Is USC on the rise academically?

phantasmagoric · July 23, 2012, 10:40am

simba9, to say that a student would be better off going to OSU instead of Berkeley because of the class sizes is odd, given that USC’s class sizes aren’t too different (e.g. USC beats Berkeley in small classes by 0.9% - not particularly significant). In both cases, the majority of any given student’s classes will be larger than 20. It also makes no sense to judge an entire university’s graduates based on the handful that you happen to have interacted with.

Sure, the budget cuts are hard for UC as a whole, but Berkeley and UCLA in particular are doing just fine. News sources overblow just how much they’re being affected; as noted even by the Stanford president, it’s mostly a scare tactic to get funding reinstated, but Berkeley/UCLA in particular are amazingly resilient and aren’t being affected nearly as much as some would indicate. IIRC, Berkeley’s revenues have in fact increased, from $1.8 billion to $2.4 billion, a whopping 33% jump. Indeed, when you factor out the med school from USC’s budget to make an apples-to-apples comparison, you’ll find that Berkeley actually has a larger budget, despite having a couple thousand fewer students and far fewer faculty. Sure, Berkeley is getting less from the state than before, but it’s still more than USC (nothing). So while USC and Berkeley have about the same in endowment, Berkeley gets $200-250 million in cash from the state each year, which would require an additional $4-5 billion in endowment to match. Even accounting for the difference in fundraising doesn’t give an accurate picture, since donations (unlike state funding) mostly have strings attached and since the margin (~$125 million in 2011) still doesn’t match what Berkeley gets from the state today. In short, even with the financial woes of the state, Berkeley still has more financial resources than USC.

docfreedaddy,

Who is doing that? I merely pointed out a database of academic citations for Trojans’ benefit, so they can see how USC has risen over time, which is certainly on-topic (“on the rise academically”). I made no claim of what makes a “top private university.” Nor do I see anyone else doing that.

You’ve now posted your ‘dissertation’ on the New Yorker article twice on the Stanford forum, and in both cases, “Stanfordites” didn’t bother to respond to you because it’s a rambling, incoherent mess of thoughts with no real thesis and certainly no evidence or data to support your strange assertions (e.g. criticizing Stanford for accepting a donation from Apple, or attempting to draw a connection between Stanford and privacy violations by Google Maps street view).

Perhaps if you took a firm stance - rather than the incessant “wondering aloud” to *imply<a href=“not-so-subtly”>/i</a> your stance that Stanford is responsible for the corporate evils of Silicon Valley and that SV has a negative influence on the university - you might hear a response, instead of crickets chirping. ;)

UCBChemEGrad · July 23, 2012, 10:47am

standing ovation

BandTenHut · July 23, 2012, 12:33pm

Yeah, it would be really odd to say that, because that wasn’t what was said.

Don’t begin posts with a lie and I’ll read them.

phantasmagoric · July 23, 2012, 1:13pm

^ what he said was ambiguous:

And while I should have said “might as well” instead of “better off,” the sentiment is the same regardless: criticizing Berkeley for OSU-like class sizes, when in fact USC is just as bad.

It’s okay if you don’t read my posts - I know all you’ll do is pretend I’m lying, so that you can maintain in your head the notion that USC is “the best.” Whatever helps you sleep at night. :)

b_amp_bsmom · July 23, 2012, 6:00pm

@phantasmagoric Just out of curiosity, where did you find your figures for USC’s revenues, excluding Keck School of Medicine? If you pull up USC’s Financial Report for 2011 you can see that revenue attributable to Keck is only 215 million. In 2011, USC reported a total revenue of 3,922,665 (recorded in thousands). Thus, their revenue in 2011 not including revenues received from Keck was 3.7 billion. This figure is still significantly larger than Berkeley’s total revenue of 2.4 billion. Also, to continue your “apples to apples” comparison of the financial resources of the two universities, if you review the financial statements you will see that USC has significantly greater assets (7.7 billion for USC vs 4.8 billion for UCB). You say that “So while USC and Berkeley have about the same in endowment, Berkeley gets $200-250 million in cash from the state each year, which would require an additional $4-5 billion in endowment to match.” What about revenue from TUITION??? What about donations specifically earmarked for professors, endowed chairs, and capital projects? Not all of the money that is currently being raised is invested to earn a yearly return (from which I’m assuming you got your figure of 4-5 billion in endowment for an increase of 200-250 million in the operating budget assuming a 5% ROI). You say that although State of California revenue contributions for UCB are dwindling, that USC as a PRIVATE university receives no payment from the state, without considering that the per student differential in tuition between the two universities is OVER $30,000 (2012 USC tuition is 43K+, 2012 UCB tuition is 12K+).

