Rank The Conferences Academic Reputation

[Tugg Speedman]

This is related to the UNC discussion but I thought it was worthy its own thread ....

In the UNC discussion we discussed the relative strength of the major conferences in terms of money (B1G leads) and football (SEC leads).  How about academic reputation?

Below is my ranking ... what say you?

1. Pac-12
2. ACC
3. Big East
4. Big 10
5. Big 12
6. SEC

Rank them according to the schools in them today.

[honkytonk]

1. ACC
2. Pac 12
3. Big 10
4. Big East
5. Big 12
6. SEC

Of course, I have no idea what criteria im suppose to use.

[chapman]

1. Big Ten
2. Pac 12
3. ACC
4. Big East
5. Big 12
6. SEC

[Pakuni]

FWIW ...
The SEC has eight schools in the US News top 100.
The Big 12 has three.
The (current) Big East has seven.
Big 10 has 11 ( ha ha, stupid Nebraska).
Pac 10 has eight.
The ACC has 11, including seven in the top 44.

I'm declaring the ACC the winner.

[keefe]

B1G
ACC
Pac 12
BEast
SEC
Big 12

[marquette20]

ACC
B1G
PAC 12
Catholic 7
SEC
BIG 12
New Big East

The new new big east is a mid major soon to be

[Aughnanure]

B1G
ACC
Pac 12
BEast
SEC
Big 12

Ding ding ding.

The Big 12 has gotten hurt by realignment, but its more a factor of having large state schools in much less populated areas (i.e., less money for research, grants - which the USNWR loves). KU, OU, UT, Baylor, TCU, and Iowa St are all fine academic schools. Just looked better w/ MU, Nebraska and A&M. WVU, KSU and Tech hurt them alot - though Tech and KSU have worked their asses off recently to get out of the lower tiers.

[Tugg Speedman]

FWIW ...
The SEC has eight schools in the US News top 100.
The Big 12 has three.
The (current) Big East has seven.
Big 10 has 11 ( ha ha, stupid Nebraska).
Pac 10 has eight.
The ACC has 11, including seven in the top 44.

I'm declaring the ACC the winner.

Resorted

Rank                 Conference             US News Top 100
1                      ACC                             11 (7 top 44)
2                      B1G                             11
3 tie                 Pac-12                          8
3 tie                 SEC                              8
5                     Big East                         7
6                     Big 12                            3

           

[Blue Horseshoe]

Ivy league anyone?
-went to school with idiots.

[Groin_pull]

1. ACC
2. Pac-12
3. Big 10
4. Big XII
5. Big East

[keefe]

My son played Lacrosse at Middlebury which is in the NESCAC. I think these kids are true student-athletes.

[ChicosBailBonds]

I would rank these the same way today, but if anything the B1G gets even stronger with their additions.  I'd put the SEC ahead of the Big East as well with Florida and Vanderbilt both AAU members.




BIG (almost every school is part of the Association of American Universities....plus they add Rutgers and Maryland with those credentials.  Nebraska the only non AAU member)  http://www.aau.edu/about/default.aspx?id=5476   More patents than any other conference in the nation, more research dollars, more noble laureates, etc, etc, etc.


ACC  (losing Maryland AAU credential and adding Louisville...OUCH, but they do add AAU member Pitt)


Pac 12 (great at the top, not so great on the bottom)


Big 12  (Add West Virginia = ouch, lose AAU member Missouri = ouch)


Big East (zero schools in the AAU after Rutgers and Pitt leave until Tulane comes on board)

[Eldon]

AAU is great and all, but it's not the end all say all (not saying anyone said it is).  AAU is one way to gauge academic success, but not the only way.   

For instance, both Boston College and Georgetown (both non-AAU) are both academically better than, say, Missouri.  Gtown and BC are higher ranked by us world news and report, both are still research I schools, both have better Bschools, Law schools, and Gtown has a higher ranked med school

[Pakuni]

I would rank these the same way today, but if anything the B1G gets even stronger with their additions.  I'd put the SEC ahead of the Big East as well with Florida and Vanderbilt both AAU members.




BIG (almost every school is part of the Association of American Universities....plus they add Rutgers and Maryland with those credentials.  Nebraska the only non AAU member)  http://www.aau.edu/about/default.aspx?id=5476   More patents than any other conference in the nation, more research dollars, more noble laureates, etc, etc, etc.


ACC  (losing Maryland AAU credential and adding Louisville...OUCH, but they do add AAU member Pitt)

I'd suggest that the additions of Notre Dame and Syracuse do far more for the ACC's reputation than Rutgers and Maryland does for the Big ?
Membership in the AAU, while it undoubtedly makes its members feel good about themselves, says little about the quality of education one receives or, frankly, a school's reputation .
The fact that Kansas (#106 in US News), Oregon (#115) and Arizona (#120) are AAU members, but Notre Dame (#17), Georgetown (#21), Wake Forest (#27), Tufts (#28) and BC (#31) are deemed unworthy - and Syracuse is essentially forced out - ought to make one question the organization's standards.
And US News rankings are both about academic reputation and set the standard for academic reputation more than anything or anyone else.

