As we anticipate today's most-certain WIN over a grossly over-matched Eastern Kentucky Colonels team, and the resulting internal afterglow generated in us all, there are a few basic ACADEMIC certainties and issues here at UofL to contemplate.
Nearly forty years of hard work by many have built a virtual College Athletics powerhouse here. While the recent scandals have damaged that extraordinary run-up, and have taken Louisviile down a peg or two in the process, the Cards remain the best example of success within the entire University. Athletics has/have outshone everything in Academics here.
No University supporter should want Athletics to now simply roll over into demise. Success should not be celebrated by reducing emphasis on the one thing we have been successful at.
This University is known far and wide for its ATHLETICS prowess and achievement. We must not believe that such prowess has stemmed from an overemphasis on Athletics. Instead this incredible Athletics success has actually resulted from University leadership fostering strong expectations of greatness for a very long period, and hiring and keeping the best coaches and staff, and building and maintaining quality facilities, and doing everything as right as we can for our student-athletes.
What is needed now is to take a similar approach on Academics. A Winning Approach on Academics! A Comprehensive approach.
Except for Scandal Overhang, most everything is still in reasonably good order in Athletics here at UofL. But...we need to keep on consistently and constantly driving for being the best we can possibly be in Athletics.
All that said, we have a very very tall hill to try to climb in Academics. And only by becoming a more Academics/Athletics-balanced institution will we achieve what so many think is possible. We want students (and student-athletes) and professors and leaders to choose us because they admire us and want to be part of what we are doing and where we are going.
We must push hard and long for what will become a virtual marathon to improve our Academic standing. We need the kind of effort that has under-girded Athletics for the last four decades. We need to push for the same degree of success in Academics that we have enjoyed in Athletics.
We must not allow the UK system and Kentucky state politics to control and limit our destiny. That is a certain path to long-term failure. We need to determine our own mission and to set our own objectives and to establish our own rules. We need to resource ourselves in the way we choose. We need to upgrade our student entry standards. We need to be more selective. We need to pay our professors more. We need to hire even better professors and we need to call on them to lead us to Academic greatness. Seek and achieve the same kinds of donor and sponsor support for Academics that we have been so successful in achieving for Athletics. We need to increase our 6-year graduation rate significantly. Many of our students come in completely unprepared by their under-caring or under-resourced families and by a miserably failed local school system. We must figure a way around these problems.
We may need to pick one or two University Departments or University Schools to emphasize these radical changes and improvements to begin with. But we need to do something fast.
We may need to explore starting up new University-sponsored/resourced Charter School-Academies to try to rescue kids as high school 10th graders from the local school system and to prepare them academically and help them culturally for entry into UofL three years later.
But we MUST do SOMETHING to improve the chances of UofL Freshmen to graduate after 6 years!
I am motivated to write all this and place it here, as my thoughts have coalesced after reading the latest Wall Street Journal U.S. College Rankings published on Sept 5th.
For those of you who have a subscription, go back and read the entire section and go to their online link also. Extraordinary depth and information for 801 universities.
The WSJ rates and ranks universities in terms of four macro-criteria;
Student Outcomes (40% weight): Graduation Rate, Teaching Reputation, Graduate Salaries, Student Debt
Resources (30% weight): Academic Spending, Student-Faculty Ratios, Research Output
Engagement (20% weight): How Engaged Students Feel with their Professors, their Peers and their Education
Environment (10% weight): Diversity
The University of Louisville has been ranked #373 out of 801 universities. It is really an extraordinarily bad ranking. Universities ranked from #400-801 are thrown into the dreaded one single grouping. UofL missed that feared single menage suite by just 27 schools.
But that is just the overall ranking. The breakdown of the four contributing criteria for UofL was:
Outcomes: #525 (AWFUL!!)
Resources: #242
Engagement: #563 (AWFUL!!)
Environment: #371
There is SO MUCH to comment on here. First, how can we pour so much (relatively) into "Resources" and get so little out in "Outcomes"!! Many schools get MORE out of Outcomes than they put in.
Our students are not graduating! That's the primary reason. We spend the money and they don't graduate. They are not prepared to come in and be college freshmen with typical expectations! Our schools and our parents and our other institutions have failed them! They come in unprepared and they fail!
So either work to better prepare them starting 3 or 4 years before they come in, or be more selective about who gets to come in.
