If our degress can be cheapened by having athletes that would have no business in school otherwise then its already happened. Letting in more 950 SAT guys instead of 1000 wouldn't change that.
No one is seriously claiming that letting in guys with lower SAT scores would devalue our degrees (although them failing out would damage the reputation of the Institute). Even adding new majors that are in line with the mission of the Institute would not be a problem. The problem is expanding Tech to become something it isn't, it shouldn't be, and it likely isn't capable of being—a comprehensive public university.
Okay, fair enough, no way of knowing if that is true or not but lets say that it is. Wasn't that the mid 80's? Our revenue sports admission standards were more lenient up until about 12 years ago. It seem like the shift to a tier oen research institute wasn't a driving factor, or having those 950 guys prior didn't seem to hurt our progress in that regard.
isn't like the entire Big 10 and Pac 12 littered with tier one research universities? Is the University of Florida or the University of Texas?
The rise in research profile and the rise in the academic profile of the undergraduate population have not moved in lock-step. The last 10-12 years have seen significant increases in the SAT scores of entering students, and with the introduction of APR, it's just too hard for exceptional admits to keep up in the classroom with these more talented students.
It was the late 80's, but really didn't hit it's stride until Clough. Tech's peer institutions are MIT, Cal. Tech, Stanford, etc. Florida, Texas, and the like don't enter into the discussion.
I am sorry but you will have to provide some more detail as to why our peer group is only small, elite private schools and why our peer group doesn't also incldue other prestigious public universities who also have strong athletic programs, many of which are more prestigious that GT.
Are you saying the BIG 10 schools and PAC 12 schools don't generate the amount of research that we do? Cal Berkely isn't a peer? Michigan or Wisconsin aren't peers? Why? I am genuinely trying to understand but it can't just be because you say it's so.
Florida I'll give you, but Texas is a peer in every sense of the word, and I think Berkeley, Michigan, and Wisconsin fit as well. I think the best list to use for comparison is the
Times Higher Education (UK) World University Rankings. We're #25, tied with Texas. The FBS-playing schools head of us? Stanford, Cal, UCLA, Northwestern, Michigan, and Washington. Only one of those can still be considered a regular power in football. The others look a lot more like us: some good years, some bad years, but mostly meh.
I think another thing that goes with rankings is reputation, and we have a huge gap in that regard relative to those schools. THE's reputation rankings are
here, and we're only #41. That's a pretty clear indication that we're newer to the scene of being a high-profile research university than those other institutions.
My argument and i didn't articulate it well is that not having these exceptions when we've had them for years doesn't seem to stem from anything logical. Sounds more like a political issue within the university.
It stems from the very logical fact that today's undergraduates are much more talented than those of a decade ago. Consider AE07's statement that he's not sure he could get in today, and I think he started about a decade ago. As a faculty member, about the only way we have to assess students is in comparison to their peers. There are no standard benchmarks in most disciplines. I don't grade on a curve, but I do set my scale and distribution based on what the class is capable of. My expectations for an A are fairly high and would be consistent across most colleges and universities. However, getting a C is tied much more to what a typical student in that major at that institution should be able to do. I know I'll give Cs to students at Nebraska this fall that wouldn't have gotten them at Georgia Tech, but my A students would be A students at Tech, too. As the quality of C students rises at Tech, it gets harder for student athletes who come in with the same scores as those admitted 10 or 12 years ago to make a C.
Those are certificate programs, not degree programs on their own. Most likely, they would only serve to cause a student-athlete to be farther from keeping up with APR standards. I think the biggest issue with APR for Tech is that most of our students need five years to finish, and so the APR standards are asking student-athletes to graduate on time with their peers. At most other schools, there are still reasonable expectations for graduating in four years, meaning that giving a five-year path grants them some leeway.
Good. Looked at your pie chart. Don't let me speak incorrectly, I didn't add it up but just a guess is 70% is federal funding... don't you realize they are broke and all of that is borrowed money?
I understand that. My point is these guys are counting dollars that are numbered. Also, unless GT is developing a romulan warbird...it will be cut if shtf.
cyptomcat has done a good job of refuting this, but let me reiterate. Research funding to NSF and NIH (and I guess for Tech I should thrown in things like DARPA) make up a tiny portion of the federal budget, and no one is seriously proposing any significant cuts to it. The BRIC nations are pouring tons of money into research, and the federal government knows that they need to continue to support basic research to avoid losing America's place in the world. Basic research is what lays the foundation for new patents and new technological developments that make big money. The "innovators" that the public knows tend to just be taking ideas developed by academic researchers and finding a market for them. By and large, they're not capable of developing those ideas themselves. There's value in both sides of the proposition, as those who are best at doing basic research generally have no interest in the issues related to developing a product that people will buy and taking it to market, and those who are good at that stuff often can't do the basic research or don't enjoy it like they enjoy coming up with and selling products. University incubators for start-up companies (and Tech has one of the best) show how successful this method can be.
Businesses don't invest in basic research because it's largely blue skies stuff. When we set out to discover something, we often don't know if it will be useful, we want to know how or why. Some of the things discovered never find practical use, but you usually can't say at the outset "Here's where this will be useful." Even though most companies know that they couldn't innovate without discoveries from basic research, they can't draw a direct enough path for the shareholders to a return on the investment. That's where government comes in. They don't need a direct, short-term return on investment. Instead, they take a chance, as time has shown that enough discoveries will lead to commercial ventures that then produce tax revenues to continue funding basic research.
