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2018 U.S. News Rankings


Bills_06

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I saw this and I was pumped! I know many people say those rankings are a hoax, elitist, blah blah blah, but I eat them up. It fosters a bit of competition, and hey, they speak to some sort of metric. 

Moving up to spots isn't much, but its a good sign that SLU may have hit rock bottom with the Biondi crisis and the change in leadership and is now rebounding. I hope we (and think we will) break the top 90 next year.

 

I saw that we are just under Marquette and Indiana. Not bad universities to be looking right up to and I think we will tie/move ahead next year. 

 

 

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2 minutes ago, SShoe said:

Wanna know why Missouri lags behind the rest of the country in terms of economic growth? Look no further than this list. 

That's a good point. Many universities are expanding their technology commercialization/licensing to feed entrepreneurship. 

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9 minutes ago, TheA_Bomb said:

That's a good point. Many universities are expanding their technology commercialization/licensing to feed entrepreneurship. 

That's part of it, but I just think it's all about the workforce.  Talent leads to growth.

California has 10 schools in the top 50.  7 of which are public universities.  You can guess which state will continue to drive innovation in this country for the next 50 years.  

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32 minutes ago, SShoe said:

Wanna know why Missouri lags behind the rest of the country in terms of economic growth? Look no further than this list. 

MO isn't California or Massachusetts, but how many Universities from this state should make the list?  MO has six in the top 213.  I don't think that is all that bad when you consider the list is dominated by a few states.  

Overall MO ranks 23rd in education according to US News.  I would like to see that higher, but it is a better ranking than many high economic growth states.

https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/rankings/education

Edited by brianstl
Terrible grammar
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10 minutes ago, SShoe said:

That's part of it, but I just think it's all about the workforce.  Talent leads to growth.

California has 10 schools in the top 50.  7 of which are public universities.  You can guess which state will continue to drive innovation in this country for the next 50 years.  

California also has 32 public colleges and universities vs 13 in Missouri, 130+ private colleges and universities vs 27 in Missouri,  and 40 million residents vs 6 million. I do agree with your premise that human capital is the driving force  behind growth and innovation. We (St. Louis) can start by retaining the best and brightest graduating from SLU, WashU, UMSL, etc., which appears to be happening (https://www.stlmag.com/news/st-louis-millennials-brain-belt-study-pew-inhen/

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Mizzou is almost certainly plummeting because of Ferguson/"we need some muscle over here" fallout. Plus it's really interesting to see the Politico analysis that schools that attract wealthier students bias the rankings towards themselves. 

The fact that MUST tread water was encouraging. 

Oh, PS. As long as the state political structure continues to be dominated by raving Jezoids, we're screwed. 

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4 minutes ago, bonwich said:

Mizzou is almost certainly plummeting because of Ferguson/"we need some muscle over here" fallout. Plus it's really interesting to see the Politico analysis that schools that attract wealthier students bias the rankings towards themselves. 

The fact that MUST tread water was encouraging. 

Oh, PS. As long as the state political structure continues to be dominated by raving Jezoids, we're screwed. 

Help an hermano out...My "jezoid" search on Google came up empty. My guess is you are referring to the continuous shift to the right in Missouri state politics. If this is what you mean, I agree 100%. 

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1 minute ago, Slu let the dogs out? said:

California also has 32 public colleges and universities vs 13 in Missouri, 130+ private colleges and universities vs 27 in Missouri,  and 40 million residents vs 6 million. I do agree with your premise that human capital is the driving force  behind growth and innovation. We (St. Louis) can start by retaining the best and brightest graduating from SLU, WashU, UMSL, etc., which appears to be happening (https://www.stlmag.com/news/st-louis-millennials-brain-belt-study-pew-inhen/

I guess they have been ranked in this area for at least a couple of years, but I was surprised to see Maryville ranked that high as a national university.  It was surprising to see them sharing the Same rank as S&T, St John's and Louisville.  They were, also, ranked higher than some schools that are far more well known.   

That school has come a long way.

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39 minutes ago, SShoe said:

That's part of it, but I just think it's all about the workforce.  Talent leads to growth.

California has 10 schools in the top 50.  7 of which are public universities.  You can guess which state will continue to drive innovation in this country for the next 50 years.  

This is another chicken and egg situation. Missouri is not comparable to California in population, rate of economic growth, or really anything else, so it would be pretty dfficult to expect them to compare in the number of nationally ranked universities. 

St. Louis always does very well on these lists compared to similar metros. Kansas City always shows lots of room to improve, and the state schools are right around the middle where you'd expect them.

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3 minutes ago, hsmith19 said:

This is another chicken and egg situation. Missouri is not comparable to California in population, rate of economic growth, or really anything else, so it would be pretty dfficult to expect them to compare in the number of nationally ranked universities. 

St. Louis always does very well on these lists compared to similar metros. Kansas City always shows lots of room to improve, and the state schools are right around the middle where you'd expect them.

I'm not suggesting Missouri is comparable to California, just making a connection between increased public investments in higher education and economic growth.  As a state, we have been doing the opposite in recent years and it appears to be showing in these rankings, as we don't have 1 public university ranked in the top 100.  More comparable states - Indiana, Wisconsin, Ohio, Illinois, etc. - all have flagship universities ranked in the top 100. Gotta figure we'll continue to fall behind as a state, region, and city as long as this remains the case.  

