nbhoya
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Post by nbhoya on Jan 3, 2020 15:12:49 GMT -5
One thing that should not be overlooked is the current state of the physical plant. On a couple of recent visits it looked like maintenance is being deferred. The asphalt in the roadways was crumbling, the men's room in Pierce was out of order, and the steps to Healy between the cannons had gaps between the treads and the risers. And this is not just a grumpy old alum talking. My 17 yo daughter noticed it on her admission tour. Current infrastructure needs to be a major focus. Capital building improvements are a must going forward.
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RusskyHoya
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Post by RusskyHoya on Jan 5, 2020 13:21:32 GMT -5
One thing that should not be overlooked is the current state of the physical plant. On a couple of recent visits it looked like maintenance is being deferred. The asphalt in the roadways was crumbling, the men's room in Pierce was out of order, and the steps to Healy between the cannons had gaps between the treads and the risers. And this is not just a grumpy old alum talking. My 17 yo daughter noticed it on her admission tour. Current infrastructure needs to be a major focus. Capital building improvements are a must going forward. A very important point, both in Georgetown's specific case and more generally. One of the biggest systematic flaws in how major institutions across the board - particularly those that are 'too big to fail' - do planning and budgeting is the way in which infrastructural upkeep gets categorized as an operational expense, where new assets are considered capital improvements. Maintenance gets short shrift and is oftentimes deferred as funds are reprogrammed to other operational needs, since most operational funds are necessarily fungible to account for immediate "keep the lights running" needs. Capital improvements, by contrast, are sexy, highlighted in glossy strategic plans... and often-times earmarked in such a way that can't be readily reprogrammed. We call them "capital campaigns" for a reason! The current predicaments of the New York City Subway and the DC area Metro stand as cautionary tales. Let this state of affairs play out long enough, and you'll find yourself with deferred maintenance as a crisis of strategic - possible existential - importance. That's certainly a feeling that's been building at Georgetown for years. Students were certainly giving voice to it during the last round of Campus Plan development: In fact, it led to a commitment by the University to prioritize housing renovations in particular. Maintenance of student housing, of course, has a sizable and outspoken constituency (and a lot of legitimate gripes). Many other key pieces of infrastructure do not... though it's important to remember that much of it is not readily visible, including when upgrades *do* take place, as with the water chiller and other work done over the years by Mueller.
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Post by reformation on Jan 12, 2020 10:06:23 GMT -5
Agree that infrastructure is an issue--I know the pres of Northwstern lived in dorms for a week to get a feel for what needs to be done there. I guess in trying to pick a new pres(assuming in next 3-5 yrs), I want somebody with a credible plan/model for what they want to accomplish. One of the issues I think is that Gtwn is a very insular place with little accountability + no real performance benchmarks. Northwestern has U Chicago, Ivies each other, Duke self selects Stanford et al. Gtwn basically insists its totally unique for the most part: structurally that leads to complacency and laziness in any big organization. This is a silly view for Gtwn to have and has not served us well in decision making, fundraising etc.
If one asks people at other top univ's what they think of Gtwn you typically get the same answer, i.e., good students/professors but should be a lot better. There are a bunch of obvious misses, i.e., quant social science, neuroscience etc. + good depts. that should be elite. That may or may not be news to many; however; it is not purely a money thing as many in the admin typically blame every shortcoming on.
What might not be as obvious is that the Gtwn students on average typically take coursework on the lower end of academic rigor versus peer institutions. I am the faculty adviser for a pretty big sport at one of the ivies so I have a pretty good view of this--have also interviewed ton of students in my non academic job at a big financial institution so have seen input/output from a number of different sides. Its not that Gtwn is not good by any means in this regard, but it could be a lot better. Also I think Gtwn tries to say that students get more real world to compensate for lack of academic rigor; that is true to some extent but the difference between what Gtwn offers vs other univ's in this regard has narrowed considerably-(increase in summer programs across industries for underclassmen has narrowed Gtwn's location advantage)-TBH I say that the kids that I see from Columbia actually have more interesting internships than the Gtwn kids--obviously Gtwn has better govt-Columbia better business, but it also has tech et al.
