UH vs UTD (Houston, Dallas, Austin: how much, purchase, best school)

[jmbonly]

Brianreading, Year founded means nothing. Stanford was founded later than many, yet it is still one of the top schools. UTD is on princetons list Best Value Colleges Press Release . Also, the two lists you named are the only two official lists that have uh ranked higher. What about Times Higher Education, Kiplinger's, The Washington Monthly, etc. Are they all negligent too? Awru is a shanghai ranking. These are american based and uk based rankings.

The reason why offering more engineering programs make a difference is because it effects the overall engineering rank if you offer programs the other school doesnt have that is ranked high even though your other programs, like electrical and mechanical engineering, are ranked much lower. As for proof, you can easily check us news or most of the ranking sites. Quite a bit of UH recent funding and better rankings to make it somewhat match UTD are because of its chemical engineering department and other engineering departments (aeronautical, etc) that are highly ranked yet not offered at UTD.

[PISDstudent]

Originally Posted by brianreading

I'll have to disagree. Enrollment has little to do with endowment and research expenditure.

For example, University of North Texas has a hefty 37,000 students and only has an endowment of $97 million, total research expenditures of only $29 million, and a measly 1 faculty member who is a member of a national academy.

So you see, the enrollment data does not correlate with those measures.

You miss the point. In order for UH to be able to offer a similar amount of resources to each student, the endowment per student must be at least equal to UT Dallas's endowment per student. That's what counts, not the total endowment. But the endowment per student at UH is lower than at UTD. The research spending per student is also lower- in fact, all of those metrics you posted, when looked at by per-student, are lower at UH. The point is that each UH student just doesn't get as much in terms as funding and resources as each UTD student. That's just basic math. $100 goes much farther spent on 2 people than $150 would go spent on 10 people...you get the picture.

[brianreading]

Originally Posted by PISDstudent

You miss the point. In order for UH to be able to offer a similar amount of resources to each student, the endowment per student must be at least equal to UT Dallas's endowment per student. That's what counts, not the total endowment. But the endowment per student at UH is lower than at UTD. The research spending per student is also lower- in fact, all of those metrics you posted, when looked at by per-student, are lower at UH. The point is that each UH student just doesn't get as much in terms as funding and resources as each UTD student. That's just basic math. $100 goes much farther spent on 2 people than $150 would go spent on 10 people...you get the picture.

It's not quite that simple either. There are many things that confound the situation including diminishing returns and a much different role that Houston has as a flagship university in its system. Different schools have different expenses to deal with.

Are you also going to state that UTD is a better school than UT-Austin because of the same reasoning?

Secondly, raw numbers irrespective of proportion are actually important here. Research spending and economic impact are significant to the public, and while a university doing more with less is certainly commendable, it has less real effect.

If UTD can grow to the size and scope of UH and beyond, but manage to proportionally maintain all of its achievements, then it could likely be the best public school in the state some day. However, the game changes as you grow.

It is for these reasons and more as to why it makes sense to speak about the raw numbers and not necessarily the proportion, but I do take your point.

[brianreading]

Originally Posted by jmbonly

Brianreading, Year founded means nothing. Stanford was founded later than many, yet it is still one of the top schools.

Stanford was founded in 1885. 128 years is quite a while for a university to be around. Perhaps Rice might be a better example? Regardless, establishment of an institution is purposeful to mention if it was as recent as 1986 (almost a century difference from what you mentioned). My point was that it can be quite difficult for a school to go from scratch to highly competitive within that brief period of time.

Originally Posted by jmbonly

UTD is on princetons list Best Value Colleges Press Release

This is not the same list that I was talking about, and to be honest is just simply not meaningful in the sense of overall rankings. I mean even Houston was added to it before Texas A&M. Try this one instead.

Originally Posted by jmbonly

Also, the two lists you named are the only two official lists that have uh ranked higher. What about Times Higher Education, Kiplinger's, The Washington Monthly, etc. Are they all negligent too? Awru is a shanghai ranking. These are american based and uk based rankings.

Firstly, what exactly do you mean by "official list"? Also, I should note that I never mentioned anything about negligence, but rather negligibility. My point in quoting the particular rankings that I did was only to disprove your assertion that UH was not ranked higher than UTD. It's simply a false statement.

I'm also not sure what you're getting at about American and UK-based rankings rather than one from China? If anything I would assume that they are less inclined to bias due to the typical downfalls of westernized rankings, but that's just me. If you want to talk about legitimacy of ranking methodologies, let's do it, but you are not bringing anything totally discussable here yet.

Originally Posted by jmbonly

The reason why offering more engineering programs make a difference is because it effects the overall engineering rank if you offer programs the other school doesnt have that is ranked high even though your other programs, like electrical and mechanical engineering, are ranked much lower.

Still not quite sure what you're getting at, but I would imagine this would have to do with the methodology a particular ranking system used. I'm still waiting to see how every engineering program that UTD has is ranked higher than the corresponding one at UH, and which ranking system you're using here. Can we see this stuff?

