<p>Is anybody else sorta annoyed at how good Virginias state schools are. I know California probably has better ones but its also the most populated state, so that makes sense (also given their finalist troubles, who knows how long their schools are gonna be good for).</p>
<p>But Virginia has like 3 state schools better than any one school in New York where I live, and its really annoying. </p>
<p>Is anybody else bothered by this?</p>
<p>Damn Virginians. UVA should become private, it basically is and only gets like 5.5% of its budget from the state.</p>
<p>Yes, Virginia has two amazing state schools. I, too, am often perplexed by New York’s state university system. I would expect it to be much better than it is. Not to say that it’s bad - by any means - but it does surprise me.</p>
<p>No, really, I have no idea why we have such good state schools. We just do. </p>
<p>And we already have a good private school: Washington and Lee.</p>
<p>Anyway, each state developed it’s university system differently. There are a lot of states that have good state schools and some that don’t. It’s not anything you can help really.</p>
<p>Yeah, Virginia is quite lucky. W&M and UVA on the public side, then W&L and UofR on the private side.</p>
<p>I doubt either public school would ever go private though. Thomas Jefferson, from my understanding, pretty much mandated that UVA be a public school. Even UVA Law which receives no public funding still reserves 40% of its spots for in-state students. W&M has talked a lot about going private, but it runs into the hurdle of buying back Colonial History from the state. I could imagine the bill running in the tens of billions.</p>
<p>It could be a function of how all the public schools are separate, like there’s no unified University of ___ system.</p>
<p>It’s not just New York. Public universities in the Northeast are something of a mixed bag, but generally they tend to be weaker than those in California, much of the Midwest, and parts of the South (VA & NC especially). I think it’s because private colleges and universities were so well established in the Northeast from an early date, and public higher education in that region was something of an afterthought. Some have argued that the established privates didn’t welcome competition from lower-cost taxpayer-funded rivals, and fought to limit state legislative appropriations for public universities, but I don’t know whether that’s true. The history in Virginia is very different, however. William & Mary is the nation’s second-oldest university; it was essentially private until it fell on hard times in the aftermath of the Civil War and was finally rescued by a state takeover in 1906. The state’s second-oldest college is UVA, founded by Jefferson out of dissatisfaction with William & Mary’s strongly religious and, as he saw it, anti-scientific orientation. UVA was public from the beginning. So there wasn’t the same kind of resistance from a well-established private sector that appears to have occurred in the Northeast.</p>
<p>I’ve also heard some complaints from academics familiar with the SUNY system that it’s been plagued by political patronage and pork-barrel politics from the outset: resources spread too thin over too many campuses, too much duplication of effort across campuses, too many key administrative and staff positions awarded as political favors, etc. I don’t know how much validity there is to all this, but those are the rumors that circulate in the academic world.</p>
<p>Virginia has historically invested a lot of money into the public universities (though that’s not really true now) plus it has a more decentralized system for public universities than other states. </p>
<p>It really depends on the attitudes of each state on how colleges should be funded and run.</p>
<p>Virginia chose to keep their schools more undergrad oriented and they avoided competing at the highest levels in expensive to fund areas like engineering and the hard sciences. Doing so allowed them to develop good undergrad reputations at minimal cost. Unfortunately the growth in higher education is now in some of the areas they have avoided and they are finding playing catch-up very difficult. While others have grown their funded research by double digits the top VA schools have been generally flat. Wiht Obama pusing more funding into academic research in science and engineering they are left on the outside looking in to some extent. As the overhead charges for such grants can go a long way to funding many other areas of the college including many that benefit undergrads, they are left without this option to expand their economic base. This also makes it difficult for them to attract top science and engineering faculty.</p>
<p>W&M is the second-oldest university in the country and U.Va. was one of the first state universities - they have over 500 years of history between them. That’s a big contributor to governmental and citizen loyalty.</p>
<p>No. What’s to be “annoyed” at? Good for Virginia, I say (and all other states that have good state flagships). It’s not a mindset that will see you well in life, that of being “annoyed” by other people’s good fortunes (in this case, VA residents).</p>
<p>VA Tech is out there for any one who feels the need to holster up a a calculator and do some expensive research. It is first in the nation in Architecture and all its engineering departments are first rate (although it is a mystery to me why anyone who is scientifically inclined would ever want be an engineer in the USA when you could make 3 times the money as a doctor or dentist).</p>
<p>But chuy, we on the VT board are so glad WV’s lack of choices sent you to Blacksburg! How on earth would we have gotten so much help had you not ended up at Tech?!</p>
<p>And Hillary2012, many would argue that there are more than two. There’s VT, UVA, WM, JMU, GMU, and the University of Mary Washington is one super little LAC. We are very, very fortunate in these times to have such options. It is a no brainer for most Virginia families to look first (and for most -only) in state when making their college lists.</p>
<p>Let me see, the entire population of UVA and W&M combined is under 28,000 students. While they both are excellent, they are not educating a significant percentage of the citizens of Virginia compared to other state universities.</p>
<p>Start early, get someone who’s essentially sacred behind the mission in a serious way and bam, you get the Virginia system.</p>
<p>Two comments 1) Cornell has state schools attached that was part of the movement that created many top publics 2) Don’t put down UBuff and Stonybrook, neither of which are nearly as great as the Virginia schools but both have areas where they are research powerhouses 3) Move to a different state if public, higher education is important to you. Vote with your feet and your tax dollars. 4) Whoever said earlier that having so many privates established so early is also right-- who needed the public version when the only kids who could afford college went to college at private schools that were “peppered” in the NE (compared to Mid-Atl and South)?</p>
<p>Let’s not forget that some counties in Virginia are among the wealthiest in the nations (Arlington, Fairfax, Loudon, and Stafford especially). Therefore they have strong school systems which feed into these excellent universities. </p>
<p>Also age probably has something to do with it, as is the case with the Ivy League for that matter. These schools had more of a chance to become established and therefore they prosper.</p>
How on earth would we have gotten so much help had you not ended up at Tech?!</p>