A "natural experiment" on college name and prestige?

Parents Forum
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<p>Could the following situation be a “natural experiment” on college name and prestige?</p>

<p>[FAMU-FSU</a> College of Engineering :: Welcome](<a href=“http://www.eng.fsu.edu/]FAMU-FSU”>http://www.eng.fsu.edu/)</p>

<p>Yes, Florida State and Florida A&M have a joint College of Engineering. For those who want to argue about the value of college name and prestige, it would seem worthwhile to study the outcomes of engineering graduates from Florida State and Florida A&M (controlled by major, college GPA, graduation year, and the usual demographic factors that can result in covert illegal discrimination like gender, race, ethnicity, and age). After all, with the same engineering courses, the main difference between a Florida State engineering graduate and a Florida A&M engineering graduate will be the name on the diploma.</p>

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<p>One could conduct a similar experiment between Barnard and Columbia College graduates as with few exceptions, both are likely to have taken some courses at each others’ respective campuses and most courses on both sides of Broadway are usually open to students on the other campus. </p>

<p>It’s not unheard of for Columbia College classes to be populated by students from other Columbia affiliates such as Barnard, SEAS, GS, or even grad students from GSAS.</p>

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<p>Which of Florida State and Florida A&M is supposed to be more prestigious?</p>

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<p>Florida State appears to be viewed as the more prestigious one in other discussions on these forums and in US News rankings.</p>

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<p>What outcome(s)/effects would you be considering?
Hiring by engineering firms? Graduate/professional school admissions?</p>

<p>I think you’d be hamstrung by sparse data for these effects.
You wouldn’t have enough applicants to comparable firms or schools to be able to control for confounding factors.</p>

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<p>Yes, both types of outcomes (including longer term outcomes).</p>

<p>The joint engineering college has been around for 30 years, so would that many years’ worth of alumni provide enough data for a social studies researcher to find useful?</p>

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<p>Columbia college is in Chicago. Columbia University is co-located with Barnard.</p>

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<p>The main undergraduate Arts & Sciences college at Columbia University is known as Columbia College officially and by the Columbia University community. </p>

<p>It is also jealously guarded by those from Columbia College as it has historically been considered the most prestigious and the hardest undergraduate college to be admitted to among all of the Columbia University’s constituent/affiliate undergraduate colleges. </p>

<p>Whether that’s means Columbia College is the best among Columbia U’s constituent/affiliate undergrad colleges is the stuff of friendly heated debates among Columbia undergrads…especially those from SEAS, Barnard, or GS.</p>

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<p>Neither have any prestige worth talking about.</p>

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<p>^ Yeah. If you compare FSU to FAU, yes it’s certainly more prestigious. But neither FSU or Florida A&M are really a substantially more prestigious, nationally-recognized university.</p>

<p>Or so I thought.</p>

<p>I looked at the admissions scores though. Looking at the middle 50 percent of students admitted to each, the ACT range for A&M is 18-22, while FSU is massively better at 25-29. Neither are incredible, really, but that’s a huge difference. 18 basically just proves that you were able to maintain your vital functions for the duration of the exam.</p>

<p>It should also be noted that FSU accepts a greater percentage of applicants than A&M, while simultaneously accepting better students. Evidently, A&M only appeals to a fairly poor (academically) pool of applicants. FSU has a better retention rate as well.</p>

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<p>I don’t think “experiment” is going to yield very much good data. There are too many confounding variables. To begin with, neither school is particularly well known on the national level as being academically more prestigious than the other, as evidenced by the questions on this thread by otherwise knowledgeable, college-minded people.</p>

<p>FSU students may well have stronger average test scores, but I’m thinking this fact is very local knowledge. If FSU is recognized nationally at all it’s usually for its football prowess more than its academics. But athletic prowess has been sometimes shown to translate to academic esteem for some schools in a vague sort of way.</p>

<p>On the other hand, Florida A&M in this experiment has in its favor the “A&M” part of its name, which suggests it is probably more heavily STEM-oriented and might stand it in good stead for employers seeking to hire an engineering grad. And we are talking about the outcomes of engineering grads here. </p>

