<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>
<p>
</p>
<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>
<p>
</p>
<p>What about USC is “medium-sized”? For a private school or for a public school, 37,000 students qualifies as “quite large.”</p>
<p>
</p>
<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>
<p>You keep trying to bootstrap the U of C grad programs (including all of the branch campuses) onto the undergraduate analysis, which simply is irrelevant. Rather than speculate on how much more expensive grad students are, let’s stick with the undergraduate discussion and data, thank you.</p>
<p>^ what are you talking about? I’m simply saying that in the context of university finances, grad students are more expensive to support; since we can’t accurately separate the two in the figures above (that would be impossible), the most we can do is add a footnote about the proportion of graduate students. By noting this, I am of course attempting to refocus the discussion of university finances on undergraduates. (Technically, this thread isn’t just about undergraduates anyway: it’s a pure and simple question of whether USC is on the rise academically.)</p>
<p>That’s what skews the analysis even further in UCLA’s favor. Sorry you don’t like the outcome, but it is what it is.</p>
<p>No, the most we can do is not resort to sheer speculation. Sorry you don’t like the analysis, but if you claim to be some sort of data miner, and if you cannot come up with raw data, then the footnote needs to say that and nothing more.</p>
<p>Okay, so your real complaint is that I didn’t fully and explicitly say: “The reason I am including graduate enrollment in this analysis is that graduate and undergraduate expenditures cannot be accurately separated. Thus, we may use the proportion of graduate students only as a proxy to temper our perception of the following figures.” [But again, the discussion isn’t solely about undergraduate anyway: it’s about USC’s rise academically, which is certainly intertwined with graduate education. After all, if we were only allowed to discuss undergraduate figures, then we should cut out all the $ amounts related to graduate education when we discuss the $6 billion campaign for USC. It’d be more like a $2 billion campaign then. ;)]</p>
<p>By the way, that graduate students are more expensive to support is not “sheer speculation”; it’s undisputed fact. The degree to which they are more expensive is debatable, however.</p>
<p>(Sigh, I knew Trojans would react poorly to my post #217…)</p>
<p>What’s your final statement based on? And which grad students in particular, by discipline, are more expensive? Finally, have you done an analysis of the grad programs of each of these three schools to support your general claim? For example, does it matter that USC might have more film school or dental school or engineering grad students than UCLA? It looks like you are lumping all disciplines together to support your conclusion.</p>
<p>Phantasmagoric mentioned multiple times where everything is coming from. Unless you are having a difficult time finding it (I’ll give you a hint, it’s in USC’s profile on your favorite college ranking), your posts just seem almost sad at this point - almost like grabbing at whatever you can to come up with a retort. Everything he says is indeed backed with raw data. The only thing he didn’t say was which institution is better than the other because by definition that is a subjective claim. Would you look at that, he’s only posted factual statements.</p>
<p>My final statement is based on how much of a tantrum you’re throwing over figures that show UCLA’s firm dominance over USC in terms of financial resources.</p>
<p>If you’re referring to my statement before parentheses: I don’t think there’s any discipline for which an undergrad is more expensive than a grad student. That’s because grad students typically take up more time and effort from professors; because they tend to make greater use of facilities (some of which are limited to grad students); because they are given stipends and tuition waivers (if they’re PhD students); and so on. Grad students’ relatively higher cost to universities is really nothing new; it’s undisputed fact.</p>
<p>The USN&WR metrics speak for themselves, and USC beats Cal and UCLA in pretty much all of them, at least at the undergraduate level. That is undisputed and further, based on the last 25 years or so, USC has risen in that coveted ranking faster and stronger than every other university in the United States. Further, USC has handily beaten UCLA and Cal in fundraising, with a few exceptions, for the past three decades; but that is really not as relevant, given the U of C is public, and USC competes against the likes of Cornell, JHU, Columbia and others in the fundraising department.</p>
<p>So you are saying that when HP and Litton Industries and others pay to have their employees earn an MS in engineering, that is costing the university more than a typical undergrad? How about a company that sends an employee to the USC B School, is that also costing USC more? How about a dental student who pays full freight to go to the USC Dental School, is that costing more? How about law: do you know USC’s law school is fully self-supported and that there are virtually no scholarships doled out?</p>
<p>Seattle, can I just ask a random question for a second? If you describe the USNews ranking as a “coveted ranking,” then is it a completely factual statement for you that Cal is superior to USC in pretty much every single way in terms of academics in undergrad? You seem to always hold to the fact that literally the only ranking USC is ahead of UCLA in (in undergrad ranking) by a mere 2 spots is so precious and coveted and really reveals so much. So Cal is pretty much 100% superior to USC then correct? I feel like you won’t agree with this which illustrates your almost worrying disconnection from reality and disconnection from the basic logic you formulate your arguments for USC superiority over UCLA.</p>
<p>You missed the import of my other thread: USC is the only school that has beaten both H and S in claiming the top spot in fundraising, so I stand by my previous statement and reasoning. And the peer assessment to which you refer relates to the graduate engineering program (and I agree regarding the national academy issue).</p>
<p>More to the point, and perhaps we can agree on something, you appear to be focusing on Ph.D.s while I’m focusing on more of the professional schools. </p>
<p>Perhaps an analysis of just Ph.D. programs would be more accurate, but then again, perhaps not. But to claim all grad programs (including professional type schools) are more expensive is not convincing.</p>
<p>No, it isn’t. Several universities have. Perhaps not in the last 10 years, but H or S isn’t always the #1.</p>
<p>And no, I don’t think you can stand by your previous statement, particularly that in the thread title: “USC Consistent Top Fundraiser With Harvard and Stanford.” So USC takes the top spot once, and that’s consistency to you. Hmm…</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>No, I’m talking about all graduate students. Sure, master’s students pay more into the school, so their net cost to the university is smaller. But that’s irrelevant: we’re only looking at how the university is spending its $ in the budget, and we don’t care where the money came from, just where the money is going. And the reality is, the cost of educating a graduate student - whether a PhD student or a professional student - is higher.</p>
<p>If you weren’t afraid–yes, afraid–of USC, you wouldn’t be spending hours of your time on a USC forum trying to convince everyone that your school is better.</p>
<p>^ that’s the typical response on CC when someone is backed into a corner with facts and evidence and cannot logically claw their way out: they attempt to re-focus the discussion on the person(s) making the argument rather than on the argument itself.</p>
<p>As said before, whatever helps you sleep at night. ;)</p>
<p>phantasmagoric said - “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.”</p>
<p>The several dozen Berkeley grads I know are almost all engineering graduates, with a few art degrees, a geology degree, and a couple of East Asian studies degrees. Whenever someone makes a statement like the one quoted, I can tell they don’t really understand statistics. Several dozen samples or data points can do a very good job at homing in on general characteristics of a population.</p>