DanMcQ
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Post by DanMcQ on Aug 17, 2006 1:43:25 GMT -5
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Aug 17, 2006 7:16:43 GMT -5
G'Town sitting at the 15th most selective. Nice (I guess).
I've never paid much attention to these rankings or how they're tabulated... could someone give a general overview of how they determine one school is the 6th best and the other the 8th or 15th or 30th?
Also, how does a school move up/down? Is it a matter of simply building new facilities or bringing on a few famous professors or expanding a graduate program? I would think G'Town would "suffer" in a few areas simply by virtue of not focusing on computer science, engineering, etc.
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RBHoya
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Post by RBHoya on Aug 17, 2006 8:04:07 GMT -5
I forget, there are a lot of variables involved in there such as peer assessment, alumni giving rate, % of professors working full time, the selectivity component, student-faculty ratio, and a number of others. I don't remember exactly, I have some more detailed stuff from last year that had all of the criteria, but it's saved on my laptop at home. I can post it later if nobody else does it between now and then. IIRC, you are right about our lack of engineering programs and comparatively weak science programs bringing us down some. Not to say our science programs aren't good, they just aren't as highly-regarded as, say,UC Berkeley's, Hopkins', Rice's, Emory's, or Carnegie Mellon's--the group of school's directly ahead of us. IMO, that's likely dragging our peer rankign down a bit.
Still, I'd like to see us leap over most of that group as well as places like Notre Dame or Vanderbilt. In some ways I think comparing Georgetown to the big public schools like Berkeley is apples to oranges. But I wonder what exactly is holding us back from a ranking higher than the afforementioned private schools? Georgetown's selectivity is tied for 15 with Emory, versus Hopkins' 22, Vandy's 26, Notre Dame's 17, and CMU's 32, yet all of those schools are ranked higher overall. That would seem to indicate that Georgetown's reputation among top high school students is better than the rep of some of these schools, which is consistent with what I found when applying to college a couple years back. Still, some statistic somewhere is holding us down and allowing us to be ranked behind them.
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Post by Nitrorebel on Aug 17, 2006 8:33:16 GMT -5
A huge factor is endowment and debt. Emory is absolutely loaded through the Coca-Cola connection, and the other schools you mentioned have way more funds than G-town as well. (Hence, the achingly slow building of new facilities, bad debt rating, etc.)
Washington U is loaded. Hopkins with all its science work, and so on. Alumni giving is much lower at G-town than at our peers, and is the main factor holding us back in a big way. Not only does it count against us, but it also means our buildings, facilities and financial aid are all worse as well. The hospital destroyed our finances, and really set us back. Either this fiscal year or soon, the hospital will be completely written off, which will help in a big way, and free up funds. And hopefully alumni giving will continue to pick up as it has in the last few years.
The science aspect has always been unfair in my mind. Our strengths in international everything (from int'l econ, poli sci, to int'l business) is not rated as highly as Hopkins' stable of researchers. Why not? People like Albright or Lake should be getting us way more cred in the rankings. Sure, they ain't healing cancer, but being Secretary of State or National Security Advisor isn't that bad, is it? FWIW.
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Boz
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Post by Boz on Aug 17, 2006 9:22:11 GMT -5
Also, how does a school move up/down? Grease the editors! Dr. Philip Barbay may not approve of these tactics, but can anyone dispute that Thornton Melon could put Grand Lakes University in the Top 5?
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SFHoya99
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Post by SFHoya99 on Aug 17, 2006 9:53:03 GMT -5
I have last year's. Places we do relatively worse than 23:
Peer Assessment Score (barely, but surprising, no?) Faculty Resources Financial Resources (29th) Full Time Professors
Things you'd thought we'd be better in:
Class Size (Under 20 and Over 50) Faculty:Student Ratio (Which is screwed because of research. We're at 11:1, but I guarantee all of Cal Tech's 3:1 don't teach undergrad)
Things we're better at than 23:
Selectivity (22 -- so barely, but this is much higher than most Top 25) Graduation and Retention Rate (9th) Freshmen in Top 10% of class Alumni Giving Rate 33%, and that's good for 17th place. Berkeley has a 15% giving rate, for example. Of course Princeton is at 61%.
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Post by hilltopper2000 on Aug 17, 2006 10:26:47 GMT -5
A couple random thoughts:
Our giving rate needs to improve, but that won't help our financial standing. We need more LARGE gifts. NYU has a giving rate of 11%, but I'd trade that for their three largest gifts -- which taken together are larger than our entire endowment. That school has landed three $150+ million gifts since we started our capital campaign. Further, Emory's financial success largely stems from one gifts of $300 million (I think) about 10 years ago. The list goes on and on. I hope one day GU gets lucky with a couple of those. We have as many alums as Emory who could do it if they desired.
