POOR ACADEMICS

[bornagaincane]

I did a couple of pages of responses that begins on Page 1006 of SemenHole Tears.

As you can see, only 40% of the ranking has to do with DIRECTLY-related "academic" factors: "Expert Opinion" (20%), Full-time faculty (1%), Full-time faculty with PhDs (3%), Class-size index (8%), Student-Faculty ratio (1%), SAT/ACT (5%), and HS GPA (2%).

In those 7 categories, we beat F$U in 4 and have a split-decision in 1. They only edge us on the FT Faculty (1%) and the PhD Faculty (3%). These are factors that often favor "rural" universities over "urban" universities, which tend to employ more adjunct faculty with real-life experience, rather than academics who are living the lives of hermits in tiny college towns.

Here's my spreadsheet (and be glad it's not a MAP!):

View attachment 190984

Tears - Nole Tears (“Offcial”)

U 🤬🤬 Nerds

www.canesinsight.com

E

I did a couple of pages of responses that begins on Page 1006 of SemenHole Tears.

As you can see, only 40% of the ranking has to do with DIRECTLY-related "academic" factors: "Expert Opinion" (20%), Full-time faculty (1%), Full-time faculty with PhDs (3%), Class-size index (8%), Student-Faculty ratio (1%), SAT/ACT (5%), and HS GPA (2%).

In those 7 categories, we beat F$U in 4 and have a split-decision in 1. They only edge us on the FT Faculty (1%) and the PhD Faculty (3%). These are factors that often favor "rural" universities over "urban" universities, which tend to employ more adjunct faculty with real-life experience, rather than academics who are living the lives of hermits in tiny college towns.

Here's my spreadsheet (and be glad it's not a MAP!):

View attachment 190984
Excuses. The rankings are not done differently for Miami. Same criteria is used to evaluate all schools. We are lagging.

Tears - Nole Tears (“Offcial”)

U 🤬🤬 Nerds

www.canesinsight.com

 

[bornagaincane]

The rankings are flawed in that they fail to take into consideration the number of palm trees on campus.

I didn’t hear this when we were highly ranked.

 

[Canedude08]

Miami has held steady between 35-55 for most of the last decade. Never mind the fact that the difference between the 35th ranked school and us are mere fractions of ranking points. We all know that the USNWR rankings are a joke, because there's no way that FSU, a school that has spent most of the last 20 years closer to the triple digits magically climbed 50 spots in 5 years. These rankings can be manipulated(Mostly through things like huge fundraising drives and tricks with admission yield) and since they started going towards more non academic criteria, Miami has been one of the schools most affected by that change.

Don't get me wrong, Frenk has done an awful job of building on what Dr. Shalala started, but that's more of a attracting world class faculty thing rather than an educational quality issue. Miami academically has changed somewhat, mostly because the student body has changed. Once the school started slowly backing away from giving away merit aid like it was candy(Mostly because it was becoming that **** near every kid admitted was getting a big time FA package), you started getting more of the solid, but not spectacular kids compared to when I was there in the early part of the 2000s. Shalala, much like Foote before her realized that Miami could get hyper talented kids that weren't poor enough to get need based aid at the higher end private schools, but weren't rich enough to pay full freight. When you get into schools like Miami and Duke, and Miami is offering **** near full tuition, while a school like Duke isn't, the difference in prestige isn't nearly the decision point, compared to when the pricing is extremely similar. Unfortunately, Frenk and the powers that be doesn't subscribe to that thought process.

What's hilarious is the same fans that are whining about this now, had a problem when the athletic department was struggling but the institution was climbing under the old ranking criteria. It's almost like our fans live to whine about something, and honestly can't stand the actual institution to begin with, mostly because a lot of our "Fans" view the school as a football vocational academy instead of an institution of higher learning.

 

[Canedude08]

Touchy subject for us alums. Kinda don’t care, kinda know it’s true if you’ve visited campus.

