Like most big universities, we are becoming a degree mill. Everybody gets a degree which greatly diminishes its value in the working world. Its all about $$ for the school.

I had a professor from TAMU(now retired) who told me that the quality of education at large state schools had greatly decreased over the last 30 years. This goes for ALL schools. He was repremanded several times but they couldnt fire him. The man was considered world class in his field.

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Muckraker living up to his name...

Like someone said before - it's about time we started ignoring US News and WR. A&M has among the highest ROI for students in the nation.

It's time to turn the establishment on it's head and start paying attention to what's really important - higher education (and K-12) industries are decades overdue for a revolution that will treat taxpayers, students and, yes, faculty with the respect they deserve

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That's because it is cheap and our degree is valued. If you devalue the degre (which is what people are complaining about), then you just have a cheap school.

Dummy with an engineering degree and a great job checking in.

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In the traditional classroom setup yes. But from what I've heard from my professors they're considering a flipped classroom setup where you read the material and come in once/twice a week for purely asking questions and turning in assignments. In such a setup I don't think you need nearly as much personnel.

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You're right. You don't. This must be why Harvard and Yale are rushing to do the same thing.

UT has won this battle. They are now the elite public university in Texas and A&M is going to be the "good" school for the everyman. It will be this way until the Aggies that graduated when all you needed was a pulse and those who share RP's academic philosophy get out of power.

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You can't compare A&M to Harvard and Yale. And if t.u. Is better academically it's marginally. You're acting like they're the Ivy League of Texas. We're not THAT much bigger.

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In the traditional classroom setup yes. But from what I've heard from my professors they're considering a flipped classroom setup where you read the material and come in once/twice a week for purely asking questions and turning in assignments. In such a setup I don't think you need nearly as much personnel.

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this is the worst idea yet. Why would you pay $5000 a semester tuition to teach yourself the material and pay faculty 6 figure salaries when they don't actually teach anything? You would be essentially paying $40000+ for a piece of paper, yet teaching yourself all the material that is available is for free

Something like this would make me want to lose ay future association with the school

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To have access to geniuses in their respective field. I've taught myself for the better part of the last four years anyway. Faculty don't get paid to teach. They get paid to do research. At least in engineering.

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You're right. You don't. This must be why Harvard and Yale are rushing to do the same thing.

UT has won this battle. They are now the elite public university in Texas and A&M is going to be the "good" school for the everyman. It will be this way until the Aggies that graduated when all you needed was a pulse and those who share RP's academic philosophy get out of power.

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You can't compare A&M to Harvard and Yale. And if t.u. Is better academically it's marginally. You're acting like they're the Ivy League of Texas. We're not THAT much bigger.

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Based on what? Unless you've graduated or taught a both schools, you wouldn't have any basis for comparison (other than the usual "because they're t.u."). So, because very few people teach at multiple schools, we use proxies for comparison. Those proxies are published in magazines like Forbes, Businessweek, etc. Those published proxies say that Texas is significantly better academically than A&M. What did you base your rankings upon?

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Like most big universities, we are becoming a degree mill. Everybody gets a degree which greatly diminishes its value in the working world. Its all about $$ for the school.

I had a professor from TAMU(now retired) who told me that the quality of education at large state schools had greatly decreased over the last 30 years. This goes for ALL schools. He was repremanded several times but they couldnt fire him. The man was considered world class in his field.

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Well that is true except for schools that stuck to their guns, like UNC, Berkley, Michigan, tu

Thanks for the extra info, Aggie1391. I appreciate that.

tu is a lot closer to us than schools like UNC, UC-Berkley, Michigan, UVA, etc.

They still have 50k+ students and they are not going to get under that number anytime soon.

A&M needs to get a top ten percent exemption (Only those in the top 7% are automatically admitted, as opposed to 10% for every other public school) like they did.

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You're right. You don't. This must be why Harvard and Yale are rushing to do the same thing.

UT has won this battle. They are now the elite public university in Texas and A&M is going to be the "good" school for the everyman. It will be this way until the Aggies that graduated when all you needed was a pulse and those who share RP's academic philosophy get out of power.

