Tier 1 Schools

[MexAmerican_Moose]

Wasn't UT Austin turning incoming freshmen away because of lack of space? That right there should tell you something. There is a market for more Tier one funded schools in Texas.

YEAH, i think they were sending them to UT Arlington

[mrfootball]

UT is maxed out as far as enrollment, and they don't want any more growth. It's been pretty much the same enrollment as when I was there at just over 50,000 students. UT's 'ideal' enrollment (per UT officials) is 48K to 49K...however they've had a difficult time pairing it down.

A&M is nearly "maxed out" as they've grown to nearly 48,000 students. A&M's 'ideal' enrollment would be to grow to whatever UT's enrollment is.....PLUS one student.

Tech is at nearly 30,000 students and plans to grow to 35,000 within the next few years. They feel that's the ideal number and don't want to get much larger than that.

[Original Timmy Chan's]

Moose, congratulations on your scholarship to UH. I also attended UH on an academic scholarship. I also had a scholarship offer to Texas A&M, but I knew in my first 5 minutes on that campus that it wasn't the place for me. Conversely, the University of Houston felt like home as soon as I stepped onto the campus.

I've never once regretted that decision; I immensely enjoyed my years at UH. I also give back as much as I can, since I feel indebted to them for helping put me where I am today. ]

I hope you enjoy your time there as much as I did...and still do today! (I'm still on campus at least 3-4 times a month to enjoy our winning football, basketball and baseball teams...)

[MexAmerican_Moose]

Moose, congratulations on your scholarship to UH. I also attended UH on an academic scholarship. I also had a scholarship offer to Texas A&M, but I knew in my first 5 minutes on that campus that it wasn't the place for me. Conversely, the University of Houston felt like home as soon as I stepped onto the campus.

I've never once regretted that decision; I immensely enjoyed my years at UH. I also give back as much as I can, since I feel indebted to them for helping put me where I am today. ]

I hope you enjoy your time there as much as I did...and still do today! (I'm still on campus at least 3-4 times a month to enjoy our winning football, basketball and baseball teams...)

thanks, i know im gonna enjoy it there, its close to home, and most of my buddies are going to go there.

[texas911]

Is $3 BILLION a lot of money? This is why the city should really embrace UH and see what an investment it really is. Imagine what Tier One funding would return.

From: www.uh.edu/admin/media/nr...mpact.html

$3 BILLION ANNUAL IMPACT OF UH SYSTEM DETAILED TO COMMUNITY LEADERS

Chancellor Jay Gogue, Noted Economist Barton Smith Presenting New Study

University of Houston System Chancellor Jay Gogue and noted economist Barton Smith will present the results of an extensive new study analyzing the university system

[HeightsGuy]

To add to the above post, the chronicle reported on it as well, but they added a truly depressing statistic:

Of the nation's 60 largest cities, Houston ranks No. 59 in terms of college enrollment per capita and No. 57 in terms of locally conferred degrees per capita, according to a recent study by the Atlanta Regional Council of Higher Education.

Study suggests UH degrees are crucial economic factor

[mrfootball]

Of the nation's 60 largest cities, Houston ranks No. 59 in terms of college enrollment per capita and No. 57 in terms of locally conferred degrees per capita, according to a recent study by the Atlanta Regional Council of Higher Education.

And that's not even factoring in the 750,000+ illegals living in the greater Houston area.

[RedScare]

And that's not even factoring in the 750,000+ illegals living in the greater Houston area.

Good job, working that statement into a thread about research funding at universities. Otherwise, we might not have known your views on the subject.

[H-Town Man]

Good job, working that statement into a thread about research funding at universities. Otherwise, we might not have known your views on the subject.

We still don't know his views on the subject. I didn't read anything into it that was offensive towards immigrants.

[ssullivan]

To add to the above post, the chronicle reported on it as well, but they added a truly depressing statistic:

Of the nation's 60 largest cities, Houston ranks No. 59 in terms of college enrollment per capita and No. 57 in terms of locally conferred degrees per capita, according to a recent study by the Atlanta Regional Council of Higher Education.

