You didn't answer his question.

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That's what you're getting with high school counselors and useless news and world distort magazine.

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That's not correct. And even if it were, the fact is that HS counselors and the USNWR rankings DO influence college decisions and perceptions of educational quality. How would you change that established fact?

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If you started a tech company and wanted it to be the most successful in the world, would you hire only high school dropouts who found your job posting on craigslist and look to the national inquirer for how to run your company? That's what you're getting with high school counselors and useless news and world distort magazine.

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If you started a tech company would you refuse to put your app up on the Apple App Store because Android is a better OS?

You don't have to LIKE that Apple dominates the mobile app marketplace but it would be silly not to accept it and find a way to use it to your advantage as best as you reasonably could.


We don't have to LIKE that USNWR influences public perception of how "good" your university is based on their flawed metrics, but it would be foolish not to accept it and find a way to deal with it. I think simply ignoring the rankings because they're stupid is really unwise. They aren't the end-all be-all of what makes your school reputable or not, but it DOES matter.


Side note, I think it is really odd that you have such a strong and negative opinion of high school guidance counselors.

Great analogy bagger.

And Jeff, just out of curiosity, is '82 your class year or birth year?

My guidance counselor was a great man. Rip Mr Burden.

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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.

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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.

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What makes you think she was stuck? A lot of people enjoy counseling high school students.

Didn't you say you were leaving this thread a few pages back?

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We don't have to LIKE that USNWR influences public perception of how "good" your university is based on their flawed metrics, but it would be foolish not to accept it and find a way to deal with it.

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I think you are a fool to accept it. It is like when men accepted that the world was flat. There was worldwide public perception and acceptance that the world was flat. Fortunately there were some people who knew better. And they would not accept that the world was flat based upon flawed metrics (your words). It took time, but those few started educating the many and eventually public perception was changed!

You guys can see the flaws in the useless news rankings. Why do you accept them? Why don't you care enough to start educating others instead of just being an goaltender for something that is wrong?

I think we all want Texas A&M to be great. But greatness has to come from the right foundation, not from the wrong place. Right and wrong is not dictated by "public perception". Right is right and wrong is wrong. Useless news survey is wrong.

Whoever asked, I was born in 1960 and graduated from A&M in 1982. My username is my first and last name and year I graduated.

Jeff you and I are not that far apart in age, but my views are very, very different from yours.

For one, using pejoratives, e.g. "Useless News..." I find to detract from the points you are asserting.

Also, perception does matter. (period) How would you suggest we change the perception. Ignoring factors (e.g. USNWR) that everyone else uses is less akin to Flat Worlders and more like Don Quixote tilting at windmills.

And, as has been mentioned several times in this thread alone, if we were rising in the rankings it would be on the front page of our web site and mentioned in every single press release.

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How would you suggest we change the perception

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By educating people on the fallacies regarding the inputs into USNWR rankings. Realize patience as humans are slow to be educated sometimes. Also promote a poll that does a better job of showing the true value of an education at each college. One that values the opinions of employers and follows the money.

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If you started a tech company and wanted it to be the most successful in the world, would you hire only high school dropouts who found your job posting on craigslist and look to the national inquirer for how to run your company? That's what you're getting with high school counselors and useless news and world distort magazine.

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If you started a tech company would you refuse to put your app up on the Apple App Store because Android is a better OS?

You don't have to LIKE that Apple dominates the mobile app marketplace but it would be silly not to accept it and find a way to use it to your advantage as best as you reasonably could.


We don't have to LIKE that USNWR influences public perception of how "good" your university is based on their flawed metrics, but it would be foolish not to accept it and find a way to deal with it. I think simply ignoring the rankings because they're stupid is really unwise. They aren't the end-all be-all of what makes your school reputable or not, but it DOES matter.


Side note, I think it is really odd that you have such a strong and negative opinion of high school guidance counselors.