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You can't compare A&M to Harvard and Yale. And if t.u. Is better academically it's marginally. You're acting like they're the Ivy League of Texas. We're not THAT much bigger.

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Based on what? Unless you've graduated or taught a both schools, you wouldn't have any basis for comparison (other than the usual "because they're t.u."). So, because very few people teach at multiple schools, we use proxies for comparison. Those proxies are published in magazines like Forbes, Businessweek, etc. Those published proxies say that Texas is significantly better academically than A&M. What did you base your rankings upon?

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I don't care what newspapers say about A&M. I care what industry says about A&M. And we seem to be doing alright.

son of a b**ch. Seriously? Now freakin anyone can get in

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Those published proxies say that Texas is significantly better academically than A&M

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Wrong. Having known multiple people that have gone to both schools for both undergraduate and graduate programs in different disciplines (engineering and business), they have told me it was as if they went to the same school the whole time. Now OBVIOUSLY there are going to be several exceptions, like professors who teach differently, and specific programs which are better at one university than the other, but to say t.u. is on another level than TAMU is just plain wrong.

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You're right. You don't. This must be why Harvard and Yale are rushing to do the same thing.

UT has won this battle. They are now the elite public university in Texas and A&M is going to be the "good" school for the everyman. It will be this way until the Aggies that graduated when all you needed was a pulse and those who share RP's academic philosophy get out of power.

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You can't compare A&M to Harvard and Yale. And if t.u. Is better academically it's marginally. You're acting like they're the Ivy League of Texas. We're not THAT much bigger.

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Based on what? Unless you've graduated or taught a both schools, you wouldn't have any basis for comparison (other than the usual "because they're t.u."). So, because very few people teach at multiple schools, we use proxies for comparison. Those proxies are published in magazines like Forbes, Businessweek, etc. Those published proxies say that Texas is significantly better academically than A&M. What did you base your rankings upon?

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I don't care what newspapers say about A&M. I care what industry says about A&M. And we seem to be doing alright.

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the backbone of our desirability in industry is academic competitiveness. They are intertwined. And again, it is as if you think every Ag goes into industry. Step outside Zachary. There is a whole world out there.

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Those published proxies say that Texas is significantly better academically than A&M

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Wrong. Having known multiple people that have gone to both schools for both undergraduate and graduate programs in different disciplines (engineering and business), they have told me it was as if they went to the same school the whole time. Now OBVIOUSLY there are going to be several exceptions, like professors who teach differently, and specific programs which are better at one university than the other, but to say t.u. is on another level than TAMU is just plain wrong.

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keep that denial up if it makes you sleep better.

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Can someone please pull up in state population growth over the past 10 years?

What is the state flagship school between houston and the metroplex for $500, alex?

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WaltonLoads, there are lots of other public schools in between Houston and Dallas that kids can go to.

I don't want A&M's College Station campus to suffer academically because we're accepting too many students rather than sending those students to other campuses that don't have the academic reputation that A&M has (had?).

I completely understand the need to get Texas kids opportunities to get their degree and head off into the work force, but there are lots of campuses in this state with room to grow and that wouldn't see a drop in academic and scholarly ability. In fact, it might help those schools out.

Maybe I just have a different vision of Texas A&M-College Station than you do.

This just in. Texas vs A&M can only be judged program to program. Even then, the success of the graduates is never taken into account. A&M might be lower ranked but produce more workplace ready students for example. At the end of the day, this town can barely take more students and 25x25 is ****ing stupid. Please stop doing it. Its awful.

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I don't care what newspapers say about A&M. I care what industry says about A&M. And we seem to be doing alright.

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the backbone of our desirability in industry is academic competitiveness. They are intertwined. And again, it is as if you think every Ag goes into industry. Step outside Zachary. There is a whole world out there.

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I agree they are intertwined. But what I'm saying is industry's interpretation of our academics are more important to me than magazine interpretations. And I'd say a majority of Ags do go into industry. What's the alternative you're implying? Academia? Thats a different beast that depends more on individual departments rather than the whole school. A&M does have a leg up in many departments.

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keep that denial up if it makes you sleep better.

