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2018 US News & Report Rankings (UC#133)
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CliftonAve Online
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2018 US News & Report Rankings (UC#133)
The latest college rankings are out-- UC is #133, up from #135 last year. Our rankings shot up over a decade ago, and once went as high as #129, but it seems to me that shooting up any further will require significant changes. IIRC, I thought UC had a goal at one time of getting into the #100 range. Seems like the 130 range might just be who we are at this point.

https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/uni...nnati-3125
 
05-11-2018 07:24 AM
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RE: 2018 US News & Report Rankings (UC#133)
(05-11-2018 07:24 AM)CliftonAve Wrote:  The latest college rankings are out-- UC is #133, up from #135 last year. Our rankings shot up over a decade ago, and once went as high as #129, but it seems to me that shooting up any further will require significant changes. IIRC, I thought UC had a goal at one time of getting into the #100 range. Seems like the 130 range might just be who we are at this point.

https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/uni...nnati-3125

Getting up to that point would require something we just will not get...additional state support.
 
05-11-2018 07:51 AM
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RE: 2018 US News & Report Rankings (UC#133)
State and local government support need to increase. Some programs need to become more selective. Also, some institutions are living off past reputation not current situation, i.e. Miami(oh).

Who writes those profiles? UC's is pretty vanilla and I do not think cover our most important attributes.
 
05-11-2018 08:01 AM
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RE: 2018 US News & Report Rankings (UC#133)
Any upward movement is a tremendously challenging endeavor. UC is to be commended for focusing on what matters the past 15 years or so and driving the rankings higher. To rise, implies that other universities are falling. Therein lies the challenge. These rankings, for better or worse, have become the bible of college selection for too many parents so universities ignore them at great risk. To expect schools ranked 101 - 132 to fall back is unrealistic.

It must always be a work in progress. And from the limited perspective of athletics, UC is now at a level above several other G5 schools which would compete for a P5 bid, giving Cincy a competitive advantage in this measure when the conference shuffle resumes.
 
(This post was last modified: 05-11-2018 08:38 AM by OKIcat.)
05-11-2018 08:37 AM
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Bearcat 1985 Offline
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RE: 2018 US News & Report Rankings (UC#133)
Our rankings rise was primarily being driven by our shift from open to selective admissions. Two of the biggest factors are selectivity and reputation among other academics. Clearly, there was a direct correlation with the former and an echo effect with the latter. As I've said previously, increasing our admissions profile was going to plateau. The higher one goes up the food chain, the higher the competition gets. The size of Ohio State and the sheer number of 28-32 ACT kids in Ohio that they are taking off the table doesn't help.

Correct assessment about Miami above. They are only maintaining their selectivity by aggressively turning themselves into a safety school for kids in the Chicago suburbs (25% of their freshmen classes). I've always maintained that their whole (really only a decade or two) "public ivy" period was a house of cards built on the premise that the state would continue to force OSU into being open admissions. After that ended, Miami's little racket collapsed pretty quickly.
 
(This post was last modified: 05-11-2018 09:21 AM by Bearcat 1985.)
05-11-2018 09:18 AM
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RE: 2018 US News & Report Rankings (UC#133)
Damn yo had me worried I thought #133 was the football team. 103 is bad enough!
 
05-11-2018 12:24 PM
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RE: 2018 US News & Report Rankings (UC#133)
Cincy has better metrics than some AAU schools. If one or two members get booted (like Nebraska) or bail out (like Syracuse), and if we enhance selectivity rather than striving for ever larger enrollments, then we should be well positioned for an invitation. Being elected to AAU status would make UC a far more attractive P5 candidate.

I wonder, does co-op hurt our USN&WR rating because participants don't graduate in four years?
 
05-11-2018 12:31 PM
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Bearcat 1985 Offline
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RE: 2018 US News & Report Rankings (UC#133)
(05-11-2018 12:31 PM)colohank Wrote:  Cincy has better metrics than some AAU schools. If one or two members get booted (like Nebraska) or bail out (like Syracuse), and if we enhance selectivity rather than striving for ever larger enrollments, then we should be well positioned for an invitation. Being elected to AAU status would make UC a far more attractive P5 candidate.

I wonder, does co-op hurt our USN&WR rating because participants don't graduate in four years?

We're farther off than a lot of people think. For one thing, we can't just be better than the worst current members. We probably need to be close to the mean for publics. Secondly, by any analysis, Utah and NC State are likely next in line on the public side, and the AAU isn't in the habit of inviting lots of schools. Lastly, we're too one-dimensional. Our metrics are driven too much by the medical school. For instance, all of the National Academy Members we have (which is less than 10) are on the Academy of Medicine. We don't have a single member of the National Academy of Sciences or Engineering on faculty. And it's even worse when you look at humanities and social sciences. You may not think that matters, but it does. The AAU constantly tells members not to neglect the Humanities and social sciences, and they kept Ga Tech out for a long time because they were viewed as too one-dimensional for a comprehensive university.