 

 

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4 minutes ago, SShoe said:

I'm not suggesting Missouri is comparable to California, just making a connection between increased public investments in higher education and economic growth.  As a state, we have been doing the opposite in recent years and it appears to be showing in these rankings, as we don't have 1 public university ranked in the top 100.  More comparable states - Indiana, Wisconsin, Ohio, Illinois, etc. - all have flagship universities ranked in the top 100. Gotta figure we'll continue to fall behind as a state, region, and city as long as this remains the case.  

 

 

Yeah, but we continue to pump out the journalists. ;)

Jezoid = fundy = fundamentalist Christian. At least some scientific-research companies have bypassed our state out of fear that their work would be deemed illegal, if it wasn't already. 

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15 minutes ago, SShoe said:

I'm not suggesting Missouri is comparable to California, just making a connection between increased public investments in higher education and economic growth.  As a state, we have been doing the opposite in recent years and it appears to be showing in these rankings, as we don't have 1 public university ranked in the top 100.  More comparable states - Indiana, Wisconsin, Ohio, Illinois, etc. - all have flagship universities ranked in the top 100. Gotta figure we'll continue to fall behind as a state, region, and city as long as this remains the case.  

 

 

And my point is it's a chicken-egg question, or turtles all the way down if you prefer that metaphor. States can afford to invest more in those things if their economies are already growing at higher rates. And attracting and keeping talent/entrepreneurs/creatives/whatever we're calling it these days is a lot easier when the top schools are already there.

I agree the neanderthals in Jeff City are setting us back in a lot of ways, but they haven't made a dent on lists like these. Illinois and Ohio are much more populous states, and while Indiana and Wisconsin are comparable they have been ranked well ahead of Mizzou for many years. Can't blame that on the current crop of term-limited hillbilly legislators.

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12 minutes ago, hsmith19 said:

And my point is it's a chicken-egg question, or turtles all the way down if you prefer that metaphor. States can afford to invest more in those things if their economies are already growing at higher rates. And attracting and keeping talent/entrepreneurs/creatives/whatever we're calling it these days is a lot easier when the top schools are already there.

I agree the neanderthals in Jeff City are setting us back in a lot of ways, but they haven't made a dent on lists like these. Illinois and Ohio are much more populous states, and while Indiana and Wisconsin are comparable they have been ranked well ahead of Mizzou for many years. Can't blame that on the current crop of term-limited hillbilly legislators.

+1

"An educated citizenry is a vital requisite for our survival as a free people." 
"The cornerstone of democracy rests on the foundation of an educated electorate." 
-Thomas Jefferson 

Ironic for conservatives to ignore this simple truth in today's day and age... The MO legislature is filled with backward idealogues who believe that the government is evil and "cutting everything" is the path to prosperity for society. How long will it take for the right to realize that eduction is fundamental for a healthy society, and that if we all pay into the same education pot we are all going to reap the benefits?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2017/09/07/the-sad-story-of-public-education-in-st-louis/?utm_term=.b0cad15868a7

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1 hour ago, hsmith19 said:

And my point is it's a chicken-egg question, or turtles all the way down if you prefer that metaphor. States can afford to invest more in those things if their economies are already growing at higher rates. And attracting and keeping talent/entrepreneurs/creatives/whatever we're calling it these days is a lot easier when the top schools are already there.

I agree the neanderthals in Jeff City are setting us back in a lot of ways, but they haven't made a dent on lists like these. Illinois and Ohio are much more populous states, and while Indiana and Wisconsin are comparable they have been ranked well ahead of Mizzou for many years. Can't blame that on the current crop of term-limited hillbilly legislators.

I could be mistaken, but I'm fairly certain Mizzou used to have a significantly higher ranking (was comparable to SLU, which also had a higher ranking), so it's certainly possible that the state's recent reduction in higher ed investments has lead to a decline in stature.  No clue where MO State, Rolla, Truman, etc. ranked previously.   

While I don't disagree that it's easier to make increased investments in education when the economy is growing at a higher rate, I don't really agree that it's a chicken-egg question.  I think there is plenty of evidence out there to suggest that those states have stronger economies in part because they made the additional investments in higher education.   Nearly all that score well in these areas are high-tax states and they've been willing to make the trade-offs that other states have not.   

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I did a little digging, I was wrong (I might have been thinking about the business school's ranking being #64ish).

This site shows a list from 2008-2015 of each school and how their rankings have changed: http://publicuniversityhonors.com/2015/06/13/u-s-news-national-university-rankings-2008-present/

Here is an updated chart showing 2010-2017: http://publicuniversityhonors.com/2016/09/18/average-u-s-news-rankings-for-126-universities-2010-1017/

So, since 2008, #80 was our peak, in 2009.  Not sure about the years before that though.

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The numerical value by itself really means very little, what you really need to figure out the meaning of any numerical ranking value is the total number of colleges and higher education schools that were ranked. A value of 94 in a field of 5000 schools means a hell of a lot more than a value of 94 in a field of 500 schools. The first example indicates the school rated 94 is in the top 2% of all higher education schools in the country, a very good rating. The second rating would mean the school rating 94 is in the top 20%, a good but not great rating as the top 2%.

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2 hours ago, QUAILMAN said:

I did a little digging, I was wrong (I might have been thinking about the business school's ranking being #64ish).

This site shows a list from 2008-2015 of each school and how their rankings have changed: http://publicuniversityhonors.com/2015/06/13/u-s-news-national-university-rankings-2008-present/

Here is an updated chart showing 2010-2017: http://publicuniversityhonors.com/2016/09/18/average-u-s-news-rankings-for-126-universities-2010-1017/

So, since 2008, #80 was our peak, in 2009.  Not sure about the years before that though.

So the mediocre program I've followed last 1/2 century is out performing itself relative to the quality of education provided?

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