@collegemom3717, agreed when it comes to some American schools. It was an OU president who said “I would like to build a university of which the football team would be proud”:
However, those generally aren’t schools which folks who are considering Oxbridge are applying to (though OU, UK, and 'Bama give generous scholarships to National Merit Scholars; 'Bama, though, is a school where spending on the football program is greater than spending on all research in all departments). The schools that have powerhouse teams but also strong academics (like UMich, ND, and Duke) do not neglect the latter for the former (even if their entry standards for athletes are, umm, more forgiving).
@PurpleTitan Oxbridge surpass Michigan in almost everything. I would put Cambridge over Michigan in terms of engineering. Cambridge has an exhange program with MIT and there is a strong relationship between both schools, while I don’t think Michigan can claim it has a similar relationship with top tech schools. I’m not sure about MBA though both Oxford and Cambridge opened their business school recently. However in terms of MBA rankings both business schools surpass ross business school in all the MBA rankings. Plus Oxbridge have the brand factor so would probably grow fast.
@collegemom3717 “The UK government won’t pay ‘star’ salaries. So the universities started looking for ways to finance that.” Oxbridge don’t simply rely on the UK government to pay professors they have a high enough endowment to pay so called “star” salaries. Also remind me who watches american football? and who cares?
I’m sure Cambridge would grow it’s endowment fast they’ve hired american staff who have been part of succesful fundraisers in the us most notable Alison traub who led UVA’s campaign to raise $3 billion and David Swensen who heads Yale university’s endowment as an adviser. I’m sure Oxbridge won’t have too much trouble raising funds in the future as they try to emulate US style fundraisers.
Lots of people in America: 34 of the 35 most-watched programs on television during football season were NFL football telecasts- more than 200 million people watch football on tv. And that translates to money:
According to the Wall Street Journal, the football programs of the ‘Big 10’ universities are worth:
University of Texas $761.7 million
University of Michigan $731.9 million
Ohio State University $586.6 million
University of Iowa $384.4 million
University of Nebraska $360.1 million
No. 16 Pennsylvania State University $300.8 million
University of Wisconsin $296.1 million
University of Michigan State $224.8 million
Northwestern University $148.8 million
Purdue University $145.1 million
Indiana University $142.7 million
University of Illinois $117.3 million
What is it that bothers you about the endowments of UK universities?
@collegemom3717 It’s just that outside of Oxbridge there really aren’t any other universities with billion dollar endowments. It’s like in the UK you have two rich unis and all the other unis are poor. For instance the third richest uni in the UK in terms of endowment fund is Edinburgh university that has $460 million. The rest like Imperial, UCL,Manchester and King’s can barely reach $250 million. Don’t get me wrong Imperial and UCL are research powerhouses that get on average $570 million each in research income every year but a low endowment effects the student experience. For instance Oxbridge are the only universities in the UK that guarantee accommodation for all 3 years of undergrad while the other unis guarantee only one year. I heard of some students having to sit on the floor in lectures at UCL and Imperial due to lack of space, the unis get so overcrowded. The only thing these universities have going for them are high research citations and location(London). In the us universities have less issues with funding and students generously donate whatever they can to their alma mater.
Many public universities in the US would vigorously dispute this! Talk to any of the UC’s for a start. Like so many things in the US, the distribution is very uneven.
Well, @Ali1302, I don’t put much stock in to the FT MBA ranking because 31% consists of fairly irrelevant criteria like how international/diverse the staff and student body are (which gives a big boost to the European schools who draw from a ton of tiny countries in Europe). What matters for the MBA is earnings, and there, the UMich Ross MBA has Oxford and Cambridge beat.
Using an exchange program with MIT as evidence that Cambridge is better is a bit nonsensical because both MIT and UMich are American unis, so they obviously would not have foreign exchange programs with each other.
For what it’s worth, UMich has exchange programs with UCL, KCL, NUS of Singapore, Waseda of Japan, and students may study at Oxford.
Look, I won’t say that UMich, overall, is at the level of Oxbridge (which I consider either HYPSM-equivalent or Ivy-equivalent while I consider UMich a near-Ivy and roughly equal to UCL in the UK), but it’s also not the case that Oxbridge surpasses UMich in everything.
Granted, UMich has many more students, though UMich doesn’t seem to have much more academic staff than either of Oxbridge (but the way that academic staff is counted may be different).
@PurpleTitan First of all currently the earnings of Oxford and Cambridge business grads are higher than ross business school. Plus London business school probably has most american unis beat in terms of salary.