UC needs to continue to build on its strengths, but also will need to make a significant investment in bolstering up the hard sciences, humanities and social sciences to get the invite.
 
05-11-2018 12:44 PM
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RE: 2018 US News & Report Rankings (UC#133)
A lot of this is "perception" and not actual measurables. For example, if someone over at the UC Medical School makes some sort of breakthrough discovery on gene-therapy for cancer (UC is a leader in research in that field) and gets a Nobel Prize for Medicine, you'll see a marked up-tick in perception of the University. Then, as in all things, the challenge will be hanging onto them. Does that mean that suddenly UC Medicine is suddenly a "better" program? Of course not, it's just that the reputation will rise.

US News and World Report Rankings are kind of the "Bleacher Report" of the College World. On any given metric or program there are more in-depth rankings, which get cited on these pages as well. As some have noted, based off of endowment, UC is ranked in the Top 50; in terms of Research money and grants, we are just outside the AAU. The Med School is highly ranked, the College of Law has been highly ranked, but has slipped a little recently. The Conservatory (CCM) is elite as is the DAAP. On the undergraduate side of things the College of Engineering has always been extremely good but under-rated; why they don't make a bigger deal about once having Neil Armstrong on faculty teaching aerospace engineering always puzzled me...I'd think you would make that a huge deal. I think the College of Business is making huge strides with the Linderner family's patronage.

The USN&WR rankings are not "unimportant," but for a serious student looking at a specialty, they will tend to look at other metrics as well in making their choices.
 
05-11-2018 12:44 PM
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Bearcat 1985 Offline
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RE: 2018 US News & Report Rankings (UC#133)
Also, to get back to the OP, I don't think those are new ranking. USNWR releases them at the end of Summer with the following year's number. So the new rankings will be the 2019 edition released in September 2018. Confusing, I know.
 
05-11-2018 01:25 PM
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RE: 2018 US News & Report Rankings (UC#133)
(05-11-2018 12:44 PM)Bearcat 1985 Wrote:  The AAU constantly tells members not to neglect the Humanities and social sciences, and they kept Ga Tech out for a long time because they were viewed as too one-dimensional for a comprehensive university.

UC needs to continue to build on its strengths, but also will need to make a significant investment in bolstering up the hard sciences, humanities and social sciences to get the invite.

That's too bad, because the only way college is going to get more affordable is if universities stop offering so many Humanities type degrees, and instead trim back those departments to being able to service more "career-related" programs with elective which help provide a more rounded education than a pure technical one. This would result in less expense, less graduates with weak job skills, and more graduates who can more easily pay off their student debt.

I just read on one college doing that very thing last month. More will follow.
 
05-11-2018 02:59 PM
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RE: 2018 US News & Report Rankings (UC#133)
(05-11-2018 02:59 PM)Bruce Monnin Wrote:  
(05-11-2018 12:44 PM)Bearcat 1985 Wrote:  The AAU constantly tells members not to neglect the Humanities and social sciences, and they kept Ga Tech out for a long time because they were viewed as too one-dimensional for a comprehensive university.

UC needs to continue to build on its strengths, but also will need to make a significant investment in bolstering up the hard sciences, humanities and social sciences to get the invite.

That's too bad, because the only way college is going to get more affordable is if universities stop offering so many Humanities type degrees, and instead trim back those departments to being able to service more "career-related" programs with elective which help provide a more rounded education than a pure technical one. This would result in less expense, less graduates with weak job skills, and more graduates who can more easily pay off their student debt.

I just read on one college doing that very thing last month. More will follow.

I think that was one of the Wisconsin branches. You'll never see UW-Madison do it and rightfully so. I'm not going to defend every humanities or social science program, but any comprehensive research university worth its salt needs to have strong departments in the core arts and sciences disciplines like History, English, Foreign Languages, Political Science, Economics, Physics, Chemistry, Astronomy and so forth. And the same goes for the hard sciences. Let's be honest in that nobody is getting a job as a physicist or astronomer with a bachelor's degree.

UC has always neglected the arts and science departments (we're far closer to a MAC school in our doctoral program rankings than a B10 school), and if AAU membership is a goal for the university, we'll need to do something about that.

As for affordability, I don't think having a History or Political Science department is issue. The three biggest issues driving up undergraduate tuition are declining state support, administrative bloat and athletic subsidies.
 
