WSJ Texas College Rankings 2021 (Houston, Dallas: neighborhood, best school, salary)

[texasdiver]

By the way, folks are comparing two separate numbers here.

Endowment is simply a measure of how much money a university has saved, or how wealthy it is.

Research spending is a measure of academic productivity. Most research spending these days is in STEM fields, but small amounts are also spent in other academic fields as well, like archeology, for example. But it is mostly dwarfed by STEM research.

Some of the top universities for research actually have small endowments because they are public universities. Texas is actually very unusual in that its public universities also have large endowments due to oil money. Most other states don't have that. Likewise, there are also some very wealthy private colleges with enormous endowments that do very little research because they are largely small undergraduate liberal arts colleges. Places like Swarthmore or Pomona, for example.

Most of the rankings like WSJ and USNWR use BOTH endowment and research spending in their ranking criteria. So they are ranking both wealth and productivity.

[EDS_]

Originally Posted by ParaguaneroSwag

Definitely not me comparing Baylor to Rice. That would be EDS. I didn’t get it either

That's absolutely ridiculous and I made as much crystal clear upthread. My question is about your research claim against Baylor - I'm still pretty sure you made it up.

[ParaguaneroSwag]

Originally Posted by EDS_

That's absolutely ridiculous and I made as much crystal clear upthread. My question is about your research claim against Baylor - I'm still pretty sure you made it up.

And now with evidence backs it, what... I got lucky?

[EDS_]

Originally Posted by ParaguaneroSwag

And now with evidence backs it, what... I got lucky?

Negative you've conflated endowment proceeds spent on scholarships and salaries with research grants from sources like The NIH and others after claiming Baylor has seen a decrease in research funding.

[EDS_]

Originally Posted by texasdiver

By the way, folks are comparing two separate numbers here.

Endowment is simply a measure of how much money a university has saved, or how wealthy it is.

Research spending is a measure of academic productivity. Most research spending these days is in STEM fields, but small amounts are also spent in other academic fields as well, like archeology, for example. But it is mostly dwarfed by STEM research.

Some of the top universities for research actually have small endowments because they are public universities. Texas is actually very unusual in that its public universities also have large endowments due to oil money. Most other states don't have that. Likewise, there are also some very wealthy private colleges with enormous endowments that do very little research because they are largely small undergraduate liberal arts colleges. Places like Swarthmore or Pomona, for example.

Most of the rankings like WSJ and USNWR use BOTH endowment and research spending in their ranking criteria. So they are ranking both wealth and productivity.

That's a good post but "folks" aren't conflating endowments and research one poster only is doing so.

[ParaguaneroSwag]

Originally Posted by EDS_

Baylor has a large research push, it wants to move from R2 to R1 and has amassed a little over half of a $1.1 billion (IIRC) research funding drive.

Given that it's really hard for me to believe Baylor has lost significant ground to Rice or the field in recent years.

When people get proved against, they change their arguments real quick. Usually doesn’t fail. All this switching and your claim on quoted “ Given that it's really hard for me to believe Baylor has lost significant ground to Rice or the field in recent years. ” is false. It’s not even just about research grants but the quality of research as well. Given that quality of research is also higher at Rice, it’s also More expensive so not a surprise.

I’m not going to say you were confusing endowment with research spending because I don’t think you were, but I obviously wasn’t either considering I broke down Baylor’s endowment to show they spend 69% of theirs on scholarships. So spending money on scholarships is a form of research funding now? This is why we think before we post. The endowment breakdown is to show the difference on how Rice 6 times that of Baylor yet spends a a significantantly less percentage on scholarships. That says a lot about the universities priorities. No one here, not even you has confused endowment with research spending. But that doesn’t mean you don’t get good information from a school’s endowment breakdown

[texasdiver]

I'm not sure why all the obsession with Baylor here.

It is a middle-of-the-road private university and probably appropriately ranked by USNWR, WSJ and other ratings. Their research spending is mediocre for a comprehensive university at $26 million in the last year calculated https://ncsesdata.nsf.gov/herd/2016/...16_DST_21.html

It's endowment is $1.34 billion which is pretty average to mediocre for a school that size with a student body of 19,297. By contrast, TCU has an endowment of $1.71 billion with a total student body of 11,024. And SMU has an endowment of $1.66 billion with a total student body of 12,373.

It is nowhere near top rank private schools like Vanderbilt, Emory, Rice, Duke, Notre Dame, Washington U, Northwestern, USC, etc. etc. which all have endowments 5 to 10 times larger than Baylor and research spending 10-20 times larger. And that's not even mentioning the Ivies.

I lived in Waco for over a decade and knew and worked with various professors at Bayor. My wife was an affiliate faculty at Baylor. I've been on campus a bazillion times and collaborated with professors in the environmental science department. I'm very familiar with the school. It is a good mid-level private university. Certainly respectable. They have decent facilities. But it is nowhere the top tier. If you are a conservative upper middle class DFW family, it's the safe place to send your daughters if they don't get into UT or the higher-tier privates like Vanderbilt.

[ParaguaneroSwag]

As your reports show, Rice’s research have for the most part been a recent thing. Ever since Leebron took over, they’ve been expanding extremely fast. Atleast by Rice standards. A lot of Rice students were worried fast expansion could cause it to lose its Ivy tier reputation. But unlike Baylor’s rapid expansion, Rice’s has been selective and careful with their growth. Smart growth beats fast growth here. Notoriously, Rice University and Baylor College of Medicine almost merged back in 09.

[Ivory Lee Spurlock]

Originally Posted by 20Hope20

We all know that rankings are needed to be taken with a grain of salt but they do provide one way to measure colleges. That being said, Texas colleges (with an exception of RiceU) never crack top 25 on on any list. What’s keeping them down?

Rice 15
UT Austin 61
Texas A&M 83
SMU 88
Trinity College 113
Baylor 125
TCU 171
Austin College 255
UTD 339
U Houston 364
U Dallas 400-500
Texas Tech 400-500
Texas State 501-600
UNT 501-600
UT SA 600

UT Austin is considered a "public ivy", so it should be ranked among the best universities in the country, including privately and state supported.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Ivy?wprov=sfla1

[ParaguaneroSwag]

Originally Posted by Ivory Lee Spurlock

UT Austin is considered a "public ivy", so it should be ranked among the best universities in the country, including privately and state supported.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Ivy?wprov=sfla1

Public ivy’s are considered a notch below private Ivy and Ivy equivalents. Even in California, Stanford and CalTech are the top tier