I'll wait until it's officially announced to believe it. It sounds like it's just a discussion at this point.

Good Idea!!

quote:

---

YES YES YES!!!!! Best news I've heard in months.

Need to stop growing so fast and focus on quality.

I hope we choose quality over size and excellence over value.

Community colleges exist for a reason.

---

Says the rook with no Ag Tag. Instead of throwing Aggie hopefuls under the bus, maybe indicate that we need to focus on developing another tier 1 institution. You're probably one of our 2%ers from the MBA program.

Research the Morrill Act, the Hatch Act, and the Smith-Lever Act, and then you MIGHT realize the irony of your statement, "If you want an A&M degree to be meaningful it cannot be accessible to all. That is the role of a community college."

Know the history of higher education in the US before you just start spouting off BS.

I don't understand your issues with BlinnTEAM. Many of these kids have higher SAT and ACT scores than the top 10% admits,in which scores don't matter for admittance . Also, if you check the actual numbers of offers to A&M it is 15,000 automatic, 2500 under full review and 600 Gateway and 3000 BlinnTEAM. For fall 2015 this equates to 56% with 38,000 applicants. If you took out BT it would reduce it to 48%. Not a significant change. I think it's awesome A&M has made it possible for as many kids that want to go here can.

You'd rather complain then be either.

Still waiting for your empirical data. Your argument shifts depending on the angle in which you are presented material facts.

When you provide data to support your claims, you have a foundation. Otherwise, its arguing an opinion in which case logically there will never a solution.

What are your suggestions to improve the university? With all of the energy you've put into playing up the negatives, how about you provide some tangible solutions vs. coming onto TexAgs and screaming at a cloud.

"Yes I know the history of land grant universities. Our role and purpose has changed since the Morrill Act of 1862. We are now counted on by the state of Texas to provide cutting edge research and top notch graduates to drive the state economy."

Says Who? I've never once heard that opinion expressed by Brett Cornwell, or anyone else in the OTC for the A&M system.

I'd read up on those various acts.

Here is the direct statement from the First Morrill Act regarding its purpose:

"to teach such branches of learning as are related to agriculture and the mechanic arts, in such manner as the legislatures of the States may respectively prescribe, in order to promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes in the several pursuits and professions in life."

You can read 7 U.S.C 301 for more details. You can also read all of the amendments. They don't include the language that you've provided that insinuates the purpose has shifted from the originally stated purpose to a catalyst for cutting edge research and top notch graduates to drive the state economy.

When you can show me where the statement "We are now counted on by the state of Texas to provide cutting edge research and top notch graduates to drive the state economy." is written in ANY doctrine or act issued via the US or Texas government, I'll believe it.

So, please provide it, and the other empirical data asked for earlier.

Vision 2020 explains this in more detail. Check our their website.

http://vision2020.tamu.edu/peer-institutions

I was part of 20/20. I understand it quite well. Now, instead of providing red herrings, why don't you answer the questions that have been presented?

quote:

---

Please provide evidence that capping enrollment empirically results in better students.

Do you have any actual data, or do you just work off suppositions and innuendo mixed with a small amount of fear mongering?

You sound like Donald Trump arguing academics. If I call everyone stupid, and skit the facts while combusting the university, people will agree. Sad. Sad. Sad. Rudder would roll over in his grave if he saw this thread.

---

Wouldn't capping enrollment at worst result in equal students?

Lets say there is a way to measure quality of students on a scale of 1-10. A&M doesn't cap enrollment, but instead grants admission to everyone with a quality score of 7 or above. This results in 10,000 students attending a&m.

Now lets say A&M caps admission at 8,000 students and only lets the highest quality students in. Now the average quality of the students will be >= to what it was before. In fact then only way it would be equal is if every single student enrolled was a 7 in quality. Otherwise by cutting off the bottom of the distribution the average is necessarily higher.

I guess you could make an argument that there is no difference between the two individual students ranked 8,000 or 8,001. But there is surely a difference between the students ranked 1 and 8,000. So by not admitting the 8,001 ranked student the average quality of the student body has now increased.

SAT rankings in Texas (May '15):

Math:
1. Rice
2. UT Austin
3. SMU
4. UT Dallas
5. Trinity
6. Baylor
7. Austin College
8. Texas A&M
9. TCU
10. University of Dallas
11. Southwestern
12. Texas Tech
13. St. Edwards

Reading:
1. Rice
2. SMU
3. Trinity
4. University of Dallas
5. UT Austin
6. UT Dallas
7. Baylor
8. Austin College
9. Southwestern
10. Texas A&M
11. TCU
12. St. Edwards
13. Texas Tech

Statistics have no business on Texags. I am learning that as I go.