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I don't think employers or HS guidance counselors run to US News rankings when they are screening employees or advising students. They have a sense of the the relative value of degrees from different places, and they also know that there is a very imperfect correlation with lots of exceptions. In the case of US News rankings, HS counselors are contributing to the rankings. Since this is the Football forum, let me make a different analogy. US News is like the stars rankings of football players. Actual coaches doing the recruiting do not use the stars over their own assessments, but their is still a positive correlation in aggregate (with huge exceptions for individual players) between stars rankings and success on the field. Recruiting class rankings say something about how the program's recruiting efforts are going in general. Similarly, US News rankings reflect how outsiders think universities are doing.

The goal is not the US News rankings in and of themselves, just as football recruiting's goal is not to win Rivals or whatever the latest flavor is. Yes, sometimes schools game the rankings. I thought TexAgs readers would enjoy one example:

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In 2008, Baylor University offered financial rewards to admitted students to retake the SAT in hopes of increasing its average score.

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How would you suggest we change the perception

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By educating people on the fallacies regarding the inputs into USNWR rankings. Realize patience as humans are slow to be educated sometimes. Also promote a poll that does a better job of showing the true value of an education at each college. One that values the opinions of employers and follows the money.

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Or a better idea would be to not admit so many people.


Our school is going to plummet in position no matter. Thank you Sharp.

That's a great analogy. The USNWR rankings don't mean everything (and honestly to purport to) but they also don't mean NOTHING!

Jeff would a USNWR ranking of 100 bother you? 200? Dead last? I would assume that finishing dead last wouldn't bother you a bit because you are convince their metrics are not good enough, actually you seem to think they are devoid of any meaning at all....

However, if we finished dead last it would materially change what we can do as a university. At least until your Windmill tilting campaign gained additional backers.

Two more questions? If in a year or two we were ranked in the USNWR top 40 and above the sips, would you want our marketing department to ignore that? Do you think they would?

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@GabeBock: A&M chancellor Sharp on alcohol at events: "Our athletic program has not reached the point where we require the numbing effects of alcohol."

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wow

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We don't have to LIKE that USNWR influences public perception of how "good" your university is based on their flawed metrics, but it would be foolish not to accept it and find a way to deal with it.

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I think you are a fool to accept it. It is like when men accepted that the world was flat. There was worldwide public perception and acceptance that the world was flat. Fortunately there were some people who knew better. And they would not accept that the world was flat based upon flawed metrics (your words). It took time, but those few started educating the many and eventually public perception was changed!

You guys can see the flaws in the useless news rankings. Why do you accept them? Why don't you care enough to start educating others instead of just being an goaltender for something that is wrong?

I think we all want Texas A&M to be great. But greatness has to come from the right foundation, not from the wrong place. Right and wrong is not dictated by "public perception". Right is right and wrong is wrong. Useless news survey is wrong.

Whoever asked, I was born in 1960 and graduated from A&M in 1982. My username is my first and last name and year I graduated.

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The flat-earth analogy doesn't fit this really at all.

I'm not suggesting to you that the USNWR rankings are good. I agree that they are flawed. The thing we apparently disagree on is whether or not they are important. To deny that they have any importance at all would make you the flat-earther in that analogy, in my opinion.

I'm not entirely sure how we got off on this tangent anyway. I don't think anyone is arguing that we should pay kids to re-take their SATs to bump up our ratings. I'm not sure who is saying that we should do everything in our power to chase the USNWR ranking and once this magazine puts a #20 by our name or whatever then we will magically be a great school.

I think A&M needs to curb enrollment. I don't think it needs to happen because USNWR says so, though. I think it's bad for the school to continue to grow at the rate we've seen recently for a variety of reasons. I also think it's important that A&M continues to progress as an academic institution, and I believe that to do so we need to nurture and continue to improve our reputation. In my opinion, our reputation is always going to be judged relative to our peers --whether it's by USNWR or by anyone else-- and I want to see us held in as high of esteem as possible. I think that curbing the growth at A&M is really important to achieve that end.

