Might be a dumb question, but I don't really know.

I'll preface this by saying I graduated in 1997 from UofL with a Bachelor's degree, majoring in Computer Information Systems (but didn't start college until I was in my mid-20's after deciding to make a career change). I'm still doing quite well in this field, and consider my education from UofL a very good experience.

I understand the part how Athletic Conference affiliation is important (for the obvious reasons) because you compete in the sports. But no time when I was at UofL did I care a rat's @ss about what my other CUSA counterparts were doing in my field of study; it wasn't like we had Computer Study interaction with schools like Cincinnati and Tulane.

I'm sure Academic Conference affiliation means something because it's always brought up, but can someone please tell me where it comes into play tangibly rather then just on paper....I really don't know.

Bragging rights for bar room boasting. Maybe perception based on the company you keep, but really that ends at the Ivy League. There really is little tangible outside of that, and that includes whether you are talking about the CIC (Big Ten) or ACCIAC.

I think a lot of it is conference academic requirements.

Its mostly "bar room bragging", but obviously a school being in the Pac-12, ACC or Big Ten sounds more prestigious academically by default. That being said the CIC and to a lesser extent the ACCIAC make the Big Ten and ACC go a little further beyond those matters. In the Big Ten's case its equipment/supply/book resource purchasing/sharing pool that saves money and enhances the library systems.

(12-05-2012 04:23 PM)brista21 Wrote:  Its mostly "bar room bragging", but obviously a school being in the Pac-12, ACC or Big Ten sounds more prestigious academically by default. That being said the CIC and to a lesser extent the ACCIAC make the Big Ten and ACC go a little further beyond those matters. In the Big Ten's case its equipment/supply/book resource purchasing/sharing pool that saves money and enhances the library systems.

I'm not convinced of the CIC's actual operational value to member institutions. That being said, it does have a brand which provides a benefit to membership.

There is a prestige element that comes with associating with high quality schools that is very important to university leaders. However, the association of a school with other quality schools also improves the quality of the student applicant pool that individual schools experience, which in turn increases the SAT scores of admitted students and decreases acceptance rates, both of which tend to increase the overall rating of the school regardless of whether any real improvement is achieved. It also improves the ability of schools to raise money from alumni and other donors for academic purposes. This can be translated into better facilities and the ability to attract higher profile professors.

There has been some talk about linking all of the ACC libraries. The Syracuse president has mentioned other ideas on academic cooperation.

Thank you to the few that have responded. I thought I'd get more responses because "Academic Status" is supposed to be a big issue with UofL....LOL.

My conclusion is that this is mostly a bunch of fluff (but the linked library idea sounds cool). I also conclude that UofL does just fine for things like engineering, business, and my area of study. UofL also has also contributed greatly in bigger things like heart transplants, hand transplants, and more recently cardiac stem cell research.

(12-05-2012 05:20 PM)orangefan Wrote:  There is a prestige element that comes with associating with high quality schools that is very important to university leaders. However, the association of a school with other quality schools also improves the quality of the student applicant pool that individual schools experience, which in turn increases the SAT scores of admitted students and decreases acceptance rates, both of which tend to increase the overall rating of the school regardless of whether any real improvement is achieved. It also improves the ability of schools to raise money from alumni and other donors for academic purposes. This can be translated into better facilities and the ability to attract higher profile professors.

BC's applicants for admission increased by something like 30% within 3 years of joining the ACC, and the number of people who accepted the BC offer also increased (I forget by much though).

Tech saw a big jump too.

(12-05-2012 07:52 PM)Wolfman Wrote:  There has been some talk about linking all of the ACC libraries. The Syracuse president has mentioned other ideas on academic cooperation.

I am not sure how much linking libraries will actually matter. Most schools pool libraries with regional groups, and the world is becoming increasingly digital. I know the B1G made a big deal about this, but the idea lost steam, and although they are linked, the other ideas that were going to build off the linked libraries are mostly distant memories.

I thought there are certain standards that the conference holds for their athletes. Isn't that why GT and Tulane left the SEC (not strict enough) and SC left the ACC (too strict)? Or why the Magnolia was talked about by Vanderbilt, Duke, Rice, SMU, and Tulane?

(12-12-2012 09:20 PM)nzmorange Wrote:  

(12-05-2012 07:52 PM)Wolfman Wrote:  There has been some talk about linking all of the ACC libraries. The Syracuse president has mentioned other ideas on academic cooperation.

I am not sure how much linking libraries will actually matter. Most schools pool libraries with regional groups, and the world is becoming increasingly digital. I know the B1G made a big deal about this, but the idea lost steam, and although they are linked, the other ideas that were going to build off the linked libraries are mostly distant memories.

Every hear of interlibrary loans? Same thing. Every academic library in America has been similarly linked for decades.

The Big Ten is also involved with Google Books and the Hathi Trust. Guess what? So are dozens of other universities. The CIC likes to list things on their website like it is exclusive to or largely the CIC or unique to the CIC, but they are not.

I'm telling you guys, the single most impressive thing of any of these consortiums is the ACCIAC's token amount of $12.5K distributed to each member school for undergrad research fellowships and the accompanying research conference that is sponsored. Expand that program (and publicize it) and it would be impressive. Even though it is a token amount, it represents a real, tangible, support of schools' academic missions (not that it is enough to improve an individual school's academics status per the other thread). Other conferences would probably follow. There's a lot of other things that could be done too...but which schools want to give up part of their annual athletic distributions to increase conference funding in order to expand such programs? If schools wanted to do that, they could just take a part of their athletic disbursement themselves and apply it how they wanted. Hence the problem with anything really impactful actually getting done by these consortiums. It costs money and it costs individual institutional control of money.

(12-12-2012 11:33 PM)esayem Wrote:  I thought there are certain standards that the conference holds for their athletes. Isn't that why GT and Tulane left the SEC (not strict enough) and SC left the ACC (too strict)? Or why the Magnolia was talked about by Vanderbilt, Duke, Rice, SMU, and Tulane?

There are differences in league rules for partial qualifiers, etc; at least there were...and perhaps for gray shirts, over recruiting, and such things. I'm not entirely familiar with the league-to-league difference though.

Perception and association are a big thing for school presidents.