Ding ding ding.... we have a winner!!

Capping enrollment does not ipso facto create better students. However, raising the selection criteria while maintaining or improving the quality of the applicant pool does. Doing the latter while capping enrollment (and thereby effectively reducing the acceptance percentage) will, in almost all cases, lead to an improvement in the average prowess of the average incoming student.

The only way it doesn't work is if there is only a pass/fail rather than a ranking of students; ie, we don't change our entrance requirements. In that case, the reduction in incoming students is brought about by randomly selecting students from the "pass" bucket. I don't think that's what anyone is suggesting when they want to cap enrollment though. When people cap enrollment, they are advocating cutting off the left tail of the distribution, not lowering the whole curve by an equal amount.

Second, having a large student body does not preclude providing an elite education. But again, I don't necessarily see many people, if anyone, advocating that we cut enrollment drastically. Personally, I'm not even against continuing the increase in size. What I am against is watering down the education. I believe that we are growing our student body faster than we are growing our ability to provide those students with a great education. That is why I advocate stopping or reducing our growth until our educational resources catch up. The rankings should follow, but that's not the reason to do anything.

I appreciate the concern about completely diluting the value of a TAMU degree. I do have some concerns about the Chevron Engineering Academy and programs that so seem to throw the gates so wide open. I get that.

I don't understand this panic of "we must preserve the great value" that are then followed with comparisons to Princeton's admission statistics. We aren't Ivy League and I don't really want us to be Ivy League. Furthermore your degree isn't Ivy League valuable, mine sure as he'll isn't (it's in PoliSci) and so I think that's what strikes me most as BS about all of these threads.

I would like to see us more competitive for "the best" with t.u. but, except for them, we're light years ahead of the other state schools in Texas as far as the value of our diplomas. We can always improve but I just think the constant comparisons to Ivy League schools make me less likely to take these conversations seriously.

I don't even know if I made any sense.

quote:

---

I appreciate the concern about completely diluting the value of a TAMU degree. I do have some concerns about the Chevron Engineering Academy and programs that so seem to throw the gates so wide open. I get that.

I don't understand this panic of "we must preserve the great value" that are then followed with comparisons to Princeton's admission statistics. We aren't Ivy League and I don't really want us to be Ivy League. Furthermore your degree isn't Ivy League valuable, mine sure as he'll isn't (it's in PoliSci) and so I think that's what strikes me most as BS about all of these threads.

I would like to see us more competitive for "the best" with t.u. but, except for them, we're light years ahead of the other state schools in Texas as far as the value of our diplomas. We can always improve but I just think the constant comparisons to Ivy League schools make me less likely to take these conversations seriously.

I don't even know if I made any sense.

---

I hear you, I think our goal should be to be a top ten public university as stated in vision 2020.

To do this we need to improve the academic profile of our incoming students and lower our average class size (among other things).

If we need to raise tuition then so be it. We are the flagship, other schools in the system can focus on value.

We can start by not including the blinn team with our incoming freshmen profile. We are really shooting ourselves in the foot there.

I recognize the value of blinn team but they are not fully admitted a&m students. They are part of the reason our admission rate is almost 70%.

Houstonag,

Did you attend A&M? Everything you have said (including the use of "alumni"), compounded with not having an agtag makes me think you didnt. I'm trying to understand your desperate need for validation on this board.

I think we can all agree that the University possibly made a mistake with the rapid growth over the past few years, but you are the only one stating multiple threads and demanding a head for this.

quote:

---

Houstonag,

Did you attend A&M? Everything you have said (including the use of "alumni"), compounded with not having an agtag makes me think you didnt. I'm trying to understand your desperate need for validation on this board.

I think we can all agree that the University possibly made a mistake with the rapid growth over the past few years, but you are the only one stating multiple threads and demanding a head for this.

---

He said he didn't. Lol, I keep hearing the words "our," "we," and "us" though.

I graduated from TAMU.

I have no qualm with you Ulrich. Just curious as to why someone would start two threads and bump several others all about the same thing, and then sit high on a soap box to proclaim his message. I agree that something should be done, but I'm not arguing with every person that posts on this board, whether they agree with me or not.

Also, for someone who claims to be such a die hard aggie, I find it odd that he doesn't understand the difference between alumni and former students.