[honkytonk]

I received a graduate degree from an AAU school and I have yet to figure out what the benefits were (are). The only people that talk about AAU and the CIC are sports fans and maybe some professors. In fact, Im guessing an overwhelming percentage of my classmates had no idea what those organizations are (a good percentage were foreign students).

I never heard a professor say to the class, "Thanks to the CIC/AAU...."

[keefe]

AAU is great and all, but it's not the end all say all (not saying anyone said it is).  AAU is one way to gauge academic success, but not the only way.   

For instance, both Boston College and Georgetown (both non-AAU) are both academically better than, say, Missouri.  Gtown and BC are higher ranked by us world news and report, both are still research I schools, both have better Bschools, Law schools, and Gtown has a higher ranked med school

Here, here. The AAU is an indication of a University's success in securing research grants. And university research has been a prime driver in innovation and creativity that has kept the US in the forefront on intellectual, technological, medical, and economic progress. But I would dare say an individual gets a far better education at Notre Dame, a non-AAU school, than almost all of the AAU schools.

I am not a big fan of the large state university. One son went to Middlebury and the other to Wazzu. As we looked at their coursework and the overall intellectual demands made of each there was no comparison. Both boys played varsity sports so there were similar demands made on their time outside the classroom. But the creativity of the learning, the immersion into an intellectually challenging environment, the high degree of individual, personal attention at Middlebury was beyond compare.

Wazzu, on the other hand, was much more of a factory that established a much different mean. The general population had lower qualifications than at Middlebury and the curricula reflected that. The largest class size for our son at Middlebury was  15. Our son at Wazzu regularly had huge lectures for his first few years. He did have tutorial support as an athlete but that isn't available to all students.

We did notice a difference in how their intellectual  curiosity developed. Our oldest had a much broader range of interest and was genuinely conversant in many things while his brother did not grow in as many ways. Both played sports but it defined the football player to a far greater degree than it did the lacrosse athlete. Some of that was structural as a football player at Wazzu leads as much more insular existence than does a lacrosse player at Middlebury. Athlete's at Wazzu tend to herd together for a number of reasons beyond team identity - they live in their own housing, they eat at training table, they have mandatory weights, mandatory study hall, mandatory film, etc... Athletes at Middlebury are not segregated and are mixed in completely with the general student body.

Neither school has AAU accreditation but our daughter's does. How did that affect her education? Not in any way. I'll bet if you asked her about AAU accreditation she would ask what is that?

[ChicosBailBonds]

AAU is great and all, but it's not the end all say all (not saying anyone said it is).  AAU is one way to gauge academic success, but not the only way.    

For instance, both Boston College and Georgetown (both non-AAU) are both academically better than, say, Missouri.  Gtown and BC are higher ranked by us world news and report, both are still research I schools, both have better Bschools, Law schools, and Gtown has a higher ranked med school

The same can be said of US News.  The difference is, one is a magazine that has made a cottage industry of this ranking system while the AAU is an elite organization with very few members and extremely difficult requirements to get in.  BC better than Missouri...maybe....all depends on the what the criteria is.  

Only 60 schools in the US are members of the AAU and they have no problem kicking schools out that don't meet their standards.  When you consider most of the Ivy schools are in there, plus Stanford, Cal, MIT, Cal Tech, and the top Pac Twelve, Big Ten universities...well it's a who's who of American education.  Been around since 1900.  Did you know that more than 50% of the PHD's awarded each year in all of the U.S. come from AAU schools?

The question was about reputation, and like it or not the academic reputations are often driven by large research dollars, endowments, presence of law and medical schools, etc.  An individual's education is ultimately up to them.  Having attended two of these AAU schools (KU and IU) and one non-AAU school (Marquette), I can put tremendous value on all of them.

[jficke13]

I wonder what it would look like if you ranked the conferences by dollars brought in by the school's research licensing. I heard somewhere during this whole restructuring fiasco that schools like Nwestern, Duke, UW, etc... all earn FAR FAR FAR more off of the rights they license out from their research divisions than they do off of athletics.

[Pakuni]

The same can be said of US News.  The difference is, one is a magazine that has made a cottage industry of this ranking system while the AAU is an elite organization with very few members and extremely difficult requirements to get in.  BC better than Missouri...maybe....all depends on the what the criteria is.  

Only 60 schools in the US are members of the AAU and they have no problem kicking schools out that don't meet their standards.  When you consider most of the Ivy schools are in there, plus Stanford, Cal, MIT, Cal Tech, and the top Pac Twelve, Big Ten universities...well it's a who's who of American education.  Been around since 1900.  Did you know that more than 50% of the PHD's awarded each year in all of the U.S. come from AAU schools?

