but it’s just not realistic given USC current financial situation. It costs lots of money to recruit top faculty, fund programs and pay for new facilities - and USC’s endowment is well below top tier institutions - so it needs to charge more in tuition. But, that is exactly what Nikias is working towards and why he decided to make the capital campaign 6 Billion - an amount many people thought could not be raised.
I would say, if you want things to continue to get better, get involved and help contribute. If you have concerns about how things are run, email Nikias - or Provost Quick. I have found both will not only respond to you, they will take your concerns seriously.
@nauidiver: I think the <18% acceptance rate is for fall only. When you add Spring Admits, acceptance rate is over 20% (Although I don’t believe the exact number of Spring Admits is published) . Then USC adds about 40% more students in the next two years with transfers. I think that is what @SeattleTW means by backdoor admissions.
I understand, but my point was that the 18% (it’s actually 17.7%) freshman fall admit rate is still considerably better and has only gotten better over time. Plus the 29% transfer admit rate is yielding 3.7 average GPA (which is very good) and is not too far off UCLA’s 26% admit rate. USC has made it a point to be a large transfer acceptance institution and maybe that’s the contention, but the quality of transfers are high and apparently have the same high graduation rates as freshman so I’m not sure why that is a problem. Not to mention many transfer students are older and bring more life experiences with them creating a more diverse environment.