ISU's academic rankings decline continues
- Thread starter Cypow
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Oh, I agree, but I am plenty sick of the navel-gazing conversations on the East Coast about how exactly Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Stanford are going to round out the top four every year.
It is my understanding much of those rankings are driven by "exclusivity" and "selectivity" ratings. Those never struck me as having much to do with the quality of academic instruction or the quality of research. There are good professors and researchers everywhere; how good is not directly related to freshman SAT scores.
As others have hinted, the state of Iowa and Iowa State just had a different model than a lot of other major research schools, and I think there are three reasons for that. To briefly list them out --
(1.) State schools are always hamstrung in those rankings because their missions is serving the population of their states, which means they cannot be too snooty about admissions standards for in-state kids. My wife was valedictorian of her high school class in Florida with nice test scores, but that was way overkill for her admittance into UF. The same kid would have had way lower chances if they were from southern Georgia or Alabama, though.
(2.) The state of Iowa has a very different and "unique" model compared to most other states. We have three states universities spread across the population density map of the state, and each offers a slightly different set of core competencies at roughly similar-sized institutions. Not a lot of other states do that. The preferred model throughout much of the Midwest and Southeast is having a "flagship" campus that is the cream of the crop and difficult to get into for even in-state kids and then regional schools to serve the rest of them out there. Wisconsin is the obvious example of this.
There are some like Iowa where they have a secondary ag/engineering school (e.g., Clemson, Auburn, Purdue, Georgia Tech, etc.), but states dominated by Ohio State, Florida, Georgia, and Penn St. have an advantage.
You take the best sets of programs out of UNI, Iowa, and Iowa State, mix them together with the best 1/3rd of students from each, and that hypothetical university would probably rank much higher than any of the three now. It might be up with Madison. That is basically the model pursued by Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Illinois. Heck, the University of Iowa has been trying to crowbar the state into something like that for a long time (which would devastate Iowa State).
(3.) When the state cut the money, ISU become functionally more of a tuition-supported private school. So they had to let more kids in/expand the tuition base to make up for the shortfall. It makes fiscal sense for the university and allows there to be more Cyclones out there, but it drops us in the rankings because we look "less selective."
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The drop in academic standing is not due to who the governor is, what political party is in charge, or the amount of money being spent. It is primarily due to the students home life. Our elementary, middle schools and high schools are filled with students who have both behavior and academic issues, that is related to parents not investing time in their kids.
Truth is...I really don't know how you correct the problem anymore. There is a generation of parents that spend more time staring at their phones than actually reading with their children. There is a reason the ACT test scores in Iowa have been steadily going down and our state has lost the "first in education" reputation.
But..if it makes you feel better...go ahead and blame the governor.
Truth is...I really don't know how you correct the problem anymore. There is a generation of parents that spend more time staring at their phones than actually reading with their children. There is a reason the ACT test scores in Iowa have been steadily going down and our state has lost the "first in education" reputation.
But..if it makes you feel better...go ahead and blame the governor.
I will add a fourth reasons to my list (and this is actually something of inside information) --
(4.) The high administration at Iowa State has been aware for decades, dating back to at least Martin Jischke, that loose admissions standards hurt our standing on those "vaunted" school rankings lists.
Taking that hit was unavoidable for two reasons...
(a.) ISU only has limited control over admissions standards, particularly for in-state students. Like I said, public schools cannot be too snooty with in-state kids. Trying to tighten them would annoy the legislators from small, rural Iowa counties, which there are a lot of and they are powerful, so you have to learn to live with it.
(b.) Iowa State is not a rich school by the standards of major research universities. In fact, we are one of the poorest. We have to fight for resources with Iowa and UNI, we do not have the "alpha omega" status in a fleet of state universities like Minnesota and Wisconsin have, and we do not have a mega-endowment like Texas or Michigan.
One of the ways... and this is a deliberate strategy on the part of university administration... we make up for that is admitting loosely but then separating the chaff from the wheat with freshmen and sophomores.
That is, we are liberal with our admissions and happy to take underclassmen's money before failing out the undeserving ones. We still get to keep their check for those first few semesters, though, right?
Michigan would never do this because they do not have to. Loose admission standards and lower graduation rates hurt your U.S. News and World Report rankings, after all. But Iowa State does not have the money to concentrate on that. We have to take the money we can, so admitting freely and then culling sternly is one way to do it.
They also deliberately have chosen not to lower our academic standards once the kids show up. They would rather lower our graduation rate than devalue the reputation of our graduates -- that is sacred.
(4.) The high administration at Iowa State has been aware for decades, dating back to at least Martin Jischke, that loose admissions standards hurt our standing on those "vaunted" school rankings lists.
Taking that hit was unavoidable for two reasons...
(a.) ISU only has limited control over admissions standards, particularly for in-state students. Like I said, public schools cannot be too snooty with in-state kids. Trying to tighten them would annoy the legislators from small, rural Iowa counties, which there are a lot of and they are powerful, so you have to learn to live with it.
(b.) Iowa State is not a rich school by the standards of major research universities. In fact, we are one of the poorest. We have to fight for resources with Iowa and UNI, we do not have the "alpha omega" status in a fleet of state universities like Minnesota and Wisconsin have, and we do not have a mega-endowment like Texas or Michigan.