The old ags need to stop being hard on themselves. It was a different era. FOR THAT TIME, they were accomplished, excellent individuals. They've shown that at their various jobs, military positions, and etc. They're awesome people who've accomplished a lot. They've gotten their degree, and they've gotten their work experience. Nobody can take that away from you.

But things are different than they were 20 years ago. Everybody has a college degree. It's the new high school diploma, but now it actually matters were you went. I mentioned it earlier, but your degree is now a stepping stone.

Be completely honest, if you had to choose a school for child to attend and they had their choice between ITT Tech or UNC Chapel Hill, what would you choose? Why would you do that?

But now let's do something a little more comparable, would you send your child to AZ State or would you send them to Alabama? How would you choose what school is best for your child? Probably look at ROI and their academic ranking (assuming the child thought both locations to be ideal).

Rankings are a factor. No matter how hard you try, that's undeniable. Exclusivity is another factor. The reason you don't send your child to the local community college is not because they won't get a decent education. You can teach yourself anything nowadays with the availability of the internet. You pay for the degree because of the name on the diploma and what employers see in that name.

We've made great leaders, academics, and athletes here. Admissions should be looking for students who are fully capable as both students and leaders. There's no point in accepting every single person, it just turns this place into a factory.

Kids aren't getting smarter.

The collective intelligence is lowering. People cite Wikipedia in research now.

Last time I checked, we are 12th in Engineering and 27 in Business. Other than medicine, everything else is a pretend education anyway. I'm not worried about SMU and BU appearing to compete with us based on the top-notched sociology programs.

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Kids aren't getting smarter.

The collective intelligence is lowering. People cite Wikipedia in research now.

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Fascinating input, especially since you display your knowledge of intelligence by conflating intelligence with specific knowledge. Intelligence doesn't have anything to do with knowing how/which sources to cite, that is a crystallized skill developed through specified teaching.

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Last time I checked, we are 12th in Engineering and 27 in Business. Other than medicine, everything else is a pretend education anyway. I'm not worried about SMU and BU appearing to compete with us based on the top-notched sociology programs.

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I'd like to think that someday, a great historian or writer will say they went to Texas A&M. The biggest obstacle to this is our own attitude.

When you walk around Cambridge University in England, you don't get the sense that students there are really that much smarter than students at A&M. But Cambridge students believe that they can be the thinkers whose ideas affect the whole world. Aggies generally believe they can just be engineers, doctors, or business people.

Exactly.

They aren't being taught any better.

Teachers generally get evaluated by pass rates. That might cause a few "minor" things to be overlooked to avoid failing a student who tried hard, but still needs to retake that level.

College is now just the next step after high school. Almost just an extension of it, even. Teens head off to college with no inkling of direction.
The TAAS and STAAR tests are great ideas if teachers teach the material. However, they've devolved into teaching students how to make the best guesses on an exam you don't know the answers to. That's a big problem.

Immigration will drive the increase in students. We need multilingual yells.

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Last time I checked, we are 12th in Engineering and 27 in Business. Other than medicine, everything else is a pretend education anyway. I'm not worried about SMU and BU appearing to compete with us based on the top-notched sociology programs.

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I'm really glad you aren't in charge of anything.

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Last time I checked, we are 12th in Engineering and 27 in Business. Other than medicine, everything else is a pretend education anyway. I'm not worried about SMU and BU appearing to compete with us based on the top-notched sociology programs.

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Thinking like this is why we'll be passed.

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Last time I checked, we are 12th in Engineering and 27 in Business. Other than medicine, everything else is a pretend education anyway. I'm not worried about SMU and BU appearing to compete with us based on the top-notched sociology programs.

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About those rankings, which you appear to be getting from USNW: I believe the 12th and 27th are for the graduate programs, which leads to the question of how the undergraduate programs fare, since the concerns about growth in this thread are primarily about dilution of the undergraduate experience, not growing the grad programs to sizes comparable to our peers. People are specifically worried about the 25 by 25 plan for Engineering. Also, that #12, while better than our overall ranking, is still not #1 in the state of Texas.

