The kids I'm talking about who are leaving are the ones who are our best and smartest. The ones who can get admitted just about anywhere but don't really have anywhere to go in Tennessee without slumming it other than Vanderbilt.
The ones you're talking about from out of state who are coming to UT are coming to a school ranked somewhere around 100th, so whatever their reasons for choosing UT, it isn't because they're a top student that can go anywhere they want to get a great education.
That's not a great swap.
I think some of you don't understand the difference between the level of education you receive and the completely subjective rankings posted by US News and World Report. Straight form their page:
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Next, we gather data from each college on up to 16 indicators of academic excellence. (Note: They never disclose what all of the measures are as they are proprietary.) Each factor is assigned a weight that reflects
our judgment about how much a measure matters. Finally, the colleges and universities in each category are ranked against their peers, based on their composite weighted score.
...The indicators we use to capture academic quality fall into a number of categories:
1) assessment by administrators at peer institutions
2) retention of students
3) faculty resources
4) student selectivity
5) financial resources
6) alumni giving
7) for National Universities and National Liberal Arts Collegeshigh school counselor ratings of colleges and "graduation rate performance."
The indicators include input measures that reflect a school's student body, its faculty, and its financial resources, along with outcome measures that signal how well the institution does its job of educating students.
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The current list of top public universities:
1)Cal
2)UCLA
3)UVA
4)Mich
5)UNC
6)W&M
7)GT
8)UC-Davis
9)UCSB
10)Wisc
11)UC-Irvine
12)PennSt
13)Ill
14)Texas
15)Washington
16)
Florida
17)OSU
18)Maryland
19)Pitt
20)UConn
21)Georgia
22)Purdue
23)
ATM
24)Clemson
25)Rutgers
26)Minnesota
27)MichSt
28)Iowa
29)VaTech
31)Delaware
32)
Bama
36)Indiana
37)
Auburn
42)FSU, Colorado, UMass,
Missouri
46) IowaSt, Nebraska,
UTenn,
If the goal is to become a top 25 institution and Cheek has explicitly stated he wants us to be tops in research as well, how does one go about doing that when almost every school in the top 25 hails from a former or current economic powerhouse region. Notice all the California and rustbelt midwest schools. Industrial revolution ring a bell? Clemson is the only southern outlier in the group. Georgia and by inference Atlanta has been the defacto capital of the south for 200 years. Kinda makes sense that they'd have a decent flagship college. UF is the most populous state in the south by a landslide. Kinda makes sense they might have a pretty solid university too. Texas A&M, same as UF.
Nobody's saying there's no need for improvement. That's just a straw-man argument. But there should be some kind of return on investment for the tuition increases seen on the hill the past 15yrs. I'd argue the benefits have been marginal at best but by all means use hoity-toity a few more times. It's kinda funny. Personally I prefer siditty but I didn't want to sound hoity-toity.