Anyone that has recently visited USC would be astounded by the capital projects recently completed (Ronald Tutor Campus Center, Phase I/II of the Cinematic Arts School to name a few) as well as the many ongoing projects such as the John McKay Athletic Center, Wallis Annenberg Hall, Dauterive Hall, the new Aquatic Center and the new Health Center which are detailed in the USC Campus Development document below. It is clear from these tremendous capital projects that USC has NO shortage of funds.

–USC Financial Report 2011–
<a href=“http://about.usc.edu/files/2011/07/USCFR.2011.pdf[/url]”>http://about.usc.edu/files/2011/07/USCFR.2011.pdf</a>

–UCB Financial Report 2011–
<a href=“http://controller.berkeley.edu/FINRPTS/2010-11/Master.pdf[/url]”>http://controller.berkeley.edu/FINRPTS/2010-11/Master.pdf</a>

–USC Campus Development–
<a href=“http://www.president.usc.edu/files/2012/06/2012-UPC-Development_for-Web.pdf[/url]”>http://www.president.usc.edu/files/2012/06/2012-UPC-Development_for-Web.pdf</a>

jjalfonso1 · July 23, 2012, 6:11pm

Please elaborate. I was under the impression USC’s student:faculty ratio was half that of Cal’s. If USC and Cal have about the same percentage of small classes (<20 students?), presumably Cal has a much greater frequency of (very) large classes. I’d like to see more data.

UCBChemEGrad · July 23, 2012, 6:32pm

That’s just the designated budget revenue. Add in undesignated and it’s about $543 million for all Health Science schools. Add in Health Service revenues and it’s an additional $914 million. Health sciences total revenue is about $1.5 billion.

simba9 · July 23, 2012, 6:48pm

At Cal, I know that Alex Filippenko (who’s a great professor) teaches introductory astronomy in a full lecture hall of 700 students. I’ve also heard/read there are plenty of freshmen classes of over 400 students.

I went to Ohio State for my freshman year, and had the same experience of sitting in classes with hundreds of other students. It was a ridiculous learning environment. Even if you have a great professor, you have very little chance of interacting with them. I transferred to a college of barely more than 3000 at the start of my second year. My largest class was about 60 people, and the class sizes made all the difference in the world.

Someone please correct me if I’m wrong, but my understanding is that USC classes top out at around 200.

Also, I know dozens of Cal graduates, phantasmagoric. Why did you assume I only know a “handful?” My impressions of Cal vs. USC vs. UCLA undergraduates come from dealing directly with them. A Cal undergraduate degree is massively overrated, piggybacking on the reputation that Cal’s graduate and professional programs have given the university.

b_amp_bsmom · July 23, 2012, 7:27pm

“That’s just the designated budget revenue. Add in undesignated and it’s about $543 million for all Health Science schools. Add in Health Service revenues and it’s an additional $914 million. Health sciences total revenue is about $1.5 billion”

Even with this taken into account USC still generates greater yearly revenue than UCB. USC’s revenue excluding Health Service and Health and Science School revenues is 2,465,798. Which is greater than UCB’s total revenue of 2,357,215.

Ultimately, both sides of this argument are flawed because you can’t do an apples to apples comparison of USC and UCB’s undergraduate finances without extremely detailed financials on each of the institutions graduate programs. This is because the individual graduate schools revenues as well as expenditures vary significantly across disciplines due to size, research conducted, disciplines offered, faculty size etc. etc.

phantasmagoric · July 23, 2012, 8:17pm

b&bsmom, what UCBChemEGrad said. I had found it from searching for the Keck operating budget.