Medicine is also a graduate degree. It's ranked #85 in primary care and #79 in research. Not worried about being behind East Carolina in primary care? Behind OU in research? Training of undergrads to get into med school relies on departments that are not in Engineering or Business. My sense is that we do pretty well at getting students into med schools currently, but it's hard to find credible stats to make comparisons to other institutions. I do have the sense that our undergrads gain advantages in their med school applications from research opportunities while they are undergrads (especially since there is not a teaching hospital on campus), and those kinds of opportunities will be harder to come by if enrollment grows without parallel growth in faculty research. Even if we hire 2x more faculty, its not trivial for all those new hires to get the extramural grant support they would need to support the additional undergrad research.

I don't know how Business is thinking about the increased enrollment. But they are already restrictive about who they let in within the broader university community... and IIRC they got special dispensation to charge their students an extra differential tuition.

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I'd like to think that someday, a great historian or writer will say they went to Texas A&M. The biggest obstacle to this is our own attitude.

When you walk around Cambridge University in England, you don't get the sense that students there are really that much smarter than students at A&M. But Cambridge students believe that they can be the thinkers whose ideas affect the whole world. Aggies generally believe they can just be engineers, doctors, or business people.

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Dear Mr. Gump,

Shakespeare is one of the greatest writers in history. But the world would be much better off if he never existed and was not replaced, then it would be if the guy who invented air-conditioning never existed and was not replaced. Engineers, doctors and business people have a much greater affect on the world then writers and historians do. Learning to read and write is easy. Learning to do heart surgery? Well it's more difficult. I'm surprised you also didn't diss farmers since we are an Ag school. I mean all those guys do is feed the world. That's not very important, is it?

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I'd like to think that someday, a great historian or writer will say they went to Texas A&M. The biggest obstacle to this is our own attitude.

When you walk around Cambridge University in England, you don't get the sense that students there are really that much smarter than students at A&M. But Cambridge students believe that they can be the thinkers whose ideas affect the whole world. Aggies generally believe they can just be engineers, doctors, or business people.

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Dear Mr. Gump,

Shakespeare is one of the greatest writers in history. But the world would be much better off if he never existed and was not replaced, then it would be if the guy who invented air-conditioning never existed and was not replaced. Engineers, doctors and business people have a much greater affect on the world then writers and historians do. Learning to read and write is easy. Learning to do heart surgery? Well it's more difficult. I'm surprised you also didn't diss farmers since we are an Ag school. I mean all those guys do is feed the world. That's not very important, is it?

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This is deliciously ironic

And didn't you say ten pages ago that you were leaving and would take your argumentum ad absurdum with you?

If you think my grammar is bad, you sure don't want me doing open heart surgery on you. It might be a little more damaging to you than a few misspelled words. Grammar smack is the weakest smack ever found on the internet.

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I'd like to think that someday, a great historian or writer will say they went to Texas A&M. The biggest obstacle to this is our own attitude.

When you walk around Cambridge University in England, you don't get the sense that students there are really that much smarter than students at A&M. But Cambridge students believe that they can be the thinkers whose ideas affect the whole world. Aggies generally believe they can just be engineers, doctors, or business people.

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Dear Mr. Gump,

Shakespeare is one of the greatest writers in history. But the world would be much better off if he never existed and was not replaced, then it would be if the guy who invented air-conditioning never existed and was not replaced. Engineers, doctors and business people have a much greater affect on the world then writers and historians do. Learning to read and write is easy. Learning to do heart surgery? Well it's more difficult. I'm surprised you also didn't diss farmers since we are an Ag school. I mean all those guys do is feed the world. That's not very important, is it?

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Let me try to unpack this for you. I never said engineers, doctors, or business people were not important, nor did I even say they were less important. I simply said that it's too bad that Aggies only aspire for these pursuits and not those others as well. That our school is not represented in every field, since it is after all a university.