Depressing indeed. And compared to most other major cities in the US, Houston has a very small number of four-year colleges and universities, yet we have one of the largest populations. And our universities are all relatively young compared to those in other places -- all were founded in the 20th century and half are fewer than 60 years old (St. Thomas - 1947, Houston Baptist - 1963, UH - 1927, Rice - 1912, TSU - 1947). Many of these aren't "destination" schools that students from other cities and states flock to. St. Thomas has just under 300 students that live on campus, and is still mostly a commuter university. HBU has a larger residential student population, but is still largely dependent on students from the Houston area. Other than Rice and to a growing degree UH, Houston's universities mostly serve the local population. There are not large numbers of students attending the other schools that come from other parts of the US to go to college here. We are not a city with many degreed professionals who grew up in other places, came here for college, and then stayed. So far Houston has done a great job of attracting college grads from other places -- when I look at my friends who are not originally from Houston, none of them have degrees from local institutions. In my opinion, this is a sign that many of our local universities have failed to evolve into the type of school that most students wanting to get away from home will be attracted to. I think UH is our best hope here. Rice is great, and is a well known destination university, but will always be fairly small in numbers. UH has made enormous strides since the days when it was known as "Cougar High" and I really think they are headed in the right direction. But it would be nice if at least one of the others could step up and bring in the kind of leadership necessary to grow into the type of university that attracts the majority of its students from all over the country, not just the local high schools.

[MidtownCoog]

Here's a cool video on UH's master plan. They also have some nice shots of new buildings on campus.

www.advancement.uh.edu/im...master.mpg

[Trophy Property]

Here's a cool video on UH's master plan. They also have some nice shots of new buildings on campus.

www.advancement.uh.edu/im...master.mpg

Will you try and add the link again. I could not get that one to work. I am interested in seeing the master plan as an MBA from UH. Go Bauer College of Buisness.

[MidtownCoog]

http://www.advancement.uh.edu/impact/download/master.mpg

[RedScare]

To add to the above post, the chronicle reported on it as well, but they added a truly depressing statistic:

Of the nation's 60 largest cities, Houston ranks No. 59 in terms of college enrollment per capita and No. 57 in terms of locally conferred degrees per capita, according to a recent study by the Atlanta Regional Council of Higher Education.

Study suggests UH degrees are crucial economic factor

Considering that Sam Houston State, Prairie View A&M and Texas A&M are all located less than 100 miles from downtown Houston (two of them are actually in Houston's CSA), with an enrollment in excess of 65,000 combined, I would not jump off of the college library just yet. Additionally, Houston as a major metro is less than 60 years old, itself. To lament that most of its colleges are less than 60 years old is to ignore the history of the city.

I am certainly a supporter of an improved UH, but this statistic, standing by itself, looks worse at first glance than it does after looking at it for awhile.

[Trophy Property]

http://www.advancement.uh.edu/impact/download/master.mpg

Thanks. it looks great !!

[krix]

Hi,

well, the Rice grad student population is full of foreigners, many of whom stay behind, so it does happen! And it has high profile grad school programs in engineering and the sciences, especially chemistry. The music school is said to be ranked very highly nationally as well, especially for the orchestra. A lot of people chose Indiana for their undergrad and go to Rice for their music grad school or vice versa. (They keep telling me that it is even better than Julliard, since Julliard students are usually more geared towards a soloist career and not towards the orchestra). Architecture is said to be good for the South as well, but I don't really know. Of course there are no med and law schools, but you know what they say at Rice: "Rice's medical school is Baylor!" A lot of pre-med students go there, they are cooperating closely with neighboring TMC institutions. The humanities has some problems, sure, with some grad programs in decline (German and Slavic, no real Asian Studies program despite the large Asian population in Houston). They should have thought about a law school though, maybe the new President, a lawyer by profession, could change that. He surely wants to largely expand both the undergrad and grad populations, since due to its size, Rice was always forced to concentrate on individual departments (hint: that's where the nobel prize winners were), so more power to him.

Although he should be careful to preserve the college system, which seems to be a mindblowing experience for anyone who went to Rice for undergrad. This appears to be an experience that just makes college a great social experience as well. If you don't know what I'm talking about, this guy who introduced this at a state school, gives much more details: http://collegiateway.org/. This is just one of several factors that regularly make Rice "the best deal in college" (relatively low tuition, guaranteed maximum debt, low student-professor ratio, although this is to the detriment of grad students, who get less teaching experience).