It’s disingenuous to make that comparison, for two reasons: 1) no one ever compares total assets; it’s net assets that matter (e.g. Harvard has over $60 billion in total assets, but roughly $23 billion in liabilities; Stanford has $32 billion in total assets, but $7 billion in liabilities), and 2) the difference between the two in net assets is far smaller ($4.2 billion vs. USC’s $5.7 billion), since USC has more than 3x as much in liabilities.

More importantly, your comparing net or total assets isn’t an apples-to-apples comparison; you would need to factor out medicine-related assets to make the comparison fair. That could easily be $1.5 billion or more in net assets, considering the relatively high expenses of a med school and accompanying hospitals/clinics, esp. in capital assets. For example, in the case of Stanford, consolidated net assets include several billion related to medicine/health sciences, including its hospitals. (The alternative comparison to make this fair would be to look at Berkeley+UCSF, which I’m sure no Trojan would want, since USC would definitely get creamed, badly.)

I’m well aware that tuition is how private universities make up for the difference in lack of state funding. The reason I mentioned state funding is that simba9 brought it up; I made the point that getting something from the state is better than getting nothing. Berkeley has responded to decreases in state funding by increases in tuition. So this gets down to the bottom line: regardless of where the money comes from, what is the operating budget? And my point on that stands. The only reason I mentioned Berkeley’s revenues was to show that cash flows have not decreased but actually increased substantially. But when comparing the operating budget, you compare expenses, not revenues. USC’s expenses are far below revenues - abnormally so ($1 billion in 2011 - a year-over-year doubling, largely due to increases in the fair value of investments and in pledged donations, with only a marginal increase in university expenses).

The end result is the same: discounting med schools, Berkeley has a larger operating budget. USC is a bit disingenuous in this respect, because it usually promotes an operating budget total that includes health care services; this is not something that schools with hospitals typically do (Stanford, for example, typically mentions a $4.1 billion budget, but excludes the $2 billion budget for its hospitals). I didn’t realize this until looking at USC’s financial statement now. Indeed, when you factor out health care services and other irrelevant parts from USC’s operating expenses, you get only $1.9 billion in actual university budget. And that still includes the budget for the med school! :rolleyes:

In other words, your analysis is too simplistic; the bottom line likely has Berkeley ahead by a few hundred million.

jjalfonso1,

Doesn’t really matter what the faculty:student ratio is, because class sizes are more dependent on how many full-time faculty there are, what their teaching load is, how they’re distributed across units that actually have undergrads in them, and so on.

The difference is marginal, and inconsequential anyway: the average student experience at USC and at Berkeley will be about the same, with the majority of their courses in large classes. If you want more data, perhaps you could pressure USC to finally man-up and start releasing a Common Data Set, which is what every other top school does; without this, we cannot even begin to estimate the average student experience, which requires knowledge of the actual number of undergrad classes in each class size range. USC conspicuously does not release a CDS (probably because it would contain lots of nuggets of information that USC prefers to hide for now, e.g. the real breakdown of its financial aid).

simba9,

It doesn’t matter how many you know - you know only a tiny fraction of its alumni, and you have no idea whether it’s a representative sample. Further, I doubt you have any real analysis of their abilities, other than a superficial one. Really, there’s no reason to try to argue this point, since you simply cannot win it. It’s anecdotal, unscientific, and irrelevant - and certainly doesn’t give you license to judge its entire alumni base.

UCBChemEGrad · July 23, 2012, 8:20pm

I believe phantasmagoric was referring to the USNWR class size stats which are classified in two categories: fewer than 20 and greater than 50. Those percentages are about the same for Berkeley and USC. USC is a huge private university.

I agree that there are some huge lecture courses at Berkeley for popular lower division prerequisites…some 700. However, these courses are primarily science/math/econ lectures and the material doesn’t require much interaction with a prof. 200-700 in a lecture doesn’t really matter…you aren’t getting personal attention in either.

compoopers · July 23, 2012, 8:24pm

“East coast” people can be highly stuck up about their universities – even Stanford and UC Berkeley aren’t looked as highly upon as their own ivies and publics, even though stanford/berk are just as good or better than some of those schools.

I’d say USC is going up up up. This year, thanks to common app, they had way more applications and a way higher average GPA/SAT for admits. I’d say the next 4 years look good for USC admissions.