05-11-2018 03:12 PM
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RE: 2018 US News & Report Rankings (UC#133)
(05-11-2018 01:25 PM)Bearcat 1985 Wrote:  Also, to get back to the OP, I don't think those are new ranking. USNWR releases them at the end of Summer with the following year's number. So the new rankings will be the 2019 edition released in September 2018. Confusing, I know.

I believe you are correct - these are the rankings from last September.
 
05-13-2018 09:48 AM
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RE: 2018 US News & Report Rankings (UC#133)
(05-11-2018 07:51 AM)BearcatMan Wrote:  
(05-11-2018 07:24 AM)CliftonAve Wrote:  The latest college rankings are out-- UC is #133, up from #135 last year. Our rankings shot up over a decade ago, and once went as high as #129, but it seems to me that shooting up any further will require significant changes. IIRC, I thought UC had a goal at one time of getting into the #100 range. Seems like the 130 range might just be who we are at this point.

https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/uni...nnati-3125

Getting up to that point would require something we just will not get...additional state support.

If Miami can be #78, so can UC.
 
05-13-2018 10:38 AM
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RE: 2018 US News & Report Rankings (UC#133)
(05-13-2018 10:38 AM)BearcatsUC Wrote:  
(05-11-2018 07:51 AM)BearcatMan Wrote:  
(05-11-2018 07:24 AM)CliftonAve Wrote:  The latest college rankings are out-- UC is #133, up from #135 last year. Our rankings shot up over a decade ago, and once went as high as #129, but it seems to me that shooting up any further will require significant changes. IIRC, I thought UC had a goal at one time of getting into the #100 range. Seems like the 130 range might just be who we are at this point.

https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/uni...nnati-3125

Getting up to that point would require something we just will not get...additional state support.

If Miami can be #78, so can UC.

We focus on far too many majors to be ranked that high. Money spread across 11 colleges does not go nearly as far as money spread across 5. I agree that in an ideal world,
we could get to that point...but we're wroking with a stacked deck against us.
 
05-14-2018 09:40 AM
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Bearcat 1985 Offline
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RE: 2018 US News & Report Rankings (UC#133)
(05-14-2018 09:40 AM)BearcatMan Wrote:  
(05-13-2018 10:38 AM)BearcatsUC Wrote:  
(05-11-2018 07:51 AM)BearcatMan Wrote:  
(05-11-2018 07:24 AM)CliftonAve Wrote:  The latest college rankings are out-- UC is #133, up from #135 last year. Our rankings shot up over a decade ago, and once went as high as #129, but it seems to me that shooting up any further will require significant changes. IIRC, I thought UC had a goal at one time of getting into the #100 range. Seems like the 130 range might just be who we are at this point.

https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/uni...nnati-3125

Getting up to that point would require something we just will not get...additional state support.

If Miami can be #78, so can UC.

We focus on far too many majors to be ranked that high. Money spread across 11 colleges does not go nearly as far as money spread across 5. I agree that in an ideal world,
we could get to that point...but we're wroking with a stacked deck against us.

The financial differences are mixed. The best way to look at the endowment is on a per student basis. Theirs is 23K/student, while ours is 29K (OSU is 85K/student for comparison). In their favor, while they get the same student subsidy as us, they do get the new bonus money for retention and grad rates from the state. They also have a lot more money coming in from out of state tuition, which is 35% of their student body (an entire quarter of their freshmen classes are coming from Chicago). We have only 10% oos enrollment, but half that is from the tri-state counties which get reciprocal tuition, so really only 5% true out of state students.

I think we suffer a great deal from a perception that we're not a national univesity. DAAP and the Conservatory are great, but they're not the kind of things that drive a university's image nationally. It's the way that the journalism school doesn't really do all that much to boost the overall perception of OU. We've historically focused way too much on the med school, and that goes back to our days as a municipal university where the agenda was being set by local corporations and wealthy families.

Secondly, Miami has a 40 year head start on being a selective university over UC, which drives USNWR rankings a great deal. OSU overtook them quickly simply because OSU's forced open admissions were not a natural thing but rather mandated by a hostile Governor. Essentially what happened after the mid-80s vis-a-vis Miami and OSU was a return to the state's historical norm. We can't count on that. We need to do much better recruiting throughout the state while upping our out of state enrollment to at least 15% (not counting the reciprocal tri-state counties) and devote more resources into strengthening the engineering, business and arts and sciences colleges.