<p>So we’ve got lack of national academic reputation holding both schools back, football fame possibly boosting FSU’s standing, and perceived STEM strength possibly boosting Florida A&M’s standing. Like I said, this experiment is confounded by too many other variables to draw any conclusions.</p>

<p>Similarly, the Columbia/Barnard natural experiment would be confounded by the fact that Barnard is a women’s college. Thus any measure of the effect of Columbia’s greater prestige would be hard to tease out of the data that also included effects based on how the public might view women’s colleges differently from coed schools.</p>

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<p>Florida A&M is not a STEM oriented university. It has a smaller applicant pool due to the fact that it is an HBCU and therefore generally appeals to a smaller population.</p>

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<p>Before you start comparing how the alumni from each school have fared, maybe you should do a large poll to actually see if one is perceived better than the other.</p>

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<p>I stand corrected.</p>

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<p>It’s not? It’s a land-grant university, and like every other land-grant school I’ve ever seen, it’s pretty heavy on the science and technology.</p>

<p>Below is the degree offering listed on their website. There are a smattering of the fine arts in there, but it ain’t no Julliard. It looks pretty science-oriented to me.</p>

<p>"Degree Offerings
The following degrees can be earned through appropriate courses of study at Florida A&M University (symbols following each degree listed: B-bachelor’s degree, M-master’s degree, P-professional degree, Ph.D-doctorate of philosophy), and J.D. (juris doctorate). Consult the department for information regarding additional tracks available through these degree programs.</p>

<p>Accounting, B
African-American Studies, B
Agricultural Business, B
Agricultural Engineering, B
Agricultural Sciences, B, M
Applied Social Sciences, M
Architecture, B, M
Biological and Agricultural Systems Engineering, B
Biology, B, M
Biomedical Engineering, M, D
Business Administration, B, M
Cardiopulmonary Sciences
Chemical Engineering, B, M, Ph.D.
Chemistry, B, M
Civil Engineering, B, M, Ph.D.
Community Psychology, M
Computer Engineering, B
Computer Information Systems, B, M
Computer Software Engineering, M
Construction Engineering Technology, B
Counselor Education, M
Criminal Justice, B
Dramatic Arts/Theatre, B
Economics, B
Educational Leadership, M, Ph.D.
Early Childhood Education, B
Electrical Engineering, B, M, Ph.D.
Electronic Engineering Technology, B
Elementary Education, B, M
English, B
English Education, B
Entomology, M, Coop. Ph.D. w/UF
Environmental Sciences, B, M, Ph.D.
Graphic Design, B
Health Care Management, M
Health Information Management, B
Health Science, B
History, B
Industrial Engineering/Technology, B, M, Ph.D.
Journalism, B
Landscape Architecture, M
Law, J.D.
Mathematics, B
Mathematics Education, B
Mechanical Engineering, B, M, Ph.D.
Music, B
Music Education, B
Nursing, B, M
Occupational Therapy, M
Pharmacy, P, M, Ph.D.
Philosophy and Religion, B
Physical Education, B, M
Physical Therapy, M
Physics, B, M, D
Political Science, B
Psychology, B
Public Health, M, DrPH
Public Relations, B
Science Education, B
Social Science Teacher Education, B
Social Work, B, M
Sociology, B
Studio/Fine Art, B
Technology Education, B, M"</p>

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<p><a href=“Page Not Found”>http://www.famu.edu/oir/UserFiles/File/DataReporting/FactBooks/1112/Degrees%20Awarded%202011-2012.pdf&lt;/a&gt; indicates that for 2010-2011, Florida A&M graduated 274 STEM majors with bachelor’s degrees, out of a total of 1304 bachelor’s degree graduates. This is 21% of the total, so it does not appear to be unusually STEM-oriented. Actually, that is pretty close to the 22.4% in science (excluding social science and psychology) and engineering, according to <a href=“http://www.census.gov/prod/2012pubs/acs-18.pdf[/url]”>http://www.census.gov/prod/2012pubs/acs-18.pdf&lt;/a&gt; .</p>