As for the rankings, RedScare already provided the ranking from US News. Now about Carnegie, I don't know where the Tier 1 ranking can be found there, but the most recent categories are:

[texas911]

Here's an interesting article from Chris Bell......

We only have two Tier I universities in Texas. A Tier I institution is basically a research university. They take in millions of dollars in federal research funding and churn out PhDs in science and math. Tier I institutions are the turbo engines of the 21st Century economy, but here in Texas we only have two of them.

It's been like this for so long that some of us might have a hard time realizing just how out of whack Texas is with the rest of the country. I often joke that we

[krix]

This is exactly what makes many Rice people angry. I mean I have yet to see a Tier 1 definition that is limited to state universities, but the definition he gave is completely applicable to Rice as well (I don't know about SMU, but it doesn't figure prominently in the listings I gave in the above post).

And as to the OP: this kind of attitude is exactly what made Texas fall behind (and Europe, for that matter too). I mean the good thing about the academic landscape in the United States is its incredible diversity, there are 4000 colleges that come in all different colors and shapes. Private elite research universities fulfill their role in this, and look what this kind of mixture has done for California.

[KinkaidAlum]

I cannot speak for Chris Bell, but I am fairly certain he is well aware of Rice University and the great role it plays in Texas.

That said, I don't think it would make much sense to have raising PUBLIC funding for a private institution as one of your campaign trumpet points!

Again, the main problem with Rice is SIZE. Here's how Rice compares to other PRIVATE RESEARCH DOCTORAL UNIVERSITIES in the county with regards to how many people graduated in 2003 (latest data I could find)

3,872 BYU

3,856 Boston University

2,998 Cornell

2,797 Northeastern

2,766 New York University

2,757 Southern Cal

2,562 Syracuse

2,324 Penn

1,985 Boston College

1,904 Notre Dame

1,889 Northwestern

1,816 Miami

1,716 George Washington U

1,647 Stanford

1,642 Harvard

1,619 Duke

1,573 Marquette

1,506 Vanderbilt

1,488 Tulane

1,459 Fordham

1,394 Georgetown

1,368 Brown

1,358 Emory

1,307 Yale

1,271 Columbia

1,270 Tufts

1,270 Carnegie Mellon

1,247 SMU

1,230 Washington U of St. Louis

1,189 Loyola of Chicago

1,129 Princeton

1,097 Lehigh

1,083 St Louis

1,069 Rensselaer Polytechnic

1,066 MIT

1,056 American U

1,054 Howard

999 Chicago

892 Rochester

794 Brandeis

736 Case Western Reserve

703 RICE UNIVERSITY

698 Yeshiva

689 Denver

620 Johns Hopkins

567 Catholic U of America

217 Cal Tech

[krix]

Yes, I am aware of that. I wasn't talking about public funding for private universities, of course, just that Texans tend to just notice two universities in the state.

Now about your figures, numbers of senior graduating is not really indicative, we should rather talk about number of faculty, post-docs and graduate students. But nobody was doubting that Rice is rather small with 2900 undergrads and 2000 grads, and 855 faculty and 135 post-docs. But even much larger universities such as Harvard or Stanford have only around double to triple the faculty, although of course much more post-docs and grad students (couldn't find any statistics of faculty numer, only of post-docs and doctorates awarded). But I remember talk that in order for Rice to increase the number of faculty, one needs to increase the number of the student population in general, and this is what Leebron seems to be planning.

Just some figures pulled from Wikipedia, and btw the ratio at Rice's peer institutions such as Emory and Duke seem to be even better:

undergrad / grad / faculty

Harvard: 6655 / 13,000 / 2300

Stanford: 6705 / 8176 / 1700

U Chicago: 4515 / 9087 / 2160

Emory: 6318 / 5336 / 2700

Duke: 6500 / 6300 / 2460

Rice : 2886 / 1922 / 855

[texas911]

Why are you guys worrying about Rice? They are well endowed, they don't need anymore funding and I think we call all agree that their reputation is in no danger of falling. They recently got a mega donation to help fund one of two proposed new residential colleges on campus so they can grow their enrollment. Rice is the last school in Texas that needs any help from the state. Their future is secured and they are a major asset to the city of Houston.

Again, tier one in this discussion is for state funding. Not national rankings.