Miamian Magazine and MU athletics

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Not attending doesn’t equate to not caring. If we use attendance as a metric for caring, then HawkTalk is full of people who don’t care about any of the 3 you mentioned.

Similar to @Quinoaburger’s story about only looking at Alabama because of their football dynasty, I know a good chunk of students I graduated with that wouldn’t have attended Miami if they didn’t have baseball. Most of them played baseball in HS, were at best good enough to play club, would go to a couple games a season, but always followed the team through social media. And always wanted Miami to win. That’s the next wave of donors. But we really need to stop equating attendance to caring.

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When do you think the discussions started for this gift? And is it just a coincidence that 10% is going back to the athletic program?

Now let’s look at their acceptance rate since then. Remember how most schools got easier to get into during COVID? WMU became more difficult:

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Louisville as we know it was built on athletic success

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WMU has a medical school?!?!

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Another question, Prof (gee, I haven’t said that in 48 years): with all the angst over MIami’s academic rankings, are you aware of an action plan to improve them – or does university leadership simply not care that much? By a plan, I mean a vision for where we want to be, identification of critical needs that need to be met to get there, and the strategies and tactics to make it all work. Importantly, this would need to be staffed and funded.

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I would suggest looking through the state of the university materials. Crawford has a very specific plan.

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You’re selling the wrong guy here. I hang out at the horse track and scream profanities to animals when they don’t do what I need them to do.

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89

It’s likely based in Grenada.

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I maybe wasn’t clear enough, but I was actually saying the opposite of that. I only looked at Alabama because they offered me a huge academic scholarship. Their football team was an afterthought at best. Not to say anything about the broader discussion between athletics/academics, just to point out that specific anecdotes (like Alabama’s huge jump in applicants and out of state students) are usually more complicated than any one factor.

I agree with your general point about how successful athletics can help with recruiting. Coming out of high school I applied to a couple of colleges that only had D3 sports. There were other factors that were ultimately much more important in making my decision, but the fact that Miami is D1/FBS was definitely a point in its favor.

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When did discussions for this gift to WMU begin?

Do you know or are you assuming correlation implies causation?

WMU 2016 13-1 MAC champions and an invite to the 2017 Cotton Bowl

WMU 2016-2017 USNWR # 285
WMU 2018-2019 USNWR # 285
WMU 2022-2023 USNWR # 285

Western Michigan University 2022-2023 USNWR Ranking

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I can tell you with 100% certainty that Miami’s administration and the Board of Trustees care tremendously about rankings, and they are not happy with the 100+ overall position. Some initiatives are going on:

  1. Have more applications to decrease acceptance rates
  2. Focus on hiring faculty that have PhDs (the % of faculty with terminal degrees is another criterion)
  3. Some colleges, like FSB, are reducing the teaching load of a few professors who are active in doing research to increase publication volume.

I am not familiar with a central vision along the lines of “we want to be the Xth best in Y,” although it might exist within the Provost/President circles. I know that the FSB dean is very clear that the division wants to be among the top 10 public business schools for undergraduate education.

Realistically, a massive improvement in our ranking numbers is really hard to achieve, given the budget constraints we have. Ohio currently pays for about 9% of the university revenue budget (that number was over 50% 48 years ago), which means the university is heavily dependent on tuition. This causes the number of enrolled students to increase in periods of crises, which in turn affects the student/faculty ratio (one ranking criterion). Although it is much improved now, during COVID years, my division couldn’t teach small classes (e.g., having 10 people) or even electives. This affected the class size component of the rankings as classes were packed. Again, all of the above is much better now, and we should be a bit better next year.

Here comes the ugly news. Pell grant numbers and their performance also influence some rankings. In 2020, Miami had the second lowest Pell Grant student enrollment rate in the country among public colleges. To fix that, the university has just raised $46 million (the largest individual gift in Miami’s history) for scholarships to support Pell-eligible students.

All the words in bold above are ranking criteria. You can see the full list here: https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/how-us-news-calculated-the-rankings.

Overall, note how several of the current achievements and endeavors are directly linked to those criteria, from accepting more students to targeted fundraising, financial support, and efforts to diversify the student body. It is safe to say that President Crawford, Provost Mullenix, and the deans are working on this. At the end of the day, it boils down to money: more money means more scholarships, more and better faculty, higher salaries for faculty, more staff to help students graduate on time, etc. All of these affect rankings.

(Sorry for the long post. I love to connect with alumni, and I am happy to discuss all of the above in person whenever any of you are in Oxford)

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So you think athletic success → academic success?

If you read any of the studies, you’d know better.

Athletic success → increased applications and donations → academic success. And we’re pretty obviously seeing the increased applications, even against the COVID trend. We’re also seeing increased donations.

Just like I told @prof that I expect professors to be able to read basic studies and apply them, I expect the same for alum.

You’re arguing against the exact blueprint study after study has shown…

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You assume too much. I can’t review studies you don’t list. I can’t apply findings for SEC and BIG10 Schools to MAC programs. The MAC doesn’t play for high enough stakes to warrant an investment in athletics as a means to academic improvement. If you have access to a study of MAC schools or Group of 5 schools that substantiates your premise please share it.

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I’ve always wondered why Miami doesn’t utilize its academic programs to bolster the department

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I’m still mad at Garland for that pipe dream “First in 2009” thing.

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This is one of the reasons I don’t pay super close attention to rankings. It’s a good thing if universities support students in financial need, but encouraging it by telling people that your academic programs are better if you do is just silly. Many of the other factors are also things which don’t have a direct impact on the quality of education.

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Any idea what happens when the Great Recession baby bust generation hits college age in a couple years? Based on what you’re saying, it sounds like that might put Miami in a bad spot relative to some of the competition.

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As the article says, the Stryker family is worth a lot and they’ve given a lot back to Kalamazoo, even if you don’t infer that they’re behind the Kalamazoo Promise free college tuition campaign. From living up here, I think it’s more of a build Kalamazoo/Western thing up then a football will attract greater academic success. Also, Kalamazoo is trying to keep pace with Grand Rapids to the north. The Medical Mile Pill Hill in Grand Rapids with partnerships between Michigan St. and Grand Valley St. has helped elevate Grand Rapids and Grand Valley St. Grand Valley St. also has expanded their downtown campus, bringing more people to an already growing downtown. Kalamazoo isn’t growing at the same pace as their neighbors to the north. The Strykers also see what the DeVos and Van Andel families continue to do for Grand Rapids.

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Ted Stryker was a great pilot.

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Dr. Peter Halstead…In The Outer Limits!

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