The "Engagement" score is AWFUL! Its seems they feel as if many of our students are simply on a short sleepwalk. They are walking around campus and going to class like zombies and they don't care enough and no one cares about them, probably including their friends and parents. They don't have a value set of high expectations ingrained in them by their peers and their culture to get them to be ready to take advantage of incredible learning opportunity.
I won't pound on what needs to be done here at UofL any longer. Neeli is here. I hope she is listening and reading and that she starts patching the holes in the ship and giving it new sails. What needs to be achieved is quite clear. How to do it is another thing entirely. But all of us need to help!
Below are some OVERALL scores of relevant Comparable Institutions:
ACC:
Duke: #10 (89.7 out of 100)
Notre Dame: #32 (80.3 out of 100)
North Carolina: #33 (79.9 out of 100)
Miami: #49 (74.8 out of 100)
Virginia: #50 (74.6 out of 100)
Boston College: #59 (72.8 out of 100)
Georgia Tech: #68 (70.9 out of 100)
Wake Forest: #68 (70.9 out of 100)
Pittsburgh: #96 (67.0 out of 100)
North Carolina State: #104 (66.1 out of 100)
Virginia Tech: #105 (65.9 out of 100)
Syracuse: #123 (64.3 out of 100)
Clemson: #188 (58.8 out of 100)
Florida State: #208 (57.6 out of 100)
Louisville: #373 (50.9 out of 100)
Others of Interest:
Oklahoma: #205 (57.7 out of 100)
Kansas: #238 (56.4 out of 100)
Oregon: #239 (56.3 out of 100)
Auburn: #249 (55.9 out of 100)
Rutgers: #251 (55.8 out of 100)
Alabama: #256 (55.6 out of 100)
Tennessee: #270 (54.7 out of 100)
Iowa State: #287 (53.8 out of 100)
Oregon State: #292 (53.6 out of 100)
LSU: #295 (53.5 out of 100)
Mississippi: #311 (52.8 out of 100)
Kentucky: #323 (52.5 out of 100)
Missouri: #348 (51.9 out of 100)
South Carolina: #348 (51.9 out of 100)
Oklahoma State: #373 (50.9 out of 100)
Arkansas: #401-500 (46.7-50.0 out of 100)
Kansas State: #401-500 (46.7-50.0 out of 100)
Mississippi State: #401-500 (46.7-50.0 out of 100)
Texas Tech: #401-500 (46.7-50.0 out of 100)
West Virginia: #401-500 (46.7-50.0 out of 100)
Guardman
Nearly forty years of hard work by many have built a virtual College Athletics powerhouse here. While the recent scandals have damaged that extraordinary run-up, and have taken Louisviile down a peg or two in the process, the Cards remain the best example of success within the entire University. Athletics has/have outshone everything in Academics here.
No University supporter should want Athletics to now simply roll over into demise. Success should not be celebrated by reducing emphasis on the one thing we have been successful at.
This University is known far and wide for its ATHLETICS prowess and achievement. We must not believe that such prowess has stemmed from an overemphasis on Athletics. Instead this incredible Athletics success has actually resulted from University leadership fostering strong expectations of greatness for a very long period, and hiring and keeping the best coaches and staff, and building and maintaining quality facilities, and doing everything as right as we can for our student-athletes.
What is needed now is to take a similar approach on Academics. A Winning Approach on Academics! A Comprehensive approach.
Except for Scandal Overhang, most everything is still in reasonably good order in Athletics here at UofL. But...we need to keep on consistently and constantly driving for being the best we can possibly be in Athletics.
All that said, we have a very very tall hill to try to climb in Academics. And only by becoming a more Academics/Athletics-balanced institution will we achieve what so many think is possible. We want students (and student-athletes) and professors and leaders to choose us because they admire us and want to be part of what we are doing and where we are going.
We must push hard and long for what will become a virtual marathon to improve our Academic standing. We need the kind of effort that has under-girded Athletics for the last four decades. We need to push for the same degree of success in Academics that we have enjoyed in Athletics.
We must not allow the UK system and Kentucky state politics to control and limit our destiny. That is a certain path to long-term failure. We need to determine our own mission and to set our own objectives and to establish our own rules. We need to resource ourselves in the way we choose. We need to upgrade our student entry standards. We need to be more selective. We need to pay our professors more. We need to hire even better professors and we need to call on them to lead us to Academic greatness. Seek and achieve the same kinds of donor and sponsor support for Academics that we have been so successful in achieving for Athletics. We need to increase our 6-year graduation rate significantly. Many of our students come in completely unprepared by their under-caring or under-resourced families and by a miserably failed local school system. We must figure a way around these problems.