None of that is going to happen overnight, but I think cracking the top 100 in the next dozen years is a somewhat realistic goal with the right leadership. Banking on AAU membership is putting the cart before the horse. We need to do these things to get AAU membership, then I think we catch and surpass Miami because I just don't see any upside for Miami improving. They can't compete for in-state students with OSU, and there's a ceiling for the number of out of state students that will be interested in a rather one-dimensional school for preppy, conservative business majors located in the middle of nowhere. They've maxed out their appeal as Chicago's safety school, and I don't see them pulling in huge numbers of OOS students from outside the Great Lakes.
 
(This post was last modified: 05-15-2018 10:12 AM by Bearcat 1985.)
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RE: 2018 US News & Report Rankings (UC#133)
Unfortunately, academics and athletics were hurt by poor and short sighted decision making many decades ago. It takes a long time to alter the course of a massive research university.

I think UC is on the right track but it will not happen as quickly as many feel it should. As special as I believe UC is, there are 50-75 other similar regional universities who also point to one of two key strengths (while ignoring multiple deficiencies) and believe they are the next one deserving of a jump up in rankings and prestige.

Improvement requires cash. I try to match my athletic spending with direct academic donations. Neither is a very big amount right now but it does make a difference. Also, let your politicians know UC is important to you and you want to see additional funding support. Politicians love spending other people's money and it goes over very well across both parties to fund higher education. A single sentence was added to the last spending bill and this bearcat got a large capital equipment grant for my lab.
 
05-16-2018 08:37 AM
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RE: 2018 US News & Report Rankings (UC#133)
(05-16-2018 08:37 AM)Bearcat1010 Wrote:  Unfortunately, academics and athletics were hurt by poor and short sighted decision making many decades ago. It takes a long time to alter the course of a massive research university.

I think UC is on the right track but it will not happen as quickly as many feel it should. As special as I believe UC is, there are 50-75 other similar regional universities who also point to one of two key strengths (while ignoring multiple deficiencies) and believe they are the next one deserving of a jump up in rankings and prestige.

Improvement requires cash. I try to match my athletic spending with direct academic donations. Neither is a very big amount right now but it does make a difference. Also, let your politicians know UC is important to you and you want to see additional funding support. Politicians love spending other people's money and it goes over very well across both parties to fund higher education. A single sentence was added to the last spending bill and this bearcat got a large capital equipment grant for my lab.

The Cincinnati powers that be put all their eggs into the medical school because the city didn't have another option for a first rate medical school. At the same time they were content to let the rest of the university stagnate as a local commuter school. It's a stark contrast to how the corporations and wealthy families in Pitt treated that school. They built up a strong, broad-based comprehensive university, and when it transitioned from metro to state university it did so as an academic peer to (if not even stronger than) PSU. We can't blame or OSU or the state for this. They had no say over UC's fortunes for a hundred years. It was a failure and lack of vision on the local level.

I think there's some marginal political things that can be done on the capital appropriations bill. The vast majority of funding though is set in stone with formulas that treat every school the same. I don't think anyone wants to go back to the days when OSU had its own funding bill, and all the other state schools were funded under a separate bill.
 
(This post was last modified: 05-16-2018 09:15 AM by Bearcat 1985.)
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RE: 2018 US News & Report Rankings (UC#133)
I spent 1.5 years in Oxford getting my MBA. A mind-numbingly boring campus and town with an incredibly common-sense-stupid student body. The campus is so beautiful and the school is incredibly well-run, but omg, “one-dimensional” is but one adjective to describe the place.

My point in bringing up Miami is that they manage reputation by doing more with less. They have effectively managed their niche. UC should figure out how to do the same.

In Dayton, I perceive that OU is favored over UC, as is Miami and OSU. There’s no reason some of that can’t change.
 
(This post was last modified: 05-16-2018 11:38 AM by BearcatsUC.)
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RE: 2018 US News & Report Rankings (UC#133)
Hats off to posts 16 through 19; an excellent analysis of the current state. Just to chain on one of the key points, select majors withing CCM and DAAP may be stronger/higher ranked than any single major at OSU. But those programs are typically very, very small enrollment (musical theater admits maybe a dozen freshmen) so they don't begin to move the needle on university-wide student selectivity.

Build a top flight program in A&S--say psychology, and watch the needle move up with 600 - 800 majors and thousands of highly qualified undergraduate applicants any given year competing to be admitted.

As stated, upward movement in the rankings tends to be slow and tedious and requires investment--from donors and the state. Look at Ohio State's donor participation compared with UC. In part, we simply need more people giving something to the academic side. And large donors giving more. Distinguished professorships, endowed faculty chairs, full ride scholarships for the brightest and best are among the fruits of donor support that build excellence. We have the alumni base to do all that.
 
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