Also getting someone who is oriented to looking at issues empirically from admissions to career placement to general academic resource allocation and even athletics would be a big help in actually diagnosing issues developing solutions.
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nbhoya
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Post by nbhoya on Jan 12, 2020 10:27:16 GMT -5
Does Georgetown really not identify and compare to peer institutions? That’s really unfortunate if true. One would think we’d strive to be on par with the Ivies.
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Bigs"R"Us
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Post by Bigs"R"Us on Jan 12, 2020 12:36:27 GMT -5
There seems to be a slow gravitational pull on GU toward Villanova, Fordham and Holy Cross. The mismanagement is hard to see measured in years, but very apparent in decades. Schools like Northwestern, Wash U, Emory, Berkeley, Vanderbilt, Rice and USC have leapt past GU and Michigan, Carnegie Mellon and Tufts are next. Dropping out of the top-25 in the USN&WR would be catastrophic. “We do things our way” doesn’t cut it.
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RusskyHoya
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Post by RusskyHoya on Jan 12, 2020 23:57:49 GMT -5
One of the issues I think is that Gtwn is a very insular place with little accountability + no real performance benchmarks. Northwestern has U Chicago, Ivies each other, Duke self selects Stanford et al. Gtwn basically insists its totally unique for the most part: structurally that leads to complacency and laziness in any big organization. This is a silly view for Gtwn to have and has not served us well in decision making, fundraising etc. Does Georgetown really not identify and compare to peer institutions? That’s really unfortunate if true. One would think we’d strive to be on par with the Ivies. When it comes to specific departments and functions, I can assure you that plenty of benchmarking and comparison to peers takes place. That was certainly true during my time in admissions, and I also saw it on the academic side when I worked for the Security Studies Program and got to see how various internal administrative functions (the SFS, the Graduate School, Advancement...even UIS) operated. On the academic side, the criticism is more often that, if anything, academia has become too obsessed with rankings and prestige whoring at the expense of its true reasons for being.
Having said that, it is certainly true that DeGioia often remarks that the goal is to be the best Georgetown, remaining true to the school's identity rather than chasing after the metaphorical Jones. In that respect, I understand why people find it frustrating that there doesn't appear to be a model we can just copy. But to me, there are some very valid reasons - mismatches in institutional aspirations and/or capabilities - why none of the commonly cited categories of peers quite work as an apples-to-apples comparison or aspirational model for us. To whit: - The Ivies: Two critical and obvious disconnects between Georgetown and the Ancient Eight. First, the resource disparity is, for all intents and purposes, insurmountable. Brown, the 'poorest' Ivy, has an endowment more than twice Georgetown's while operating in a lower cost-of-living area. Our current system of finance concentrates the rewards among those who have the most - wealth has an accelerant effect., begetting more wealth faster. Second, the Ivies abandoned their religious affiliations long ago, and while Georgetown continues to become more laicized, its Catholic identity continues to shape its institutional priorities in ways that diverge from secular schools.
- The Catholic Crown Jewels: Ok, so if Catholicism is such a big deal, then what about Notre Dame? Or, to make it more of a generalizable model and less about one school in particular, let's throw Boston College in there as well. Again, we have some obvious disconnects. Notre Dame's endowment is north of $10B and cannot possibly be caught. BC's is closer, but still hundreds of millions more than Georgetown's, even as it backs a smaller portfolio of programs. Moreover, Notre Dame places an outsized emphasis on athletics that Georgetown simply does not and will not; BC is no Notre Dame, but playing competitive FBS football is still a university-defining attribute, and their path is not ours.
- Current Peers, Near-Peers, and Competitors: How about the schools that we compete against for undergrads, US News rankings, etc? The likes of Duke, Northwestern, Emory, UChicago, Vanderbilt, Rice, Tufts, Johns Hopkins, NYU, Tulane, etc. This cohort is split between those who compete in FBS and those who chose to go the D-III route. Either one can work... but Georgetown has committed itself to walking a different path, for reasons I've beaten to death many times over on the football board.