I’ve judged the college of engineering senior design expo two years running, and I’m seriously underwhelmed by what the school is producing…

The engineering school has always been mediocre, let's stop pretending that Miami engineering has been upper tier in the past. It's a solid program, but grading an entire program on some optional expo, that a majority of kids couldn't care less about is a bit iffy. I heard the same thing from law alums about things like mock trial and that stuff. Most of us didn't want to participate in that stuff, lessens the talent pool. There were a ton of talented kids that I went through law school with that didn't want to do any of that stuff, because they were busy interning and doing other things that they felt were more beneficial.

 

[Bender]

We have a president that you can hardly understand when he speaks English. That’s the problem.

Yeah. Thats the problem. Sure.

 

[Pentagon Cane]

In the US News for best universities, Miami has dropped in ranking to 55 and tied with FSU, while the Gayturds have volted to 28. What is going on? We can’t play football and can’t do academics.

Poor academics my ***. Check the metrics when we were in the top 40 and the metrics now and report back.

 

[Pentagon Cane]

The engineering school has always been mediocre, let's stop pretending that Miami engineering has been upper tier in the past. It's a solid program, but grading an entire program on some optional expo, that a majority of kids couldn't care less about is a bit iffy. I heard the same thing from law alums about things like mock trial and that stuff. Most of us didn't want to participate in that stuff, lessens the talent pool. There were a ton of talented kids that I went through law school with that didn't want to do any of that stuff, because they were busy interning and doing other things that they felt were more beneficial.

My son's aero project consisted of a gal who is heading to Seattle to work for Boeing. My son and his best friend are heading to USAF pilot training. In the interim, my son just took a system's engineering job with the NRO at Westfields because it will be at least a year before he heads to Vance AFB. His buddy actually heads to Fairchild AFB in a couple of months in casual status before pilot training. Their last partner has a bunch of offers. I think he is either going to work for NRO or NGA. This was all pro forma as part of their capstone project. Their objective was to get the A and enjoy their last semester.

The engineering program is not top tier, but the kids do well after leaving the program.

 

[TC@ne]

I did a couple of pages of responses that begins on Page 1006 of SemenHole Tears.

As you can see, only 40% of the ranking has to do with DIRECTLY-related "academic" factors: "Expert Opinion" (20%), Full-time faculty (1%), Full-time faculty with PhDs (3%), Class-size index (8%), Student-Faculty ratio (1%), SAT/ACT (5%), and HS GPA (2%).

In those 7 categories, we beat F$U in 4 and have a split-decision in 1. They only edge us on the FT Faculty (1%) and the PhD Faculty (3%). These are factors that often favor "rural" universities over "urban" universities, which tend to employ more adjunct faculty with real-life experience, rather than academics who are living the lives of hermits in tiny college towns.

Here's my spreadsheet (and be glad it's not a MAP!):

View attachment 190984

Tears - Nole Tears (“Offcial”)

U 🤬🤬 Nerds

www.canesinsight.com

I trust most of that information, but not all. As a recent graduate I still remember my high school peers’ test scores versus mine.

Based on that range I’d be probably 73rd percentile for UM, and all my friends who were accepted and enrolled into FSU were at that 25th percentile or below for the FSU range shown.

Not to say they are or aren’t smart based on their SAT, but maybe one or two out of every 10 had an SAT over 1250.

I have a hard time imagining the 50th percentile for an FSU student is a 1270.

 

[genxcane]

In the US News for best universities, Miami has dropped in ranking to 55 and tied with FSU, while the Gayturds have volted to 28. What is going on? We can’t play football and can’t do academics.

Don't underestimate how much the state schools are improving.

I have a daughter in college right now and the economics are 100% skewed towards keeping smart Florida kids at in-state Universities. Florida has one of the lowest in-state tuition rates in the Country (2nd lowest last time I checked) and adds a pretty generous Bright Futures Scholarship on top. Going to a private school or even an out-of-state public school can easily add six figures to your degree. I know because I am paying for it for my daughter who desperately wanted to leave the state.

The net result is a lot of smart kids are staying home. That creates a feedback loop where the Universities get better and encourage even more to stay home. There is even a domino affect where kids that used to be eligible for UF and FSU end up at second tier state schools and they get better too.

Considering the economics involved, I am pleasantly surprised that UM can even keep up with those schools. You have to like palm trees a lot to pay an extra 200k for a similar education.