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Denial comes from refusing to accept something that is true. I am not doing that, but nice try at attempting to shut me up with ignorance. I even stated how much variance there IS in both universities when you go from department to department. However, if you choose to go purely off these proxies you speak about, created from sources that use rubric subjective to academic quality that fit specific means, then you are already putting yourself at a significant disadvantage in determining and comparing academic quality.

I am using several personal accounts to show you that at least in the math and science, engineering, and business departments at both universities, there is hardly a difference in academic quality. They are both overall are on par with each other, and again vary within certain disciplines. Pretending the two schools are not similar in these areas is denial.

Now if you want to talk about liberal arts or law school, that's a different story.

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Since 1978 yes, since 2004, no.

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A&M peaked in the late 90s/early 2000s. It's gone downhill since then. Look at the academic rankings. A&M fell from a top 50 university to a top 80 with Baylor about to pass us by. SMU already did.

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Suck it millenials.

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I don't care what newspapers say about A&M. I care what industry says about A&M. And we seem to be doing alright.

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the backbone of our desirability in industry is academic competitiveness. They are intertwined. And again, it is as if you think every Ag goes into industry. Step outside Zachary. There is a whole world out there.

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I agree they are intertwined. But what I'm saying is industry's interpretation of our academics are more important to me than magazine interpretations. And I'd say a majority of Ags do go into industry. What's the alternative you're implying? Academia? Thats a different beast that depends more on individual departments rather than the whole school. A&M does have a leg up in many departments.

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I'm not exactly sure what he means, either, but maybe you kind of hit on some of it earlier when you said we can't be compared to Harvard or Yale.

I agree, but the rub is why can't we, at least to an extent? Now, a lot of that is obvious, but schools sit along a continuum, they don't sit on opposite poles. A&M is a large public university, and with that comes some of those obvious reasons we aren't going to be Harvard and Yale. However, with a large state population and the ability to bring in some out-of-state students, we could probably strike a good balance somewhere along that continuum where we both provide opportunity for our large in-state population while also producing a level of graduate that is, in many cases, ready to go be forward thinking, inventive, leaders in industry.

Will we produce 15,000 future executives every graduating class? No, but we can sure work to create an environment where our students have a legitimate chance to learn and condition themselves to the rigor and complexities of being leaders, and not just worker bees.

Rabble, rabble, rabble

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I'm not exactly sure what he means, either, but maybe you kind of hit on some of it earlier when you said we can't be compared to Harvard or Yale.

I agree, but the rub is why can't we, at least to an extent? Now, a lot of that is obvious, but schools sit along a continuum, they don't sit on opposite poles. A&M is a large public university, and with that comes some of those obvious reasons we aren't going to be Harvard and Yale. However, with a large state population and the ability to bring in some out-of-state students, we could probably strike a good balance somewhere along that continuum where we both provide opportunity for our large in-state population while also producing a level of graduate that is, in many cases, ready to go be forward thinking, inventive, leaders in industry.

Will we produce 15,000 future executives every graduating class? No, but we can sure work to create an environment where our students have a legitimate chance to learn and condition themselves to the rigor and complexities of being leaders, and not just worker bees.

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I agree I would like A&M to be able to compete with such schools. You're right our size and public nature are restrictive in that regard. As far as striking the balance I think that has a lot to do with where the A&M higher ups have their vision for A&M.

As far as producing forward thinking and inventive leaders I think A&M does that really well already. There are a lot of former students in prestigious places in their industry.

You're right that is definitely an arena we can and should be competing in. Besides isn't an Aggie in 4 years supposed to be called boss??

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Those published proxies say that Texas is significantly better academically than A&M

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Wrong. Having known multiple people that have gone to both schools for both undergraduate and graduate programs in different disciplines (engineering and business), they have told me it was as if they went to the same school the whole time. Now OBVIOUSLY there are going to be several exceptions, like professors who teach differently, and specific programs which are better at one university than the other, but to say t.u. is on another level than TAMU is just plain wrong.

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I've gone from A&M engineering to a dual graduate degree program (not engineering) at UT-Austin, and I feel like I'm in a different world of academic and scholarly rigor, personal ambition and ability, etc...