Our peer assessment score is hurt by our underachieving graduate programs. They simply need more funding -- again money.
What concerns me most about the numbers in the most recent rankings is actually our SAT spread. 1290 - 1490 seems low for a school that is as competitive as GU. We are getting our clock cleaned by Wash U. (1350-1520) and Rice (1330-1540), two schools that most people would not immediately identify as being as hard to get into to. I wonder if it might be time to explore granting academic financials rewards like Wash U., Rice, Duke, Emory, etc. Oh wait . . . money.
Finally, on the money issue, something I've harped on before -- a signficant problem, particularly over the last ten years, is the poor rate of return GU has gotten on its endowment. We've lost about 20 places in the decade on the endowment ranking list, even though we've raised more endowed funds than nearly every school that has passed us. DeGioia has finally righted the ship and brought in a Chief Investment Officer, but I worry we will refer to 1995-2005 as the lost decade, where poor investing and the med center combined to hold GU back while a whole host of schools gallopped on.
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Post by TrueHoyaBlue on Aug 17, 2006 10:32:21 GMT -5
We usually lose out on financial resources (mostly because of the endowment and the historical med center issues, although our alumni giving rate has been rising quite a bit over the last few years).
Faculty resources really hits us, though, in this methodology, as we lose points for having a lot of part-time professors, and professors without terminal degrees. This is a very misleading stat, though, because:
A) a lot of these professors are in the SFS or the government department, where years of service at the Pentagon, CIA, State Department can be considerably more valuable than having a ph.d., particularly as many of these professor currently hold position in the government or at Brookings, RAND, etc, which enhance their abilities to bring in real world examples.
B) otherwise, the most likely departments to have part-time or non-terminal-degree professors are foreign languages, and since GU's language offerings are very extensive, they impact the overall numbers considerably.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Aug 17, 2006 10:36:17 GMT -5
Dr. Philip Barbay may not approve of these tactics, but can anyone dispute that Thornton Melon could put Grand Lakes University in the Top 5? As you can imagine, I find this worthy of nomination for Post. Of. The. Year.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Aug 17, 2006 10:40:27 GMT -5
Nitro - the med center will be "written off?" Please explain... first I've heard of this (I generally tune out med center talk as it generally depresses me via its impact on university finances).
It sounds like money is the root of our problems on one level or another. Other than the new CIO, are there any other steps the school is taking to remedy the situation? Is there actually a second Third Century Campaign about to start as I've heard rumored?
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Post by TrueHoyaBlue on Aug 17, 2006 11:09:23 GMT -5
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Post by Nitrorebel on Aug 17, 2006 12:09:35 GMT -5
Basically, the Hospital was run by GU through the O'Donovan regime at a huge loss. I believe hearing at some point almost 2/3 of undergrad tuition was going towards financing it!!! Anyway, when we finally sold the damn thing to MedStar, it was in such terrible financial condition that we had to assume the responsibility for the debt for a few years. If I remember right, any fiscal year now that obligation expires, freeing a significant amount of money that for years now has gone straight into a black hole. Since we still retain the Hospital in terms of training docs and treating students, etc, the deal is good anyway you see it, and really a huge boost for our budget.
Rooter, the AMOUNT is exactly what I mean. Sure, lots of people are giving at G-town, but it's peanuts compared to Gates' (U Wash), Dell's (Texas), Goizueta's (Emory), and so on gifts. I mean, the Hoop Club is a great example of this. We may be getting $25 donations (though even those are tiny in terms of percentage), but we're not getting those big chunks of cash. That hits us all around.
And like I said, I think it sucks that people like Albright or Lake or Dionne don't get more recognition in the rankings. They may not be full-fledged "academics" or have published a million papers, but clearly they are just as much leaders in their fields as a brain surgeon at Hopkins or a physicist at CalTech.
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Post by hilltopper2000 on Aug 17, 2006 12:17:12 GMT -5
Nitro: I've never heard of this debt issue before. But I can tell you that the Med Center is still an on-going drain on resources. The Hoya article refers to losses from operating the research and teaching facilities. Losses from the operations of the hospital are MedStar's problems. (Also, I think you slighted Dionne, who is a first-rate scholar.) If anyone is interested, all of the university's financials are available on-line: www.georgetown.edu/finaff/gta/statements.html
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Post by Nitrorebel on Aug 17, 2006 12:24:37 GMT -5
Maybe I'm getting debt with on-going operational expenses confused, but I don't think so. There might be some archived Hoya article when the sale to MedStar happened. Anyway, it's a huge financial black-hole.
