Is USC on the rise academically?

[phantasmagoric]

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Thank you, California taxpayers…I would hardly characterize the above stats as indicative of the strength of the U of C.

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<p>You’re right: it’s much stronger than those stats would indicate. Things like quality of faculty, research, and inventions can’t be accurately captured in $ figures.</p>

<p>By the way, the majority of UCLA’s assets come not from taxpayers’ money to the state, but from donors. The capital assets which the state funded before have long depreciated in value.</p>

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And those figures are unimpressive given the much larger student body at UCLA, particularly at the undergraduate level.

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<p>UCLA has ~39,000 students, while USC has ~37,000. Not particularly significant; indeed, if you calculated the above figures on a per-capita basis, UCLA would still cream USC.</p>

<p>And as I indicated before, UCLA’s higher proportion of undergrads actually works out in its favor here. The reason is that grad students are much more expensive to support. USC has 7,000 more grad students than UCLA. That means that a higher proportion of its budget is going to graduate student support than the proportion of UCLA’s budget is going to the same cause.</p>

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which is a medium sized school but large private school

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<p>What about USC is “medium-sized”? For a private school or for a public school, 37,000 students qualifies as “quite large.”</p>

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I’m not sure where that data is coming from. I went there in the 80s

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<p>It’s coming from USC, as it reports it to US News: the proportion of classes under 20 and over 50. Whatever your experience was 20+ years ago isn’t particularly relevant to USC today.</p>