We may need to pick one or two University Departments or University Schools to emphasize these radical changes and improvements to begin with. But we need to do something fast.
We may need to explore starting up new University-sponsored/resourced Charter School-Academies to try to rescue kids as high school 10th graders from the local school system and to prepare them academically and help them culturally for entry into UofL three years later.
But we MUST do SOMETHING to improve the chances of UofL Freshmen to graduate after 6 years!
I am motivated to write all this and place it here, as my thoughts have coalesced after reading the latest Wall Street Journal U.S. College Rankings published on Sept 5th.
For those of you who have a subscription, go back and read the entire section and go to their online link also. Extraordinary depth and information for 801 universities.
The WSJ rates and ranks universities in terms of four macro-criteria;
Student Outcomes (40% weight): Graduation Rate, Teaching Reputation, Graduate Salaries, Student Debt
Resources (30% weight): Academic Spending, Student-Faculty Ratios, Research Output
Engagement (20% weight): How Engaged Students Feel with their Professors, their Peers and their Education
Environment (10% weight): Diversity
The University of Louisville has been ranked #373 out of 801 universities. It is really an extraordinarily bad ranking. Universities ranked from #400-801 are thrown into the dreaded one single grouping. UofL missed that feared single menage suite by just 27 schools.
But that is just the overall ranking. The breakdown of the four contributing criteria for UofL was:
Outcomes: #525 (AWFUL!!)
Resources: #242
Engagement: #563 (AWFUL!!)
Environment: #371
There is SO MUCH to comment on here. First, how can we pour so much (relatively) into "Resources" and get so little out in "Outcomes"!! Many schools get MORE out of Outcomes than they put in.
Our students are not graduating! That's the primary reason. We spend the money and they don't graduate. They are not prepared to come in and be college freshmen with typical expectations! Our schools and our parents and our other institutions have failed them! They come in unprepared and they fail!
So either work to better prepare them starting 3 or 4 years before they come in, or be more selective about who gets to come in.
The "Engagement" score is AWFUL! Its seems they feel as if many of our students are simply on a short sleepwalk. They are walking around campus and going to class like zombies and they don't care enough and no one cares about them, probably including their friends and parents. They don't have a value set of high expectations ingrained in them by their peers and their culture to get them to be ready to take advantage of incredible learning opportunity.
I won't pound on what needs to be done here at UofL any longer. Neeli is here. I hope she is listening and reading and that she starts patching the holes in the ship and giving it new sails. What needs to be achieved is quite clear. How to do it is another thing entirely. But all of us need to help!
Below are some OVERALL scores of relevant Comparable Institutions:
ACC:
Duke: #10 (89.7 out of 100)
Notre Dame: #32 (80.3 out of 100)
North Carolina: #33 (79.9 out of 100)
Miami: #49 (74.8 out of 100)
Virginia: #50 (74.6 out of 100)
Boston College: #59 (72.8 out of 100)
Georgia Tech: #68 (70.9 out of 100)
Wake Forest: #68 (70.9 out of 100)
Pittsburgh: #96 (67.0 out of 100)
North Carolina State: #104 (66.1 out of 100)
Virginia Tech: #105 (65.9 out of 100)
Syracuse: #123 (64.3 out of 100)
Clemson: #188 (58.8 out of 100)
Florida State: #208 (57.6 out of 100)
Louisville: #373 (50.9 out of 100)
Others of Interest:
Oklahoma: #205 (57.7 out of 100)
Kansas: #238 (56.4 out of 100)
Oregon: #239 (56.3 out of 100)
Auburn: #249 (55.9 out of 100)
Rutgers: #251 (55.8 out of 100)
Alabama: #256 (55.6 out of 100)
Tennessee: #270 (54.7 out of 100)
Iowa State: #287 (53.8 out of 100)
Oregon State: #292 (53.6 out of 100)
LSU: #295 (53.5 out of 100)
Mississippi: #311 (52.8 out of 100)
Kentucky: #323 (52.5 out of 100)
Missouri: #348 (51.9 out of 100)
South Carolina: #348 (51.9 out of 100)
Oklahoma State: #373 (50.9 out of 100)
Arkansas: #401-500 (46.7-50.0 out of 100)
Kansas State: #401-500 (46.7-50.0 out of 100)
Mississippi State: #401-500 (46.7-50.0 out of 100)
Texas Tech: #401-500 (46.7-50.0 out of 100)
West Virginia: #401-500 (46.7-50.0 out of 100)
Guardman
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