One of the ways... and this is a deliberate strategy on the part of university administration... we make up for that is admitting loosely but then separating the chaff from the wheat with freshmen and sophomores.
That is, we are liberal with our admissions and happy to take underclassmen's money before failing out the undeserving ones. We still get to keep their check for those first few semesters, though, right?
Michigan would never do this because they do not have to. Loose admission standards and lower graduation rates hurt your U.S. News and World Report rankings, after all. But Iowa State does not have the money to concentrate on that. We have to take the money we can, so admitting freely and then culling sternly is one way to do it.
They also deliberately have chosen not to lower our academic standards once the kids show up. They would rather lower our graduation rate than devalue the reputation of our graduates -- that is sacred.
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Ask any department, foreign student numbers are down, a direct link to political unrest and Covid-19 response.
Assuming this is true, what do you think is inferior about Iowa family development relative to the rest of the country and world not in academic decline?
This is a misinformed statement. While you may be correct that there are issues at the primary education level, claiming that those are the only issues is incredibly misguided.
Claiming that funding is not a reason for the drop is unequivocally false. Some basic background research will tell you this.
Good question. I don't think this is a unique Iowa trend. IMO this is an entire society trend.
For example, listen to the Oscar acceptance speeches from past winners vs. today's winners. Previous winners had grace and a well thought out thank you speech; now we have winners feeding into the society hot topics while more concerned about their twitter account responses.
Another example is politics. Listen to the political candidates speeches today vs. the great leader of our past. We were at Mount Rushmore this summer and they have displayed writings of each of the four presidents. Neither Trump or Biden could possibly write such well thought out statement.
Finally, look at our Churches. Today's pastors are more concerned about attendance numbers and what clothes to wear that will make them look cool, than researching the Bible for well prepared sermons. (there are still some however that are incredible).
Technology is great...but it is creating a laziness in all of us... me included. Perhaps I am to critical.
I'm sorry, but this is a load of crap, at least as it applies specifically to ISU or the state of Iowa. Maybe you could try to make that claim about society in general, but there is nothing particularly bad about our state.
Edit:I see you answered this right before I posted this. Without getting into a debate about the dumbing down of society, your post really in no way explains why ISUs ranking has dropped relative to other schools, which is the point of the thread.
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Every generation thinks that the generations that follow after it have lost their way. It's such a tired and cliched way of thinking.
I have heard this sociological phenomenon described as our society becoming "post-literate."
It is not that people literally do not know how to read, but they simply do not. So much more of our mass culture now (and in every realm, including the faith and political ones) is based on images and video... originally television, but increasingly over the Internet through social media... as opposed to the written word being the dominant form of communications (newspapers, letters, books, etc.) in the media, business, politics, and religion in centuries past.
The idea that the medium is deterministic or influences heavily the type of discourse that you can have is controversial, but I tend to come down on the side that the medium has strong hold over the message.
The written word is good for nuance, slowly but well-developed ideas, and the very nature of written text on the page disconnects the ideas of the writer from the writer themselves. It forces you to engage with the text itself, rather than thinking about the poor sap with the quill or the typewriter putting it down on paper. The written word also allows you to take your time and think through things, rather than having to listen fast and talk even faster.
In a video/post-literate culture, everything is personalized. It is all talking heads yelling at each other. The most charismatic or interesting draws eyeballs on TV, not the most intelligent or insightful.
We are not becoming unintelligent, but our intelligence is being directed in very different ways.
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Some great points here, thanks for contributing.
I must point out that all of this was true 10-20 years ago, when ISU was ranked significantly higher. Furthermore, Iowa's higher educational model was very successful in the rankings until the late 2010s. Therefore, I don't think the Iowa model alone can be blamed (though it certainly does put us at a disadvantage to the UW-Madisons and Minnesotas of the nation).
Anyway, if I could speculate, I would imagine that as the population of Central Iowa increases, Iowa State will be pushed into being a more comprehensive university (looking at a timeframe of 50-100 years). This will be driven either by tuition, as public universities become "private" in all but name, or by higher federal (possibly state) government funding in a post-covid, post-student debt debilitated environment. Two very different scenarios, I know, and possibly two extreme ends of the spectrum, but both seems equally likely at the present.
You are correct. I see this as a larger issue than ISU's standing. There are some well thought out responses in this thread..I hijacked it....which wasn't right to do.
There are so many ironies here.
Harvard is a "private" school... but most of its money comes from federal research grants.
Westfield State is a "public" school.... but most of its money comes from student tuition.
Which one is really private and which one is really public, really?
This is all affecting Iowa more than other states and countries?
I agree with some of what you're saying but don't understand why it would hit Iowa harder than elsewhere. Compared to budget cuts which can be pretty specific to a state and institution.
It is amazing to see, really. Private and public are on their way to becoming useless designations for most universities.
Similar conversations were had in the UK in the 1900s around Oxbridge. Were they really private or public? who should be responsible for their funding and success? Today, such designations are nonexistent, particularly for Oxford and Cambridge. The funding structures are so mixed that no one would honestly call one private or public (not to mention those terms mean different things across the pond, but for the sake of explanation I think you know what I mean).
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