It's great for me because the prestige of my degree is actually higher than it was when I earned it. So bonus.

 

[TheOriginalCane]

I didn’t hear this when we were highly ranked.

Man, fvck all the way off.

US News has changed the ranking system with regularity. I made no excuses, I simply pointed out HOW the ranking is computed. I accurately showed that 60% of the current ranking score is NOT directly related to academics.

I am not expecting a shift in the ranking system will take Miami to #1 or #100. Instead, I am saying that we should have a consistent scoring matrix that focuses on ACADEMICS, rather than the price of the school (and how it impacts student loans) or the salary structure of the faculty (private schools are not taxpayer-subsidized).

Stop acting like a d!ck and acknowledge that an EXPLANATION is not an excuse, even if both words start with an "e" and an "x".

 

[hoops156]

Yeah, I’ve asked the ? to some alums if they r happy w/ Frenk in this regards. It’s been a precipitous decline since Shalala.

the metrics changed since she left. they use like donations as a factor now or something. us news isnt a good metric and some presidents have figured out how to game the system in their favor (UF does this. UM and UF are about the academically equivalent).

 

[Bender]

Academics rankings are mostly pointless.

 

[TheOriginalCane]

Yeah. Thats the problem. Sure.

So bornagaincane edited his post to remove the racist bits?

At least now we know what we are dealing with on bornagaincane. A guy who judges and criticizes a person based on his accent.

 

[Bender]

So bornagaincane edited his post to remove the racist bits?

At least now we know what we are dealing with on bornagaincane. A guy who judges and criticizes a person based on his accent.

Nope, he hasnt edited them, thats his exact words.

 

[TheOriginalCane]

Don't underestimate how much the state schools are improving.

I have a daughter in college right now and the economics are 100% skewed towards keeping smart Florida kids at in-state Universities. Florida has one of the lowest in-state tuition rates in the Country (2nd lowest last time I checked) and adds a pretty generous Bright Futures Scholarship on top. Going to a private school or even an out-of-state public school can easily add six figures to your degree. I know because I am paying for it for my daughter who desperately wanted to leave the state.

The net result is a lot of smart kids are staying home. That creates a feedback loop where the Universities get better and encourage even more to stay home. There is even a domino affect where kids that used to be eligible for UF and FSU end up at second tier state schools and they get better too.

Considering the economics involved, I am pleasantly surprised that UM can even keep up with those schools. You have to like palm trees a lot to pay an extra 200k for a similar education.

It's great for me because the prestige of my degree is actually higher than it was when I earned it. So bonus.

All of this is completely true.

And that's why we have to dig into the ELEMENTS that make up the score.

Let's play a logical game. Let's take a school, we can call it UCF, the second largest public school in the country. TOMORROW, there is an announcement that UCF is cutting its freshman class size by SIXTY PERCENT, and tuition is now free. They take 8,000 incoming freshmen instead of 20,000. All of a sudden, the UCF Admissions process would become ultra-competitive. Median GPA and SAT scores would increase, by default, because UCF would simply choose the top 40% of its applicant pool (from a statistical standpoint).

But would UCF be a better ACADEMIC institution because of this? Would the professors or programs or class offerings be any different? Would the value of a UCF degree in the world become any different overnight?

Would the INCOMING grade/test-score standards be better? Yes. Would the faculty-student ratio be better? Absolutely yes.

But would the overall "academic" quality of UCF be fundamentally different? Not really, not overnight. Definitely a bit better, though, but not enough to skyrocket up the rankings. BUT IT WOULD HAPPEN. Because the mathematical components of the current US News Ranking system are very manipulable.

 

[genxcane]

All of this is completely true.

And that's why we have to dig into the ELEMENTS that make up the score.

Let's play a logical game. Let's take a school, we can call it UCF, the second largest public school in the country. TOMORROW, there is an announcement that UCF is cutting its freshman class size by SIXTY PERCENT, and tuition is now free. They take 8,000 incoming freshmen instead of 20,000. All of a sudden, the UCF Admissions process would become ultra-competitive. Median GPA and SAT scores would increase, by default, because UCF would simply choose the top 40% of its applicant pool (from a statistical standpoint).