How much of that is simply the difference between being in undergraduate versus graduate study? Probably a lot of it (which is partly why I'm confused as to your comparison), but that's my experience, at least.

And yes, I know the A&M engineering school I graduated from is fantastic and I know you have to go school-by-school and A&M is still a solid school and all of that jazz.....

It is going to be interesting to see how they handle this 25 by 25 thing once it gets more in depth. We were having a hard enough time as it is in EE getting in to upper level courses.

What is 25 by 25? Back in my day we had "Vision 2020." Did we decide to scrap that when it became clear we weren't going to reach whatever lofty goals it was all about?

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It is going to be interesting to see how they handle this 25 by 25 thing once it gets more in depth. We were having a hard enough time as it is in EE getting in to upper level courses.

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Indeed the struggle is real

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I'm not exactly sure what he means, either, but maybe you kind of hit on some of it earlier when you said we can't be compared to Harvard or Yale.

I agree, but the rub is why can't we, at least to an extent? Now, a lot of that is obvious, but schools sit along a continuum, they don't sit on opposite poles. A&M is a large public university, and with that comes some of those obvious reasons we aren't going to be Harvard and Yale. However, with a large state population and the ability to bring in some out-of-state students, we could probably strike a good balance somewhere along that continuum where we both provide opportunity for our large in-state population while also producing a level of graduate that is, in many cases, ready to go be forward thinking, inventive, leaders in industry.

Will we produce 15,000 future executives every graduating class? No, but we can sure work to create an environment where our students have a legitimate chance to learn and condition themselves to the rigor and complexities of being leaders, and not just worker bees.

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I agree I would like A&M to be able to compete with such schools. You're right our size and public nature are restrictive in that regard. As far as striking the balance I think that has a lot to do with where the A&M higher ups have their vision for A&M.

As far as producing forward thinking and inventive leaders I think A&M does that really well already. There are a lot of former students in prestigious places in their industry.

You're right that is definitely an arena we can and should be competing in. Besides isn't an Aggie in 4 years supposed to be called boss??

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"A lot" can mean, well, a lot of different things.

The worry is in the future, that over time, the rigor at A&M will pared down and our students will be less prepared to go be high achievers in whatever they do after they graduate.

And yes, we'll always produce some amount of leaders. I for one would like us to produce more, and better, leaders, not risk decreasing that production.

If we can increase enrollment quickly and improve our academic rigor, I'm all for that. I'm unconvinced we can, however.

They want 25000 engineering students in their program by 2025.

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Those published proxies say that Texas is significantly better academically than A&M

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Wrong. Having known multiple people that have gone to both schools for both undergraduate and graduate programs in different disciplines (engineering and business), they have told me it was as if they went to the same school the whole time. Now OBVIOUSLY there are going to be several exceptions, like professors who teach differently, and specific programs which are better at one university than the other, but to say t.u. is on another level than TAMU is just plain wrong.

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I've gone from A&M engineering to a dual graduate degree program (not engineering) at UT-Austin, and I feel like I'm in a different world of academic and scholarly rigor, personal ambition and ability, etc...

How much of that is simply the difference between undergraduate and graduate programs? Probably a lot of it (which is why I'm confused as to your comparison), but that's my experience, at least.

And yes, I know the A&M engineering school I graduated from is fantastic and I know you have to go school-by-school and A&M is still a solid school and all of that jazz.....

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So you found Austin to be a more rigorous of an academic experience? Can I ask what you studied?

I will say, at least in my circle of influence at A&M, true entrepreneurial ambition seemed hard to find.

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The worry is in the future, that over time, the rigor at A&M will pared down and our students will be less prepared to go be high achievers in whatever they do after they graduate.

And yes, we'll always produce some amount of leaders. I for one would like us to produce more, and better, leaders, not risk decreasing that production.

If we can increase enrollment quickly and improve our academic rigor, I'm all for that. I'm unconvinced we can, however.

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I agree. Hopefully the administration can get it right. Was 25 by 25 Loftins brain child?

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keep that denial up if it makes you sleep better.