Not slighting Dionne, but he's def not known in academic circles for poli sci the way he is respected as a commentator for the Post, NPR, etc. Anyway, a quibble. A lot of our profs don't get the cred in these rankings a scientist gets. I don't think that's right, but that's just one opinion obviously.
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Post by Nitrorebel on Aug 17, 2006 12:33:09 GMT -5
OK, here's an excellent article from The Hoya from a little while back that examines all the financial problems and intricacies with the hospital. It's really ugly.
Anyway, this is what I was referring to when I said debt, which will fall off the books soon, and I was mistaken, its operational expenses they are referring to:
"Financial Troubles Continue
Finances after the transaction, like those before the sale, have failed to meet projections. In 1998, former Senior Vice President Weisel projected to the Faculty Senate that the Medical Center would be revenue neutral by 2000. Under a restaging plan implemented by MedStar and the university in 2000, the Medical Center was supposed to break even in fiscal year 2006.
In 2001, the target date was pushed back to fiscal year 2007. The university’s Board of Directors has agreed to fund these deficits until 2007. According to DeMaria, the Medical Center expects a $24.8 million shortfall in fiscal year 2004."
Basically, it's not good for our budget or our endowment.
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Post by TrueHoyaBlue on Aug 17, 2006 12:38:58 GMT -5
The catch with Hospital/Med Center is that medical research facilities have traditionally been a net drain on resources. However, in the "good old days," research costs were subsidized by clinical revenues in the hospital.
Once shifts in the health care industry occurred (80s-90s, due to HMOs, among other things), clinical enterprises began to be less profitable, and very quickly, they move from the "life raft" to the "anchor" on Med Center finances.
In Georgetown's case, the hospital accrued a ton of debt, which is now largely paid off (8 or 9 years after the sale to MedStar). However, the remaining challenge has been how to correct a much longer historical trend, that of medical research losing money. This has been challenging, due to a lot of factors... philanthropy is harder to come by for medical research than for things like buildings... federal grants generally require some level of institutional spending to match federal contributions... medical research previously existed in an arena with significant financial cushion (clinical revenues)... and so these are some of the issues that G.U. has been dealing with in attempting to turn the remaining parts of the medical center (minus the hospital), from net money-losers, to net money-earners -- or at least break-eveners.
And that process is the piece that has been extended to 2010. Meanwhile, the main campus and law center have been running small to medium sized surpluses for the last several years.
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Post by hilltopper2000 on Aug 17, 2006 12:40:14 GMT -5
I think that was the Board laying the smackdown on the Med Center to break even by 2007 or expect major cuts in operations. It still hasn't, btw. The Med Center does not include the hospital portion, though, which is run by MedStar. As of 2000, I think the hospital is no longer the Unversity's problem. (The reference to the "restaging plan" is confusing. The restaging plan was just the turn-over of the hospital to MedStar. I don't think MedStar cares one way or the other if the Medical Center is in the red.)
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DFW HOYA
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Post by DFW HOYA on Aug 17, 2006 12:52:22 GMT -5
The hospital debt is nowhere close to being paid off--it's the short term, not long-term liabilities which have been addressed in recent years. That's why Georgetown is at its debt ceiling and has suffered in recent years being placed on S&P credit watch (a BBB+ as late as 2004).
The post above correctly notes that the losses are now coming from the imbalance of clinical research revenues vs. ongoing expenses. It's a no-win situation, because without clinical research, Georgetown falls completely out of the Tier I research universities listings.
So if the losses continue, where do you start cutting? Does it shift to cuts at the other schools?
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SFHoya99
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Post by SFHoya99 on Aug 17, 2006 12:58:52 GMT -5
Not to get away from cash, but I think the idea that Georgetown should up the average student's SAT score so it doesn't fall in the rankings wrong.
Georgetown's goal should not be to stay high in rankings.
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SoCalHoya
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Post by SoCalHoya on Aug 17, 2006 13:05:29 GMT -5
Well, for the first time I can say that prospective students I've talked to are less interested in the US News rankings. It's still important to be a top school--so in fact I do think it is important to stay in that top 25. But I have heard from them that top HS students are looking to sources other than US News, and some of those other sources (rightfully) ignore things like PhDs per student, etc.
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