I come from a part of the world that stresses education above all else, so I spend much of my time reading about institutions of higher learning. The Carnegie Foundation publishes a taxonomy of these institutions that categorizes them in dimensions like size, programs offered, selectivity, and so on.
At the Carnegie website, it is possible to search for institutions by name, and then, having found an institution by name, to find all institutions that fall into the same category in one or more of these Carnegie dimensions. There are nine such dimensions listed on the Carnegie Foundation website.
What I find interesting is that Temple and USM fall into the same category in seven of the nine dimensions, and that only three schools located east of the Mississippi River share this seven-value profile. The seven dimensions of compatibility are "level," "control," "student population," "undergraduate program," "enrollment profile," "undergraduate student profile," "basic research," and "community engagement." The third similarly-categorized school is Western Michigan... Temple's conference-mate in the MAC!
Temple's Carnegie page...
Southern Miss...
In light of this basic sameness (not "in lieu of"... we're smart so we know this!), we should probably establish some sort of outreach program at each other's campuses. Maybe you can come down to Hattiesburg, and we'll take you "tubing" and play the banjo for you. In return, you can underwrite some negotiable securities or bonds or something and just give them to all of us. That is the kind of thing people in the Northeast do, I think.
Maybe one day you can even play us in football. Of course, we must take things one small step at a time!
