USC back in the 70s and 80s was indeed a very good regional school of moderate size and composed mainly of A and B high school students. The acceptance rate was around 70 percent and that included a similar transfer in rate. About 50 percent matriculated from private and upper middle class public high schools. What made USC attractive back then were its affluent alumni, especially in California and the West Coast. USC was the poor kids’ way to affluence, especially with its liberal financial aid package, wealthy student body and strong alumni network in Southern California. And it was mid sized for a private university. During Sample’s tenure, USC’s size did not explode at the undergraduate level, but remained relatively constant despite huge academic gains. During Nikias’ tenure, however, after all of the academic gains, USC has added about 4,000 kids, essentially another class. Now he’s on a veritable speaking circuit extolling the virtues of quantity over quality, at the expense of the traditional 4-year undergraduate experience. And on top of that, USC’s tuition has exploded relative to the top 10 schools. The kicker is that our FA is weak and is the result of trying to offer too many things to too many students.
@nauidiver: I think my issue is that USNWR uses selectivity as one of the criteria for ranking schools, and I don’t think USC is a very selective school overall. I’m not even criticizing USC here. I think schools can decide size, mission, character for themselves, and it is a good thing that there are a lot of kinds of schools. A big school can have very talented and academic students and less academic students and be able to meet all their educational needs. But a big school has a difficult time being very selective with the entire student body. Selectivity is overrated anyway as a criterion for choosing a school. Outcomes are much more valuable.
I just think it is odd to act as though USC is selective, when USC is selective for fall freshman year only. After that, the gates are open. I exaggerate, but I have to wonder if USNWR rankings are being gamed a bit. If that is so, I can’t blame USC really, because some people take USNWR rankings way too seriously.
So that’s why I’m commenting on this topic. It is a good example of why people shouldn’t choose schools based on ranking, but should dig deeper to see the rest of the picture.
I agree with a lot of what’s been said, and I think that Seattle isn’t giving Nikias the benefit of the doubt. I too am frustrated with the explosion of the student body size-wise, not only for prestige issues but because one problem USC has historically had is a gross lack student housing, which ends up throwing lots of 20 year olds out into the Los Angeles rental market with its painfully up and down prices, along with having to then commute in. As I’ve said before, in that way USC reminds me of America Online in the 1990s - overselling itself and not having the underlying infrastructure to legitimately support the students they’re attracting. Every year the student housing lottery is one giant game of musical chairs, with a certain number of kids left out, even in spite of the ridiculous tuition they’re being asked to pay.
Beyond that, USC has a lot of the same stupid problems that are festering all across higher ed nowadays - runaway tuition, less rigorous courses, far too many classes taught by adjunct faculty who have no health insurance and are being paid poverty wages, etc. etc. etc. The USN&WR rankings are definitely a good place to start, but too many people don’t look past the ordinal numbers in the rankings to see what’s actually being measured and weighted and the often minuscule qualitative differences that an ordinal ranking system masks. In my experience thus far in the business world, all that anyone generally cares about is good school / bad school and then on to the next hiring criterion.
In terms of the next chapter in USC’s history, well I think the thing that’s been mentioned here but not adequately emphasized is the growth of the health sciences campus and new biotech park which I believe is going to include Caltech and possibly the Cal State system and some local community colleges. They’ve also expanded some of the outreach programs that surround the University Park campus to the health sciences campus which is also heartening to see.
@USCAlum05 says: “As I’ve said before, in that way USC reminds me of America Online in the 1990s - overselling itself and not having the underlying infrastructure to legitimately support the students they’re attracting.”
This is an excellent argument for @SeattleTW 's case that USC is too large. A school must be able to handle the students that are admitted and enrolled. That alums are concerned about how USC’s increased size is impacting the quality of education there is something that families should consider when deciding to attend. It is certainly a valid question.
Just like the unfortunate Spring admits who need to complain ad nauseum to change poor admissions policies, I and other alumni will keep banging the drums of dissent over the direction Nikias is taking us. He needs to go, and until USC replaces him with a private school centered academic (and native American who is more concerned with educating Americans as opposed to international students) I will continue extolling the virtues of a smaller USC undergraduate experience.
Here’s an interview that Nikias did with the local NBC affiliate for their show News Conference, which is like a local version of Meet the Press:
I think a lot of this also depends on the particular program that a kid applies to. Having gone through one of the fantastic small programs in the film school, I felt like I got the best of both worlds - a small program where you know all of your professors, and the resources of a large university. That would’ve been a different story in the business school or Dornsife (liberal arts). I feel like they have a lot of warm bodies teaching the generic university-wide writing classes (Writing 140 and Writing 340) but otherwise the quality of the teaching was fantastic. It’s the quality of LIFE that I’d be more concerned about - housing and being bumped further and further away from campus. Because the school is so incredibly expensive, most students try to cut expenses everywhere they can. The second biggest line item after tuition is usually housing, so that’s where you end up with kids packed in like sardines into off-campus housing. The university can do better, and this is where the America Online comparison for me comes in. Student housing is also usually only for the academic year, and that’s where it can be difficult for international students and for kids who otherwise don’t have the money to go back for the holidays or for the summer, or who would (imagine that) want to work internships and jobs to build their careers while they’re in school.
Ironically, if USC had not expanded across the street, and I am not opposed to the improvements, USC could have gone smaller and reduced tuition at the same time. Nikias is blinded by his own ambition, and while he thinks he is responsible for USC’s rise academically, he is but a cog in the wheel of progress USC has made decades before he set foot on the campus of SUNY Buffalo – or USC.