Still, this group collectively is probably the most relevant source of aspirational models in areas where their institutional profiles and ethos do overlap with Georgetown's (resources remain a confounding variable in many cases, though: Northwestern's endowment is $11B+, Duke's $8.5B+, Rice's $6B+, Hopkins and Vandy both over $4B). They just operate in a very different context, one that is not directly transferable. - Big East/Patriot League: There are some schools that have chosen to strike a similar athletics balance as Georgetown, to be sure. A couple of the Patriots have even gotten themselves over the $1B endowment line (congrats to Holy Cross and Lehigh). But league rules make the PL a much smaller-footprint endeavor than the Big East, and though Butler and Villanova do also play FCS football, they are nowhere near Georgetown from an academic/institutional profile perspective. We may envy their basketball success, but not much else. In this cohort of peers, *Georgetown* is the aspirational model.
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hoyatables
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Post by hoyatables on Jan 13, 2020 12:58:16 GMT -5
There seems to be a slow gravitational pull on GU toward Villanova, Fordham and Holy Cross. The mismanagement is hard to see measured in years, but very apparent in decades. Schools like Northwestern, Wash U, Emory, Berkeley, Vanderbilt, Rice and USC have leapt past GU and Michigan, Carnegie Mellon and Tufts are next. Dropping out of the top-25 in the USN&WR would be catastrophic. “We do things our way” doesn’t cut it. What support do you have for this?
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Bigs"R"Us
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Post by Bigs"R"Us on Jan 13, 2020 13:34:56 GMT -5
GU hovered in the high teens for many years, above Emory, Wash U and a host of others. We have now slipped down to 24 with the California schools (UCLA, Cal, USC) leapfrogging us. Carnagie Mellon and Michigan sit just below us, then you have three ACC (Wake, UVA, GTech), followed by NYU, Tufts and UNC. Many of these schools were safety choices for my classmates. We can’t afford to slip any further without reputations consequences.
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Post by reformation on Jan 13, 2020 15:22:51 GMT -5
Peer analysis would be pretty useful if done at more of a micro level than Russky laid out. There is no reason why any dept should not compare itself to pick your favorite uni in terms of course offerings, faculty specialization, student numbers, student outcomes job's or grad school. At a school level looking at distribution of undergrad majors versus peers, detailed hs prep of students etc. It seems that the only two groups at Gtwn that do this type of analysis regularly and seriously are in fact the two groups that Russky was formerly affiliated; i.e., undergrad admissions and security studies. Not surprisingly these are two areas where Gtwn arguably outperforms. Benchmarking is invaluable in quality control and should also be useful in fundraising. Schools like Northwestern have been successful at raising a lot of money because they pick areas to fundraise for that are likely to draw a lot of $ and make a clear case that the activities can be world class -top 5 or 10 etc. with extra $. I received a fundraising pitch from an academic center at Gtwn recently where I asked a question about where they would rank their own activities relative to others and how would that change with extra $ --they clearly had not thought about the question at all, though eventually came to an answer. They indicated that they had never had that type of discussion before at Gtwn(these are pretty high level people).
Its more part of establishing a culture of excellence that sets top institutions apart and obviously requires some judgement. Cornell,to take an Ivy example, benchmarks its engineering program vs MIT and Stanford, not Brown or Dartmouth. Cornell certainly doesn't benchmark its athletic program versus either MIT or Stanford to take extremes. If Georgetown actually did this type of analysis across the institution more seriously I'd bet it would have raised more money, had better quality control across academic, student life, athletics, infrastructure and fundraising. Also big misses in Gtwn's offerings/fundraising(neuroscience, quant social science to name a couple) and areas to exit would be apparent much earlier if benchmarking was really done frequently and rigorously.
Lack of endowment is not an excuse for lack of management.
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nbhoya
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Post by nbhoya on Jan 13, 2020 18:58:35 GMT -5
I think Gtown should work to partner with Amazon and establish a math/systems/tech-forward school in Northern Virginia, perhaps in Alexandria.