[HtownLove]

Originally Posted by PISDstudent

You miss the point. In order for UH to be able to offer a similar amount of resources to each student, the endowment per student must be at least equal to UT Dallas's endowment per student. That's what counts, not the total endowment. But the endowment per student at UH is lower than at UTD. The research spending per student is also lower- in fact, all of those metrics you posted, when looked at by per-student, are lower at UH. The point is that each UH student just doesn't get as much in terms as funding and resources as each UTD student. That's just basic math. $100 goes much farther spent on 2 people than $150 would go spent on 10 people...you get the picture.

Nonsense. Endowment per student doesn't mean much. Rice had one of the highest endowment pet student in the country. I think it's higher than Harvard. Just because Rice per student endowment is that high didn't mean anything

[jmbonly]

Brianreading, I can see that your not going to go look at the information on the web, so here is all the information you were asking for:

University of Houston Information:

Official National Ranking Systems:
ARWU---------------------------- 86–109
Forbes--------------------------- 344
U.S. News & World Report--------- 184 (Tier 1)
Washington Monthly--------------- 237
Kiplinger's------------------------- Unranked
Princeton Review------------------ The Best 377 Colleges

Official World Ranking Systems:
ARWU---------------------------- 201–300
QS------------------------------- 551–600
Times---------------------------- 351–400

Engineering Ranking:
Research Expenditures: $25M (Engineering)
Top 100 in Undergraduate Engineering (Refuses to release actual number)
#76 in Best Engineering Schools (Graduate)
#39 in Aerospace / Aeronautical / Astronautical Engineering
#36 in Chemical Engineering
#72 in Civil Engineering
#80 in Computer Engineering
#89 in Electrical / Electronic / Communications Engineering
#71 in Environmental / Environmental Health Engineering
#53 in Industrial / Manufacturing / Systems Engineering
#70 in Materials Engineering
#84 in Mechanical Engineering


University of Texas at Dallas Information:

Official National Ranking Systems:
ARWU---------------------------- 110-137
Forbes--------------------------- 367
U.S. News & World Report--------- 151 (Tier 1)
Washington Monthly--------------- 154
Kiplinger's------------------------- 60
Princeton Review------------------ The 377 Best Value schools

Official World Ranking Systems:
ARWU---------------------------- 301–400
QS------------------------------- No Data Collected on University, No Ranking Performed
Times---------------------------- 167

Engineering Ranking:
Research Expenditures: $43M (Engineering)
#96 in Undergraduate Engineering
#76 in Best Engineering Schools (Graduate)
#53 in Computer Engineering
#60 in Electrical / Electronic / Communications Engineering
#59 in Materials Engineering

Facts | UH Cullen College of Engineering
http://ecs.utdallas.edu/academics/as...2005to2014.pdf
Enrollments-Office of Assessment - Erik Jonsson School of Engineering & Computer Science - The University of Texas at Dallas
Other Sources include the various ranking sites I mentioned

[Cowboys fan in Houston]

I will say this, the student body of both schools is extremely diverse.

[TX75007]

Originally Posted by homeinatx

Dream on. The Texas state legislature is hardly the arbiter of tier 1 status. If anything, the current governor and his cronies are more likely to lose Texas a tier one university than create a new one. The absolute baseline for tier 1 status is membership in the Association of American Universities (62 members).
e.

Just another sneer at Texas.

Tier 1 refers to funding priorities. UT, Austin and A&M were the Tier 1 colleges for funding priorities and UTD was for a long time a graduate commuter school with a narrow focus.

That changed in 2008 with HB 51.

Texas Takes Step Toward More Tier One Universities - UT Dallas News

Gov. Rick Perry signed House Bill 51 – legislation aimed at creating more national research universities in Texas – on Wednesday morning at The University of Texas at Dallas....House Bill 51 constructs a framework of funding that rewards performance by all of the state’s public universities, but in particular the seven universities classified by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board as “emerging research universities.” They include Texas Tech University, The University of Houston, The University of North Texas, The University of Texas at Arlington, The University of Texas at Dallas, The University of Texas at El Paso and The University of Texas at San Antonio. The legislation also provides matching state dollars for external financial support raised for research at these seven institutions.

Note that both UTD and UH are on that list. Note that there will be THREE Tier 1 schools in the DFW area - UTA, UTD, and UNT.

One other note is that there are a number of hard science programs at both local and charter schools which will prepare kids to enter these universities with most of the undergrad courses done. Math Rocks at PISD is just one example.

My wife will teach at UTD beginning this fall.

[TX75007]

Originally Posted by peterlemonjello

I will say this, the student body of both schools is extremely diverse.

So is Texas. DFW is the 3rd most diverse MSA outside of NYC or SFO.

[Cowboys fan in Houston]

Originally Posted by TX75007

So is Texas. DFW is the 3rd most diverse MSA outside of NYC or SFO.

Its the 6th diverse major metro area statistically. NYC, Bay Area, LA, DC, and Houston are in front.