Syracuse's rankings slide downward and was predicted five years ago

Parents Forum
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<p>Syracuse’s decline in research competitiveness led it to give up membership of the Association of American Universities this year. I think this is just another sign of its overall decline in status, which is partially due to the deteriorating local economy (e.g. the struggling Kodak). </p>

<p>[Syracuse</a> U., Facing a Forced Exit, Says It Will Withdraw From the AAU - Government - The Chronicle of Higher Education](<a href=“Syracuse U., Facing a Forced Exit, Says It Will Withdraw From the AAU”>Syracuse U., Facing a Forced Exit, Says It Will Withdraw From the AAU)</p>

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<p>Kodak is in Rochester not Syracuse. Syracuse’s local economy has been bad for years.</p>

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<p>Perhaps they replaced merit scholarships with need aid because, with today’s economy and its $53,000 per year cost of attendance, they were losing a lot more students due to insufficient need aid than they were gaining with merit scholarships?</p>

<p>Times may be rough for an expensive private school that does not have enough mindshare reputation to convince that many students that it is worth paying the tuition premium over their in-state public flagship. Even after merit scholarships or need aid, it might still be a tough sell.</p>

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<p>" from 1999 to 2009…Syracuse’s federal dollars fell to $22.4-million during that period, a 42-percent drop after adjusting for inflation" </p>

<p>Syracuse never was even close to being a research powerhouse and correctly realized that they never will be. They had no chance to grow their Federal research funding in the long-term.</p>

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<p>Isn’t teaching undergrads the core mission of a university? One of the biggest complaints about research-driven universities is that THEY lose sight of their core mission by chasing grants and funding rather than making their professors teach students. I also don’t see why the core mission of education excludes having a social conscience and actually making that part of how you do business, rather than just giving it a friendly wave as you continue to hand out money to snobs.</p>

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<p>We’ll see how that is working for them. Most outstanding faculty want to do both-- research and teach.</p>

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<p>I applaud any school that reduces or eliminates merit aid in favor of increasing need-based aid. I have no objection to a school providing merit aid if it’s already meeting 100% of need for all its students. But most schools that offer merit aid don’t meet 100% of need. That means they’re offering money to the students with the top grades and test scores even if by the school’s own calculation some of those students don’t have financial need. And that comes at the cost of supporting students the admissions office deems qualified to attend, but who may not be able to attend for financial reasons. Going to need-based aid is not social engineering, it’s just basic fairness. Most of the tippy-top schools went there years ago; Syracuse is just following in their footsteps.</p>

<p>As for renovating buildings in downtown Syracuse, this is also not unusual for urban universities. Columbia, Penn, and the University of Chicago, among others, have all invested heavily in their surrounding neighborhoods, not out of a misguided do-gooder impulse but as a question of institutional survival. If their respective urban neighborhoods went into a tailspin of urban decline, disinvestment, blight, and crime as many nearby neighborhoods in New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia had done, the students would stop coming, the faculty wouldn’t want to work there, and the universities would face a costly and unpalatable choice between abandoning their present physical plant and relocating lock, stock, and barrel to another location (surely more costly than fixing up the neighborhood and getting in some better tenants), or going into an irreversible decline themselves. I don’t know enough about Syracuse (the city or the university) to say whether that’s been the case there, but investing in acquisition and rehab of a few blocks of buildings has proven highly successful for Columbia, Penn, and Chicago. And for all I know, they might even be turning a tidy profit as residential and commercial landlords.</p>

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<p>^^^ Trinity College too. In the late 90s, it gained national renown for its groundbreaking work in urban renewal. Maybe Syracuse is simply trying to reinvent itself.</p>

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<p>Syracuse will not be abandoning research, they never did much to begin with. The $30 million or so in Federal research funding they received barely (I’m guessing) places them in the top 200 research schools. They were a bit player to begin with and will continue to be a bit player in this game. </p>

<p>I think it makes sense, focus on research that impacts their community. More schools should be doing this.</p>

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<p>“We’ll see how that is working for them.”</p>

<p>Fair enough. I certainly agree that this strategy carries risks for Syracuse. I just believe it’s a good thing when a university feels free to pursue its vision in spite of what USNews might have to say about it. I would think that even if I disagreed with the vision. It’s a huge strength of American higher education that our institutions are so diverse in so many ways. Over-valuing USNews has the potential to stifle further innovation and individualization because the rankings reward schools for striving to meet a uniform model. As much as I love HYP, the whole population benefits from having so many schools that look nothing like HYP (or each other).</p>

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<p>Just remember, a reputation is easy to lose and hard to regain. When i was younger SU had a good reputation as a solid private below the top tier equal to say NYU. That seems to have slipped already as others have passed it including NYU. Maybe the die was already cast and they are just making the best of it but I though it had more going for it and just had poor management.</p>

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<p>Well, no. </p>

<p>The core mission of a university is scholarship, and producing the next generation of scholars, aka the grad students. The undergrads come after that.</p>

<p>The core mission of a LAC is educating undergrads.</p>

<p>I just asked a friend what the rep of Syracuse was, in his mind: “Basketball” Syracuse has been, in my mind, the epitome of a private school that I would not cough up the $$ for unless I had a ton of money. (Except, perhaps, for the writing/communications programs.)</p>

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<p>I am not gloating as Rodney suggests,but I did see the future effect. I am not happy with the results,but it is what it is. I am simply citing what others have said about Syracuse’s policy. In fact, I wish all merit scholarships were eliminated everywhere!</p>