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Post by TrueHoyaBlue on Jan 13, 2020 20:10:42 GMT -5
GU hovered in the high teens for many years, above Emory, Wash U and a host of others. We have now slipped down to 24 with the California schools (UCLA, Cal, USC) leapfrogging us. Carnagie Mellon and Michigan sit just below us, then you have three ACC (Wake, UVA, GTech), followed by NYU, Tufts and UNC. Many of these schools were safety choices for my classmates. We can’t afford to slip any further without reputations consequences. Over the last 20 years or so, Georgetown has bounced between a tie for 17th at the highest and IIRC a 3-way tie for 24th at the lowest. Most of that time, GU has been in the 21-23 range. There hasn’t really been much of a trend in any direction that I can recall.
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Bigs"R"Us
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Post by Bigs"R"Us on Jan 13, 2020 21:08:38 GMT -5
Well, we are at our lowest at 24. Let’s check back in five years to see where we sit. I would wager 28 before 20.
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RusskyHoya
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Post by RusskyHoya on Jan 13, 2020 22:10:22 GMT -5
I think Gtown should work to partner with Amazon and establish a math/systems/tech-forward school in Northern Virginia, perhaps in Alexandria. I think Amazon is looking for more pliant institutions, ones willing to take the risk of getting into bed with a company with rather questionable labor practices: What might not be as obvious is that the Gtwn students on average typically take coursework on the lower end of academic rigor versus peer institutions. I am the faculty adviser for a pretty big sport at one of the ivies so I have a pretty good view of this--have also interviewed ton of students in my non academic job at a big financial institution so have seen input/output from a number of different sides. Its not that Gtwn is not good by any means in this regard, but it could be a lot better. ... Also getting someone who is oriented to looking at issues empirically from admissions to career placement to general academic resource allocation and even athletics would be a big help in actually diagnosing issues developing solutions. This is... a pretty broad claim, one that would also benefit from an empirical perspective. For what its worth, since we're apparently going down the USNews rabbit hole, for 2020 Georgetown is ranked #16 in "Best Undergraduate Teaching" - 8 spots higher than its overall rank. I don't put much stock in such rankings... but I also haven't seen much evidence for the argument that the rigor of Georgetown's undergraduate instruction is lower than that of its peers.
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SSHoya
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Post by SSHoya on Jan 14, 2020 7:02:16 GMT -5
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Bigs"R"Us
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Post by Bigs"R"Us on Jan 14, 2020 8:10:55 GMT -5
When you have to point to sub-rankings, which most prospective students and employers never look at, there is a problem.
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SSHoya
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Post by SSHoya on Jan 14, 2020 8:50:50 GMT -5
When you have to point to sub-rankings, which most prospective students and employers never look at, there is a problem. In the era of niche marketing, less of a problem. Disagree that a prospective student interested in IR and an employer looking for demonstrated interest/expertise never look at those types of rankings. Both my sister (Brown) and brother (Tufts and Fletcher School), retired FSOs, would jokingly refer to the "Georgetown mafia" that ran the State Department. Both their spouses are Hoyas who they met at State Department! I applied to SFS because of its reputation for IR when such national rankings did not exist (1972) but as a prospective student I researched what schools had strong programs in IR. www.collegerank.net/history-of-college-rankings/
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drquigley
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Post by drquigley on Jan 14, 2020 15:10:05 GMT -5
Wow, I've read all the posts and no one wants to acknowledge the elephant in the room. Affordability. It would be nice if GU were affordable to middle class parents like it was to my parents (and like it wasn't to me). How many great kids are we not even attracting because our tuition is so high? I know this is a universal problem now but just looking at our "rankings" and how to raise them only means we aim to be one of the best "elite" colleges. We saw what that leads to with the Lori Laughlin scandal. How many kids are attending GU just because they and their parents want to be able to brag to their friends that they are attending GU? I'm proud to be a GU, SFS, grad but wish that we had eschewed the fancy dorms and dining facilities, as well as the celebrity professors, and stuck to the basics. I would love to see the University make a serious effort to have tuition at the 2030 GU at least 25% less than it is today.