But would UCF be a better ACADEMIC institution because of this? Would the professors or programs or class offerings be any different? Would the value of a UCF degree in the world become any different overnight?

Would the INCOMING grade/test-score standards be better? Yes. Would the faculty-student ratio be better? Absolutely yes.

But would the overall "academic" quality of UCF be fundamentally different? Not really, not overnight. Definitely a bit better, though, but not enough to skyrocket up the rankings. BUT IT WOULD HAPPEN. Because the mathematical components of the current US News Ranking system are very manipulable.

I agree that the system is prime for manipulation. A perfect example is the shift towards test optional applications. It is sold as a benefit to non-traditional students who can rely on other metrics if their test results are low. However, it is a direct benefit to the university since the applicants self select whether to supply test scores. Those that have good scores report while those with lower scores don't report. The net result is higher scores.

Having said that, I would disagree somewhat with your example of the mythical "UCF" you describe. I happen to think the academics would be better if you shaved off the upper 40%. The classes would be smaller and the competition more intense. As an employer, I would be much more confident taking an average student from that pool than I would from the larger pool. In the end, employability is really the only aspect that matters.

 

[TheOriginalCane]

I agree that the system is prime for manipulation. A perfect example is the shift towards test optional applications. It is sold as a benefit to non-traditional students who can rely on other metrics if their test results are low. However, it is a direct benefit to the university since the applicants self select whether to supply test scores. Those that have good scores report while those with lower scores don't report. The net result is higher scores.

Having said that, I would disagree somewhat with your example of the mythical "UCF" you describe. I happen to think the academics would be better if you shaved off the upper 40%. The classes would be smaller and the competition more intense. As an employer, I would be much more confident taking an average student from that pool than I would from the larger pool. In the end, employability is really the only aspect that matters.

I acknowledged that class size would be smaller. However, I did not change the applicant pool. I simply said UCF would admit 8,000 students rather than 20,000. So they still admit the same 8,000 students that they would have admitted in a larger freshman class, they just eliminate the 12,000 students with lower GPA/test-scores from the "admitted" pool. I made the tuition "free" to help "UCF" ace the "student loan debt" component, but I understand the argument that free tuition would eventually CHANGE the applicant pool.

Yes, OVER TIME, smaller class size and free tuition can CHANGE the applicant pool. And OVER TIME, a better applicant pool can raise the academics. But it must be acknowledged that "better academic institutions" are a combination product of WHAT THE SCHOOL OFFERS as well as THE QUALITY OF THE STUDENTS who apply and are accepted.

To take the logical game in another direction, imagine that a hypothetical school, let's call it "Harvard", suddenly had a labor dispute with all of its faculty, and the entire teaching staff at Hypothetical Harvard was fired. Then HypoHarvard hires a slate of community college professors. Would Harvard's "academics" and academic rankings suddenly decline, or should they remain constant because the student body has such high GPAs and test scores?

Again, I point out that factors such as "student loan debt", while important to all of us IN REAL LIFE, are inherently skewed to favor "state schools" over "private schools", particularly now that the tuition differentials between state and privae schools have become VAST.

I am not saying I have the perfect replacement ranking system, I am simply saying that there are reasonable explanations and understandings for the current results.

 

[ICANEDOIT]

When I was at UM, I thought there were way too many dumbass Jersey dudes. Someone had to pay full tuition I guess.

 

[Unsider]

In the US News for best universities, Miami has dropped in ranking to 55 and tied with FSU, while the Gayturds have volted to 28. What is going on? We can’t play football and can’t do academics.

Listen up young’un, I don’t care where they’re ranked akademikally, so long as they’re going to appear in the ‘ship game soon. I don’t have that many years to live, and I’ve waited so long, akademiks can wait till after I’m gone.

 

[rok]

Miami is back to being Suntan U. I spend a lot of time on campus and there are significantly fewer nerds now than when Shalala was UPREZ. Hot girls in sports bras and yoga pants everywhere you look must make it tough to concentrate.