<p>The problem is that Syracuse is in an academic arms race with other universities for top faculty and top students. If they give up on this because their monetary priorities becomes political correctness, they will fall behind academically. This is the reason that many faculty are balking at what Syracuse is doing.</p>

<p>Yes, I fully agree that it is laudable. It would be great if they can give a lot more of need based aid. It would be great if they can buy up much of the down town area and renovate it as well as give lots of merit based aid and endowed chairs. The problem is that they don’t have the endowment to do all this. They have to make choices, and the choices made are leading to declining academics.</p>

<p>I saw this five years ago when my daugther decided not to take a bus to their downtown facility in the cold. No one at Syracuse ever did a study of parent’s wishes regarding this. I predicted Syracuse’s decline and will predict that it will get worse unless Syracuse recognizes the realty of the marketplace that they are competing against.</p>

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<p>Interesting that the mail my D has been getting from universities for the last year and a half doesn’t mention that. </p>

<p>“Come to our university and be the stage props for our real mission, educating graduate students. If you pick up some education along the way, so much the better.”</p>

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<p>It is totally possible to have educating both levels of students as priorities. Even at one university depts vary in how many grad students they have and how they are handled versus undergrad. Broad general conclusions are impossible.</p>

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<p>“That seems to have slipped already as others have passed it including NYU.”</p>

<p>That’s true, but I don’t know how much Syracuse could have done about that. Most of the regional private schools that became big national players in the last 50 years are in big metro areas. (NYU, Emory, Rice, Vanderbilt, Wash U, USC, GW, American, Northwestern, BC, I’d even put Stanford in this group. Duke is virtually the only exception, and it at least has good weather.) In the case of NYU, BU, GW, and American, the power of the location is pretty much the whole story behind the transformation. Central NY is a very tough sell without the Ivy magic.</p>

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<p>Hanna notes, “but I don’t know how much Syracuse could have done about that. Most of the regional private schools that became big national players in the last 50 years are in big metro areas”</p>

<p>Response: There is some truth to this;however, schools like Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan and others are not in ideal , big metro areas but have a sterling reputation.</p>

<p>What could Syracuse do about it? Let me give some suggestions that I am sure many of you won’t like. However, I approach schools like a business. Thus, I will suggest what a good business should do from that perspective:</p>

<p>1.Reduce need based aid.
2. Increase Merit aid somewhat
3. Establish ast least one to two endowed chairs per year in order to bring in top scholars. At the end of ten years, Syracuse would have at least 20 endowed chairs with top faculty that would certainly cause a rise in ratings.</p>

<p>It might be best to pick one department at a time. Thus, they had two chairs to the philosopy department, then the physcis department etc. Moreover, this shouldn’t be that difficult to accomplish or to attract top faculty due to the lower cost of living in Syracuse.</p>

<ol>
<li>Reduce somewhat the enrollment in order to raise SAT scores and GPAs</li>
<li>Since they are a big player in the region, higher a chancellor whose sole goal is to bring in donations. This is crucial to accomplishing this.
6.Provide performance measurements for the quality of funds spent on research.</li>
<li>Put more emphasis on meritocracy and less on affirmative action and/or diversity.</li>
<li>Always consider the needs of the students and parents. Thus, before they open facilities away from the main university, polling parents, or conducting some consumer study, about this possibility would have been a good idea. I would bet that there would have been an overwhelming response against this proposal.</li>
<li>Make a big push to establish ties with alumni including an alumni center and provide benefits for alumni. This will encourage both greater contributions and a higher percentage of alumni will make donations. This intern will help fund programs and raise ratings.
10 Utilize their close connections with both NY and the federal government should allow for greater state and federal grants thought research and other projects</li>
</ol>

<p>I would say that these steps would go a long way to reversing the decline in academics.</p>

<p>I know that many of your won’t agree with these items because it goes against our ( and I do mean our since it also applies to me)sensibilities and our desire for egalitarian justice. However, if Syracuse wants to compete in the academic world, they need to adopt many of these suggestions.</p>

<p>Bottom line: Syracuse is in an academic arms raise. If they want to compete successfully, they need to acknowledge this reality and respond accordingly. Their low cost of living can certainly be an inducement to attracting quality faculty…</p>

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<p>I’ll respond to a couple of your points…</p>

<p>Endowed chairs. Syracuse has created 33 newly endowed faculty chairs since June 2010. </p>

<p>Syracuse was never the research powerhouse that WI, MI, MN are or were. They were not even close. Not having a medical school puts Syracuse at a tremendous disadvantage in research funding. Top research faculty want to go to a top research school, Syracuse never was one.</p>

<p>Since 2006 Syracuse has raised nearly $1billion dollars in their campaign. </p>

<p>You seem to have a false impression of the type of university that Syracuse was and is.</p>

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<p>Why does everyone act like GWU is so much better than Syracuse? Its ranking isn’t THAT much higher.</p>

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<p>@ annasdad: Thank you for that! My S is apparently getting mail by the bucketload that says: “Come to our university, where we study things, and teach grad students to study things, and we study studying things. Maybe your undergrad fits in there somewhere, we don’t know and we don’t care, but please, bring money.” Maybe grad students are undergrads who went to research universities and still are not employable, so they are recycled into the university system (first as grads, then fellows, then assistant profs) – a nicely self-sustaining philosophy of the ivory tower which doesn’t seem to promote an educated populace at all.</p>