Also all of your rankings of Michigan are the shanghai international rankings that are completely based off of research. As you can see british schools like imperial, LSE and Manchester outrank Michigan in physics, engineering and econ. Social sciences are rather irrelevant here. If you look at the overall ranking Cambridge is 5 Michigan is like 22.
Michigan spends a lot on research yet produces less citations than universities like UCL and Imperial that get half of the research funds that Michigan has. If anything this proves the university is inefficient. Stanford, Harvard and Princeton spend less on research and have more of an impact than Michigan. The ivies on average spend like $700 million to $900 million which is the range which Oxford and Cambridge are in in terms of research funding.
The reason Oxford and Cambridge have more academic staff is due to the tutorial teaching system they would need to maintain at least a 1 to 4 staff to student ratio. Also if you combine both Oxford and Cambridge to match the student number of Michigan then the £478 million and £371 million add up to £849 million which currently stands as $1.3 billion that is similar to Michigan’s $1.33 billion research income. Oxbridge combined has 41,000 students similar to Michigan and spends a similar amount of money on research.
Um, @Ali1302, I just showed you figures that showed that UMich MBAs earn more than Oxford and Cambridge MBAs. Care to actually show data to support your rebuttal rather than just state something?
And why are social sciences irrelevant? You get to decide which subjects matter and which don’t?
And yes, some other UK unis are better than UMich in some subjects as well. Which means they are better than Oxbridge in some subjects as well (though actually, no UK uni outranks UMich in econ).
I personally loathe subjects like Sociology, Linguistics and International relations. Sociologists just take polls and I just don’t get the value of research in most social sciences the only few notable subjects are psychology, geography and history. The research in most social sciences are rather irrelevant in terms of impact and in my view less important than the natural sciences and engineering.
As for Oxbridge endowments catching up with the elite American unis . . . Eh.
From 2006 to 2014, Cambridge’s endowment grew from £4.1B to £5.98B.
In that same time frame, Harvard’s endowment grew from $28.92B to $35.88B.
MIT’s grew from $8.37B to $12.43B.
Northwestern’s grew from $5.14B to $9.78B.
UMich’s grew from $5.65B to $9.73B.
It looks to me like HYPSM are pulling away from Oxbridge while Northwestern and UMich (& UPenn and Columbia) went from being behind Cambridge to pulling even with or even ahead of Cambridge (depending on the exchange rate) and ahead of Oxford at £4.36B.
@Ali1302, re: social sciences:
You have a lot to learn. That’s all I will say.
Re: MBA salaries:
So it looks like Cambridge has pulled even with UMich while UMich still has Oxford beat.
Meanwhile, the top European MBA programs (LBS & INSEAD) are behind the American M7 b-schools (HBS, Stanford, Wharton, Chicago Booth, MIT Sloan, Kellogg, and Columbia) as well as Haas.
@PurpleTitan the £4.1 billion figure is inaccurate I wouldn’t advise you to use that figure. Also MIT, Northwestern and UMich are growing at a rate of $500 million per year which is a similar rate to both Oxford and Cambridge. I’m sure once Oxford and Cambridge start growing at a rate of £1 billion ($1.54 billion) per year which is what they are aiming for they could keep up or even surpass those three schools.
@Ali1302, the figures I have seen online for the Cambridge and Oxford endowments are even smaller. More like 2B pounds.
And sure, they can aim for anything. They may even achieve it (though so far, there’s not much evidence that they will reach those numbers any time soon) but keep in mind that the American unis aren’t exactly sitting still either. Northwestern is in the middle of a $3.75B fund-raising campaign. UMich is in the middle of a $4B campaign. MIT is in one as well, though I can’t find the number they hope to reach online; they’re probably in the silent phase now.
@PurpleTitan No neither Oxford nor Cambridge have £2 billion endowments those are simply the central university funds as I’ve stated each college has their own separate endowment some richer than others. I get my figures from the accounts and financial statements of the universities and not news articles.
Cambridge currently are planning to start a £2 billion fundraising campaign after their successful £1.2 billion campaign that started in 2009. Cambridge has hired leaders of university funding campaigns in the us for instance Alison Traub who led UVA’s $3 billion fund raising campaign.
Oxford university has raised £2 billion and wants to extend it to £3 billion soon they aim to grow by £1 billion per year.
@Ali1302 is that so? Well, Thanks for the info. I’ll admit, I sorta need all the information I can get about other universities in other countries because I’m bound to study in a foreign land and I might be having 2nd thoughts about it. It’s actually really scary you see?
UK universities are funded by the government. US schools build endowments mostly based on contributions designed to secure admissions, immediately or long-term for family members. You can’t do that in the UK.