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Denial comes from refusing to accept something that is true. I am not doing that, but nice try at attempting to shut me up with ignorance. I even stated how much variance there IS in both universities when you go from department to department. However, if you choose to go purely off these proxies you speak about, created from sources that use rubric subjective to academic quality that fit specific means, then you are already putting yourself at a significant disadvantage in determining and comparing academic quality.

I am using several personal accounts to show you that at least in the math and science, engineering, and business departments at both universities, there is hardly a difference in academic quality. They are both overall are on par with each other, and again vary within certain disciplines. Pretending the two schools are not similar in these areas is denial.

Now if you want to talk about liberal arts or law school, that's a different story.

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Ahh, the personal anecdote. The weapon of those lacking in facts

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You're right. You don't. This must be why Harvard and Yale are rushing to do the same thing.

UT has won this battle. They are now the elite public university in Texas and A&M is going to be the "good" school for the everyman. It will be this way until the Aggies that graduated when all you needed was a pulse and those who share RP's academic philosophy get out of power.

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You can't compare A&M to Harvard and Yale. And if t.u. Is better academically it's marginally. You're acting like they're the Ivy League of Texas. We're not THAT much bigger.

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Based on what? Unless you've graduated or taught a both schools, you wouldn't have any basis for comparison (other than the usual "because they're t.u."). So, because very few people teach at multiple schools, we use proxies for comparison. Those proxies are published in magazines like Forbes, Businessweek, etc. Those published proxies say that Texas is significantly better academically than A&M. What did you base your rankings upon?

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I don't care what newspapers say about A&M. I care what industry says about A&M. And we seem to be doing alright.

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You avoided the question. In what industry do you work that you get to query so many recruiters personally?

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You're right. You don't. This must be why Harvard and Yale are rushing to do the same thing.

UT has won this battle. They are now the elite public university in Texas and A&M is going to be the "good" school for the everyman. It will be this way until the Aggies that graduated when all you needed was a pulse and those who share RP's academic philosophy get out of power.

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You can't compare A&M to Harvard and Yale. And if t.u. Is better academically it's marginally. You're acting like they're the Ivy League of Texas. We're not THAT much bigger.

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Based on what? Unless you've graduated or taught a both schools, you wouldn't have any basis for comparison (other than the usual "because they're t.u."). So, because very few people teach at multiple schools, we use proxies for comparison. Those proxies are published in magazines like Forbes, Businessweek, etc. Those published proxies say that Texas is significantly better academically than A&M. What did you base your rankings upon?

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I don't care what newspapers say about A&M. I care what industry says about A&M. And we seem to be doing alright.

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You avoided the question. In what industry do you work that you get to query so many recruiters personally?

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Corporate chair for TAMU IEEE-HKN for about 3 years. My job was to deal with recruiters. I'm a current student.

A&M is only *hard* to get into if you aren't top 10%. But sooooo many completely incompetent students get in under the top 10% rule. It's really unfortunate. And engineering has to do something to retain students or half their admits will be dismissed by junior year.

I understand the arguments that as long as standards stay high, who cares how many you admit.

But that only works to a certain extent. Texas has grown like crazy the past couple of decades, and it doesn't appear that that's going to slow down any time soon.

The plan of just letting more people into your two "tier one" universities is not sustainable. UT has already had to adjust their Top 10% allocation down to Top 7%, and is reducing their overall enrollment to a more manageable amount. That leaves A&M to pick up all of the extra top students in the state. It just can't be done without sacrificing educational quality.

The state needs to start investing in another "Tier One" university. They need to be looking at Houston, Tech, UNT, and Tx. State and deciding which of them is best positioned to join A&M and UT at the top. Then they need to sufficiently fund the transition. A&M and UT simply can't handle the student load by themselves anymore.

California has 6 Tier One Universities in the UC System, serving a combined 190,000 students. Plus large private "Tier One" universities like Stanford and USC (which between them serve approx. another combined 55,000 students) to help lessen the load on the public school system.

Texas is the second most populous state behind California, and only has three Tier One universities. And UT and A&M are reaching their capacities, and Rice only enrolls about 6,000 students. I get that A&M and UT have the best academic reputations in the state among public schools, but other campuses need to start joining those ranks for the continued good of the State.