CTHoya08
Diamond Hoya (over 2500 posts)
Bring back Izzo!
Posts: 2,861
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Post by CTHoya08 on Oct 20, 2021 9:40:31 GMT -5
There’s no question that the Big East schools aren’t on par with some in other conferences. But are the firms you’re talking about recruiting at Clemson or wherever because they happen to play in the same league as UVa and Duke? Or are they recruiting at UVa and Duke? Sure, it would be nice to have our athletic and academic peers aligned better. But it’s such a marginal factor compared to the other things discussed in this thread. If you put George Washington University in the Ivy League today, the school would rank above GU in less than a decade. No doubt in my mind. I think that the Ivy League truly is unique in that regard, though. Outside of the Ivy League, I don't think that very many people view athletic-conference affiliation as a proxy for academic bona fides.
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prhoya
Blue & Gray (over 10,000 posts)
Posts: 23,305
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Post by prhoya on Oct 20, 2021 9:40:56 GMT -5
Very few jobs at Gtwn seem to have any real accountability from the Pres on down. Also most univ presidents max out at 10 year terms. I remember talking with both Father Healy and Father Beirne about that 10-yr term. They were both very interesting men and university presidents. Here’s the list of GU presidents: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_presidents_of_Georgetown_UniversityDeGioia is on his 20th year. No other president lasted more than 13 years.
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Bigs"R"Us
Platinum Hoya (over 5000 posts)
Posts: 6,642
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Post by Bigs"R"Us on Oct 20, 2021 13:30:06 GMT -5
The school’s stature has stagnated, if not slipped a bit, under his tenure. Granted, not all factors are under his control.
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Bigs"R"Us
Platinum Hoya (over 5000 posts)
Posts: 6,642
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Post by Bigs"R"Us on Oct 20, 2021 13:40:53 GMT -5
The cost of college killed the liberal arts degree. Parents aren’t spending $300,000 only to have their kids unemployed and living at home after four years. We view stacks of college resumes regularly. The liberal arts majors get tossed out first, perhaps unfairly. We are hiring college kids with STEM competency and demonstrated interest in finance.
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RusskyHoya
Diamond Hoya (over 2500 posts)
In Soviet Russia, Hoya Blue Bleeds You!
Posts: 4,608
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Post by RusskyHoya on Oct 20, 2021 22:29:46 GMT -5
Russky Hoya--you are way off base with the quant trend in political science-- I'm going to assume you mean that I am off base in my assessment of the Georgetown Government department's choices being seemingly positive, rather than being off base that it was a deliberate choice at all (because it would be pretty outlandish to claim that all of the highly credentialed and regarded GU faculty to have been simply ignorant of the biggest development in their field in 50 years or more). So I guess I should start out by stating the obvious: most people in the field today would probably agree with you, though more for ideological/philosophical reasons than out of pragmatic "what will make my university seem the most elite/be the most in demand" considerations. How has the failure to recognize and do anything about that helped Gtwn or its students in any way--all it has done is led to the perception that Gtwn is not a leader in the field where we clearly should be... The Dans Nexon and Drezner and David Edelstein are probably the best suited to lay this out, but I'll do my best to succinctly channel the explanations they gave me when I was still working with them:
Georgetown GOVT views quantitative methods as valid and useful and indispensable... when appropriate. It does not believe that quantitative methods are the *only* valid approach to political science. In this, it has stood somewhat aloof from the rest of American (but not international!) academia over the last two decades or so. This distinctive posture is in fact an institutional advantage because not everyone wants to only do quantitative work. It may not be quite as distinctive in branding or public recognition as the 'Chicago School' for economics, but Georgetown's divergence in this regard attracts a diverse array of top-notch candidates, both quant-heavy and non. It is important to emphasize here that departmental and especially PhD program reputation and recruitment does not work like undergrad or law/business school admissions, where there's a relatively pyramidal hierarchy, such that admission to schools at a higher tier all but guarantees admission to schools lower tiers because the schools are all essentially looking for the same things. Other universities' politsci departments have their own institutional philosophies and methodological preferences and quirks, and they seek out doctoral students who will mesh well within that context. For that reason, defining who is "a leader in the field" and who isn't is not so straightforward. ...and also led to the fact that Gtwn students have fewer quant skills than they should hurting them in the job mkt-- Assuming we're still talking about the GOVT department here... the people coming out of those programs have more than adequate quantitative skill to become tenure-track faculty in any polisci department, which is pretty much the only job market that any doctoral program cares about. Many go so far as to rather openly discriminate against any applicant not dead-set on a career in traditional academia. Georgetown does not do that - and it is true that its reputation scores tend to suffer as a result. But this is a problem/bias within academia, not a Georgetown problem, one that is also being increasingly challenged as the inescapable math of "too many PhDs, not enough professor jobs" continues to run its course. The fact that the McCourt School is setting up a massive data institute actually supports my point--If the big data thing is not impt why would they be trumpeting the fact that they are doing this The point here is not that big data or quantitative methods aren't important, it's that they are not the only thing that is important to the exclusion of everything else, which is essentially the cliff that most of American academic polisci went off of. Over the last few years, we've been seeing more and more remorse over that from the rest of the field, as the shock of the almost totally unforeseen populist wave (Trump, Orban, Le Pen, PiS in Poland, etc.) triggered greater scrutiny of many elaborately constructed quantitative models and has revealed just how flimsy they were methodologically.
A case in point from years before the current quantitative 'crisis of faith' - when I was still working for the Security Studies Program, I hosted one of our alumni for a book talk. He had gone on to do his PhD at the Bush School at Texas A&M and had turned his dissertation into a book, as academics are wont to do. I got Edelstein to be the host of the talk, as he was our most 'hardcore polisci' core faculty at the time.