UCBChemEGrad · July 23, 2012, 8:27pm

Phanta, Berkeley + USCF + LBNL would be a fair comparison. :D

jjalfonso1 · July 23, 2012, 8:32pm

What data are you using to make this conclusion? Any class larger than 20 equals “large class”, and if difference in small class (<20 students) is 0.9%…

A CDS would provide more insight. You seem to be speculating.

phantasmagoric · July 23, 2012, 9:16pm

^ of course it’s speculation. No one can make a claim either way about the average student experience, because USC does not release its CDS. I had to get the class size data from a third-party source (US News). Given that simplistic data, it’s likely that the average student experience in class sizes is at best marginally different at Berkeley and USC. But we can’t know unless/until USC releases a CDS like Berkeley. In the meantime, it’s more likely that my assertion is true.

Addendum to my last post: not only does Berkeley have a higher university budget even before you discount USC’s med school budget, but the two are different in a very crucial way: how the money is distributed over its student population. While USC is only marginally larger than Berkeley as a whole, USC has almost 2x as many graduate students as Berkeley. Graduate students are far more expensive to support than undergrads, which means that despite the similarly large overall student bodies, a greater proportion of USC’s budget is spent on its graduate student population than its undergraduate student population.

What, no LLNL? ;)

g0ld3n · July 23, 2012, 9:42pm

Man, we need to have a bat signal for phantasmagoric. Your posts are clean, true, and to the point (and devoid of personal/association attacks). You need to be a payed employee or something to clear up these misconceptions on CC because they seem to happen so often. Unlike the majority of the population on CC, phantasmagoric kudos for actually using reliable data and facts to support claims and not just posting useless banter about what you feel is true. It shouldn’t really have to be impressive, it should be expected, that people would behave this way. But sadly, it’s not the case usually.

phantasmagoric · July 23, 2012, 11:04pm

^ Hmm, bat signal… that could work. ;)

I focused on Berkeley before, although much of the same applies to UCLA. Here’s the same for UCLA. Trojans won’t like this at all.

All figures in billions; USC’s figure in parentheses

Total assets: $8.19 ($7.65)
—Total liabilities: $1.93 ($1.92)
Net assets: $6.26 ($5.73)
Operating revenue: $5.06 ($3.92)
Operating budget (expenses): $4.69 ($2.93)
Operating budget (without healthcare services): $3.62 ($1.9)
Operating budget (without healthcare services or med school): $2.43 (???)

% of student body at the graduate level: 31% (53%)

In every measure, UCLA beats USC by a comfortable margin. I should have used UCLA in my original example, since it demonstrated my point even better than Berkeley. So again, top UCs are doing just fine holding their own against USC.

SeattleTW · July 23, 2012, 11:31pm

Thank you, California taxpayers…I would hardly characterize the above stats as indicative of the strength of the U of C. And those figures are unimpressive given the much larger student body at UCLA, particularly at the undergraduate level.

takmuieo · July 23, 2012, 11:39pm

definitely the strength of the UC’s should not be characterized by the above stats. Nonetheless, the UC’s are cranking out more reputation and prestige. we have a long way to go to catch up to the leagues of stanford and berkeley

SeattleTW · July 23, 2012, 11:53pm

It’s interesting that many Cal and UCLA alumni believe that USC, which is a medium sized school but large private school, hosts class sizes equal to or about the same as Cal or UCLA. I’m not sure where that data is coming from. I went there in the 80s and most of my classes were around 20, on average (lower level). The higher level classes averaged fewer than 15. There were a couple of lectures (Calculus and Poli Sci 100), that each had about 200 students, but even those had break out labs with TAs or professors. And that was when USC was far from selective.

I also attended the University of Michigan (as a law student), a huge public school, where kids spent the night in lecture halls and hallways in order to register for undergraduate courses. That sort of musical chairs does not happen at USC. I witnessed huge lecture halls filled to the brim with undergrads. I also took an undergraduate class where kids would stand in the back of the room overflowing with classmates jockeying for a seat. I was spared such indignity because I was in law school. It was truly phenomenal and my fellow private-schooled law school colleagues and I would comment how grateful we were for having attended private colleges.

How is a kid supposed to learn and get noticed in such a sea of humanity?

Is USC on the rise academically?

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