I want to hear plans for decreasing class sizes and hiring more faculty to keep up with enrollment growth.
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Wouldn't fewer scholarships help reduce enrollment?
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We have to get rid of these all these guys like Perry and Sharp who went to A&M in the late 60s/early 70s and want it to be just like when they went there, ie it was a cheap, open admission school where academics were not a thing at all and it was all about "the other education" (partying and football).
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president Young won't let his legacy be tainted by watching a major research university turn into a worthless degree mil if he can help it.
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Wow. Sounds like some of you clowns owe Mr Sharp a virtual apology for all your premature predictions of gloom/doom
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These are the top public universities according to USN&WR. They didn't need large football stadiums to be megaphones for their university. Pretty sure a few of them don't even have football programs.
1) UC-Berkeley
2) UCLA
3) UVA
4) Michigan
5) UNC-Chapel Hill
6) College of William and Mary
7) Georgia Tech
8) UC-San Diego
9) UC-Davis
10) UC-Santa Barbara
11) UC-Irvine
12) Illinois
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We have to get rid of these all these guys like Perry and Sharp who went to A&M in the late 60s/early 70s and want it to be just like when they went there, ie it was a cheap, open admission school where academics were not a thing at all and it was all about "the other education" (partying and football).
Pretty much sums it up.
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Useless news and world distort is the Ketch of college rankings.
quote:quote:The STEM fields are not a panacea.
We have become the society that believes that every kid should get a college education. So when all these kids graduate, they can have their expectations shattered by the reality that a liberal arts degree does not always get you a desk job.
Engineering is saturated as is. Technology fields are similar to the gold rush right now, and will level out the salary to becoming the new standard business major - which may or may not be a bad thing.
And science along with mathematics? Well, you pretty much need a Ph.D nowadays to be anything other than a research assistant or teacher.
Texas A&M's job is to be the FLAGSHIP institution that provides education to the public, accepting the best students while the others without the credentials or test scores can go to other non-flagship schools TAMU-CC, TAMU-Galveston, and such.
We should striving to be like or better than the other flagships: UVa, UT, UC-Berkeley, Wisc, UMich, UF, and so on. But they're currently outperforming us.
What metrics do we have other than ROI or US News? Both of which we seem to be slipping in (see above). I'm not saying we should be some elite school like Stanford, Cornell, Harvard, etc. That's dumb. But we should be at least equal to our peers.
Nowadays, due to the large amount of college educated students, your university seems to provide the initial filter for jobs. If we slip up, it does not bode well for future Ags.
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Jeff, he wasn't talking about old Ags like you (or me). He mentions a specific type of old Ag, some of whom do exist. Not all old Ags.
quote:His quote isn't just disparaging Perry, but an entire school and everyone who attended back then.
want it (A&M) to be just like when they went there, ie it was a cheap, open admission school where academics were not a thing at all and it was all about "the other education" (partying and football).
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We have to get rid of these all these guys like Perry and Sharp who went to A&M in the late 60s/early 70s and want it to be just like when they went there, ie it was a cheap, open admission school where academics were not a thing at all and it was all about "the other education" (partying and football).
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Absolutely.
One thing though: a lot of people talking about it being harder to get into aren't talking about 40 years ago. They're talking about within the last ten years. Which is a good thing. But one thing it tells us is this travesty hasn't happened just yet. There's still people who can work to prevent it. The number one thing separating us from being a top 10 public university is professor:student ratio, IMO. And that is my concern with Sharp. He talks about admitting more people and keeping "overhead" low.
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Basically if it's 10% harder to get into A&M today it is 20% harder to get into Baylor. Those other schools are on a steeper trajectory and it won't take long before some schools we are currently "ahead of" pass us by.
quote:What are you calling BS on? That is a long post but I don't see it refuting anything that I posted. Are you saying that it is NOT harder to get into A&M or Baylor today than it was 10 years ago?quote:
Basically if it's 10% harder to get into A&M today it is 20% harder to get into Baylor. Those other schools are on a steeper trajectory and it won't take long before some schools we are currently "ahead of" pass us by.
I call BS. The implication is that there are a crapload more smart kids today then there was 10 years ago. I've been hearing this same thing since I was a kid, 50 years ago. If people are so much smarter today then they sure have a great way of hiding it in real life.
My kids are 23 and 26, so I'm around lots of people age 18-33 due to their social circles and my enjoyment being around younger people. My observations of young people is their "intelligence" seems based upon their ability to parrot answers, but they show a lack of ability to understand why those are the correct answers.
If America is producing an army of super genusies then I feel better already. But I doubt it. 99% of them can tell me who Caitlyn Jenner is, but can't name the Secretary of Defense or Treasury or Chief of Staff. And I mean every bit of 99%. The boob tube has done its job.
As for rankings, focus on rankings that get their input from employers, not from high school guidance counselors. I remember my hs counselor and she was a nice lady, but I would put zero stock in her advice on which colleges were the best in the country. She wasn't that bright. If she was smart, she wouldn't have been stuck being a hs guidance counselor.
quote:I can see why JeffHamilton is offended. The i.e. part characterizes the school as a whole, not just a subset of Ags and mischaracterizes the "other education". I didn't go here, but my understanding is that the "other education" is about service and civic duty, not partying and football. And there is no shortage of students who focus on partying and football at schools that are more selective in admissions.quote:
We have to get rid of these all these guys like Perry and Sharp who went to A&M in the late 60s/early 70s and want it to be just like when they went there, ie it was a cheap, open admission school where academics were not a thing at all and it was all about "the other education" (partying and football).
I don't read it the way you do. He's specifically speaking of Aggies "like Perry and Sharp" and then goes to describe the attributes he finds negative. His description of the academics and admissions was changing by the time you and I went, but the late sixites, early seventies were a time of transition. I am class of 77 and not at all offended. Why? Because I did take academics seriously, didn't have a "c" average, and didn't focus on partying and football.
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My kids are 23 and 26, so I'm around lots of people age 18-33 due to their social circles and my enjoyment being around younger people. My observations of young people is their "intelligence" seems based upon their ability to parrot answers, but they show a lack of ability to understand why those are the correct answers.
If America is producing an army of super genusies then I feel better already. But I doubt it. 99% of them can tell me who Caitlyn Jenner is, but can't name the Secretary of Defense or Treasury or Chief of Staff. And I mean every bit of 99%. The boob tube has done its job.
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Counselors have significant input to the schools students choose.
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I am troubled by the "We don't want to be a snooty school... " quote.
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OK, having just agreed with you above, I have to tweak you on this. Naming members of the Administration would be classified as a recall/parroting skill, not a "understand why those are correct answers" skill. And I will admit that I had to look up who the current answers are.
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I am troubled by the "We don't want to be a snooty school... " quote.
You can't say stuff like this and be taken seriously as a chancellor.
quote:Unclear antecedent. Do you agree with Richardson Zone or with Sharp?quote:quote:
I am troubled by the "We don't want to be a snooty school... " quote.
You can't say stuff like this and be taken seriously as a chancellor.
I haven't read all the context for this, but I agree.
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Do we want A&M to be as successful as possible in the world we live in or the world we wished we lived in? Maybe guidance counselors shouldn't have any influence over kids picking a college, but they do. Maybe the USNWR rankings shouldn't be considered important by anyone but they are.