The question was about reputation, and like it or not the academic reputations are often driven by large research dollars, endowments, presence of law and medical schools, etc.  An individual's education is ultimately up to them.  Having attended two of these AAU schools (KU and IU) and one non-AAU school (Marquette), I can put tremendous value on all of them.

Geez Chico's, that reads like an AAU press release. Let's be honest ... while the AAU might have once been about lofty platitudes and the like, today it's little more than a lobbying organization that tries (successfully) to secure the lion's share of federal grant money for its members. The only reason they've booted members in recent history is because those members were securing enough, or the right kind, of grant money.

But yes, the issue is reputation. And while the US News rankings certainly has its flaws, the rankings are all about reputation. They're both largely based on reputation and they - to a far greater extent than the AAU - determine reputations. The single most important factor in the US News ranking is peer assessment ... what professors and administrators at other schools think of your school.
So, when a school like BC ranks 31st or ND 17th or G'Town 21st, it reflects the fact that people in the university fields believe they're much better schools than IU at 83rd, Mizzou at 97th and Kansas at 109th (or MU at 83rd , for that matter) ... despite their AAU status, of which I'm sure they're well aware.
Remember, the question was about reputation.

[Stronghold]

One of our own Jesuits once said something to me along the lines of, "There is a qualitative difference between a Marquette graduate and a graduate from <Insert big state school name here>."  He went on basically stating get your undergraduate education at a place like this and then go to a big research school for graduate programs.  

I believe this to be quite true in more cases than not.

[keefe]

The same can be said of US News.  The difference is, one is a magazine that has made a cottage industry of this ranking system while the AAU is an elite organization with very few members and extremely difficult requirements to get in.  BC better than Missouri...maybe....all depends on the what the criteria is.  

Only 60 schools in the US are members of the AAU and they have no problem kicking schools out that don't meet their standards.  When you consider most of the Ivy schools are in there, plus Stanford, Cal, MIT, Cal Tech, and the top Pac Twelve, Big Ten universities...well it's a who's who of American education.  Been around since 1900.  Did you know that more than 50% of the PHD's awarded each year in all of the U.S. come from AAU schools?

The question was about reputation, and like it or not the academic reputations are often driven by large research dollars, endowments, presence of law and medical schools, etc.  An individual's education is ultimately up to them.  Having attended two of these AAU schools (KU and IU) and one non-AAU school (Marquette), I can put tremendous value on all of them.

If money, geography, and course of study are not barriers and your child was accepted to one of these non-AAU members:

Bates, Middlebury, Amherst, Williams, Tufts, Dartmouth, Vassar or Swarthmore

And these AAU members:

Mizzou, SUNY Stony Brook, UC Irvine, UC Davis, UCSB, Colorado, SUNY Buffalo, Iowa State

from which list would you encourage your child to attend? Be honest.

[keefe]

a good percentage were foreign students

You mean the guys who were in the library on Saturday nights?

[buckchuckler]

The thing about athletic conferences is that academics don't matter.

[ChicosBailBonds]

Someone did this for football



http://m.outkickthecoverage.com/us-news-rankings-of-top-six-football-conferences.php

[Tugg Speedman]

Someone did this for football
http://m.outkickthecoverage.com/us-news-rankings-of-top-six-football-conferences.php

Be careful with this list as they do NOT include the C7 in the BE and count Pitt and Syracuse in the ACC

ACC -- Average of 51.2
8. Duke
24. Virginia
27. Wake Forest
30. North Carolina
31. Boston College
36. Georgia Tech
44. Miami
58. Syracuse
58. Maryland
58. Pittsburgh
68. Clemson
72. Virginia Tech
97. Florida State
106. North Carolina State



Big Ten: Average of 57.5
12. Northwestern
29. Michigan
41. Wisconsin
46. Penn State
46. Illinois
56. Ohio State
65. Purdue
68. Minnesota
72. Michigan State
72. Iowa
83. Indiana
101. Nebraska



Pac 12: Average of 81.75
6. Stanford
21. Cal
24. UCLA
24. USC
46. Washington
97. Colorado
115. Oregon
120. Arizona
125. Utah
125. Washington State
139. Arizona State
139. Oregon State

SEC -- Average of 98.7
17. Vandy
54. Florida
63. Georgia
65. Texas A&M
77. Alabama
89. Auburn
97. Missouri
101. Tennessee
115. South Carolina
125. Kentucky
134. LSU
134. Arkansas
151. Ole Miss
160. Mississippi State

Big 12 -- average 113.1
46. Texas
77. Baylor
92. TCU
101. Iowa State
104. Oklahoma
106. Kansas
139. Kansas State
139. Oklahoma State
165. Texas Tech
165. West Virginia

Big East -- Average of 130.6
58. SMU
63. UConn
68. Rutgers
125. Temple
139. Cincinnati
160. Louisville
165. San Diego State
170. South Florida
174. Central Florida
184. Houston
Memphis (unranked)
Boise State (#62 regional western college)
To be fair Navy also isn't ranked and would likely be a top 25 caliber school.