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Post by reformation on Jan 14, 2020 15:57:59 GMT -5
This is... a pretty broad claim, one that would also benefit from an empirical perspective. For what its worth, since we're apparently going down the USNews rabbit hole, for 2020 Georgetown is ranked #16 in "Best Undergraduate Teaching" - 8 spots higher than its overall rank. I don't put much stock in such rankings... but I also haven't seen much evidence for the argument that the rigor of Georgetown's undergraduate instruction is lower than that of its peers.
Easy to do if one wants to look at actual content of comparable classes across different schools. Difference will be more or less prominent depending on major. In general the quant preparation of Gtwn students tends to be well below avg relative to kids at other elite schools. Also Gtwn kids tend to have much smaller participation in "hard" majors than peer schools. I've asked other faculty I teach with what they think of the gtwn applicants + how have gtwn grads performed in the grad programs and generally get a positive but not outstanding review. Clearly there are a lot of great gtwn students who do good degrees but if you want to actually improve the place its important to identify and address weaknesses. I know this is somewhat anecdotal but I probably see academic programs of 20-30 kids a year at the Ivy where I'm an adjunct + maybe 10-20 Gtwn kids through job interviews etc. so i think i have a pretty accurate view. If one wanted to take a more empirical view I guess one could analyze grad school application success and performance at a bunch of benchmark programs--I know that this is not perfect but its somewhat objective--looking at comparable syllabi is another way to do it. TBH I suspect gtwn faculty in a lot of disciplines would share similar views--i would agree in something like security studies that would not be the case, but that is not where Gtwn could use improvement.
With regard to affordability, agree its an issue for Gtwn. I would add anecdotally again that the kids at the Ivy where I teach seem on the whole to be a lot less wealthy than the avg Gtwn kids I run across. Hard to say what to do about it other than looking more analytically at the tradeoff between marginally more financial aid versus marginal academic or other uses. Obviously the other solution is to raise more financial aid which obviously is already a big priority. My only thing to add in this area is that I've seen other universities be more flexible in taking current use money than Gtwn does for specific fin aid uses.
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Post by happyhoya1979 on Jan 14, 2020 19:13:48 GMT -5
When I went to my Ivy League MBA program in the early 1980s after having graduated from SFS, the academic rigor of the SFS program was superior to that of virtually all my Ivy League peers. At SFS I had to take five courses per term all of which required the same workload -20 page research paper, mid-term and final, as that of the undergrad classes of my grad school classmates from other institutions. ONLY at Georgetown you had to complete five classes and not four each term. Additionally, SFS had the do or die (no degree if you failed which led to several of my friends transferring to the college) language proficiency examination which no other school had. Only Yale and Columbia College matched the depth of Georgetown's academic demands and some schools were downright embarassing in what they required(Brown, for instance, in that era required only 28 pass-fail classes to graduate).
While this may not be the case today, when I went to Georgetown, it was one of the most demanding places around.
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SSHoya
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Post by SSHoya on Jan 14, 2020 19:53:58 GMT -5
When I went to my Ivy League MBA program in the early 1980s after having graduated from SFS, the academic rigor of the SFS program was superior to that of virtually all my Ivy League peers. At SFS I had to take five courses per term all of which required the same workload -20 page research paper, mid-term and final as that of the undergrad classes of my grad school classmates from other institutions. ONLY at Georgetown you had to complete five classes and not four each term. Additionally, SFS had the do or die (no degree if you failed which led to several of my friends transferring to the college) language proficiency examination which no other school had. Only Yale and Columbia College matched the depth of Georgetown's academic demands and some schools were downright embarassing in what they required(Brown, for instance, in that era required only 28 pass-fail classes to graduate). While this may not be the case today, when I went to Georgetown, it was one of the most demanding places around. I can confirm the lack of rigor at Brown. I use to give my sister (Class of '82) grief about it. I also believe students could drop a course anytime before the final and not have it reflected on your official transcript.
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