What transpired can only be described as a very polite vivisection, as the University of Chicago PhD (and thus plenty adept quantitatively) Prof. Edelstein filleted the methodology in this young postdoc's disserbook. What was good enough to pass muster with the 'All Quant Everything' crowd simply did not hold up when confronted by counterexamples that could not be simply excluded as outliers or the pointing out of logical implications of the model that were absurd on their face.
I felt so bad for the guy that I bought his book, perhaps the only person to do so at that event. I felt terrible, thinking it must've been one of the most mortifying experiences of his life. Little did I know he had made an infamous appearance on the Washington Post's Date Lab....
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Post by reformation on Oct 21, 2021 9:01:10 GMT -5
Long answer above to simple point re the univ potentially not keeping up with peers
My take --I'm sure you're right that Georgetown profs certainly saw that the field was going in a quant direction. They just didn't do much about it. Other univ's did. Dartmouth(as an example ) set up a quant social science program(mostly undergrads) a number of years back and now has 100+ undergrads majoring in it. The quant social science programs are a good way to expose liberal arts/soc science majors to quant skills and research in a meaningful way and signicantly broaden their career opptys. Georgetown should have done the same program Dartmouth did 5-10 years ago. Maybe they will eventually. The big places all did the same Chicago/Har/Stan/Prin etc., but I highlighted Dart as being more comparable from a resource perspective to Gtwn. Not sure if the Profs really follow what goes on at competitor schools in terms of their offerings very closely--certainly doesn't look like it. I think the reason that Gtwn is always behind in developing programs like Dartmouth did is that there is not a clear sense of gaols accountability performance benchmarking etc. As alums or paying parents/students we deserve better.
I suspect that Gtwn did not do anything in this regard because they still have a lot of undergrads majoring in govt and are not benchmarked to make sure that their curricular offerings are competitive with peers. Most top univ's had seen big declines in enrollment beginning about 10 yrs ago. Updating their curricular offerings was one way to make the offerings more relevant. As a general point also, not limited to Govt, Gtwn's lack of focus on quant skills is not a + for graduates--at the margin does not help their career opptys or improve their overall educational experience
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Post by happyhoya1979 on Oct 22, 2021 12:42:56 GMT -5
Conference membership is almost irrelevant to academic reputation - ask Vanderbilt. Or Rice, for that matter. Georgetown is a founder of the Big East and it's a good place to be. Besides, I'm not sure that it quite fits any other conference, and it's not in demand by any other conference. I can’t say I agree. I absolutely believe people associate your school, holistically, academics included, with the pool of schools you associate with athletically. One could argue it benefits the academically lesser than schools, ie. an Auburn is benefited by Vanderbilt more than Vandy is harmed. But the association still matters. The expanded Big East before the current reconstitution which included major research universities like Boston College, Syracuse, U Pittsburgh , Notre Dame and even for that matter West Virginia U, was much better company to keep academically than what we have now. The closest fit to us institutionally, especially when you consider football (where Georgetown is one of only ten FCS non-scholarship schools and the others are the Ivies and Marist) would be the Ivy League but to go in that direction would kill our potential national powerhouse opportunity in basketball, soccer and track. The best thing we can do is double down on basketball in the Big East, pray for a five star recruit (or two) and win big.
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Post by TrueHoyaBlue on Oct 22, 2021 14:54:33 GMT -5
There’s no question that the Big East schools aren’t on par with some in other conferences. But are the firms you’re talking about recruiting at Clemson or wherever because they happen to play in the same league as UVa and Duke? Or are they recruiting at UVa and Duke? Sure, it would be nice to have our athletic and academic peers aligned better. But it’s such a marginal factor compared to the other things discussed in this thread. If you put George Washington University in the Ivy League today, the school would rank above GU in less than a decade. No doubt in my mind. Quite a straw man, since the membership hasn’t budged in the 67 years since the Ivy League athletic concurrence was formed (and roughly 150 years since the academic grouping was a thing).
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Post by badgerhoya on Oct 22, 2021 19:05:10 GMT -5
I can’t say I agree. I absolutely believe people associate your school, holistically, academics included, with the pool of schools you associate with athletically. One could argue it benefits the academically lesser than schools, ie. an Auburn is benefited by Vanderbilt more than Vandy is harmed. But the association still matters. The expanded Big East before the current reconstitution which included major research universities like Boston College, Syracuse, U Pittsburgh , Notre Dame and even for that matter West Virginia U, was much better company to keep academically than what we have now. The closest fit to us institutionally, especially when you consider football (where Georgetown is one of only ten FCS non-scholarship schools and the others are the Ivies and Marist) would be the Ivy League but to go in that direction would kill our potential national powerhouse opportunity in basketball, soccer and track. The best thing we can do is double down on basketball in the Big East, pray for a five star recruit (or two) and win big. I'm w/DFW on this, and I don't understand this line of thinking. - We've, by and large, been associated with the same, small-ish, private universities since 1979, and always been considered to be the cream of the crop amongst those schools -- including the larger schools you mention. If it's hurt us academically, we've been going downhill since I was 6 months old. To that end...
- ... It just completely ignores the idea that football is driving conference membership. All else equal, would we love to still be associated w/BC? Or Duke for that matter? Of course?! But are those conferences going to give up a share to a team that doesn't have FBS football? Gimme a break...
- And last... this is the same WVU that wasn't considered to have good enough academics to get into the ACC, right? Just checking.
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