As to who has more of an effect on the world, well, it's difficult to say. Thomas Jefferson for example spent his life immersed in literature and ideas. Because of this, he had an outsized role not only in the design of the U.S. government, but also the revolution in France. Now who is more important, Thomas Jefferson or the doctors and farmers of his time?

Lastly, I think your inability to understand a pretty simple post and your resort to junior high school tactics like calling me "Mr. Gump" in the response is a good indicator that more than just a technical education is needed.

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If you think my grammar is bad, you sure don't want me doing open heart surgery on you. It might be a little more damaging to you than a few misspelled words. Grammar smack is the weakest smack ever found on the internet.

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No, not physical damage, but it does weaken your ability to wage effective debate. This is part of why Republicans are having such trouble holding on to the country - we send out people like George W. Bush or Sarah Palin or Rick Perry to national debates and watch in dismay as they get shredded. Republicans tend to believe that the only thing important in life is to earn money, so they make fun of the life of the mind and the notion of "education for its own sake," laughing at liberal arts as though only sissies or people too dumb to be engineers would study political science. Then when someone like Barack Obama appears, they feel genuine terror for something that they can't comprehend, and resort to hopeless theories like "He's the Antichrist!"

I vote Republican, so don't take this as a partisan attack. But if George W. Bush had been as articulate as Tony Blair, he would have had a much better time communicating his Middle East policy, among other things. And the fact that Rick Perry could win term after term in Texas and then get laughed off the national stage for his confused bluster should embarrass us all.

Texas A&M leads in CEOs of Fortune (corrected to 100) companies. Not bad for a school that is looked down upon by so many. Of course we might be last in what really matters, writers.

Link

The electability of those politicans reflects the stupidity of Americans, it does not reflect on the merits of those individuals.

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Texas A&M leads in CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. Not bad for a school that is looked down upon by so many. Of course we might be last in what really matters, writers.

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Thanks mostly to being in a state with huge oil and gas resources. If it weren't for writers and thinkers, the Fortune 500 as you know it wouldn't exist because we never would have developed the kind of society where economic competition could flourish. Hell, Texas A&M wouldn't even exist if it weren't for the North passing the Morrill Land Grant Act in 1862, which they couldn't have passed if the southern states hadn't withdrawn. The wealthy leaders of Texas at the time were NOT in favor of higher education, since of course, it wasn't as important as farming. It took a black man in the 1870's to say, hey, maybe we should take this free money that the federal govt. is offering us and build a college.

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The electability of those politicans reflects the stupidity of Americans, it does not reflect on the merits of those individuals.

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Even if Americans are stupid, it takes a clever politician to move the herd in the right direction. Whatever you think of Obama, his ability to speak and think fast lit a fire in people who had been lulled by eight years of Bush's rhetorical clumsiness. The election was over before it began; Sarah Palin sealed the deal.

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If it weren't for writers and thinkers, the Fortune 500 as you know it wouldn't exist

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You continue to imply that engineers, doctors, businesspeople, etc are not "thinkers". That we have to have YOU or else we are doomed.

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Texas A&M leads in CEOs of Fortune 500 companies.

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You're just making stuff up now.

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Here are the top ten schools in America that spit out Fortune 500 CEOs, with the corresponding number of Fortune 500 CEOs who attended:

• Harvard: 65
• Stanford: 27
• University of Pennsylvania: 24
• Columbia: 18
• Michigan: 14
• Notre Dame: 14
• University of Virginia: 14
• Cornell: 13

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Link

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Even if Americans are stupid, it takes a clever politician to move the herd in the right direction. Whatever you think of Obama, his ability to speak and think fast lit a fire in people who had been lulled by eight years of Bush's rhetorical clumsiness. The election was over before it began; Sarah Palin sealed the deal. 0

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Slowbama was elected because of his skin color and the economy was cratering in fall of 2008 making any Republican unelectable. Most politicans are not clever. They are corrupt and lacking morals.