UChicago Braces for $220M Deficit

Colleges & Universities University of Chicago
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Marlowe, I take no offense whatsoever to being a “brutal realist.” I find that trying to understand, acknowledge, and influence reality in an honest and brutal way is far more satisfying and productive than indulging in fairy tales. It’s good and beautiful to see your alma mater achieve eminence, bad and ugly when your alma matter is an irrelevant afterthought.

However I would just clarify that I said the the primary purpose of elite colleges is to achieve eminence (and yes, power, prestige, and influence) but this doesn’t exclude elite colleges from pursuing other purposes as secondary or tertiary. In fact, the greater their eminence and wealth, the better they can pursue whatever other secondary or tertiary purposes they wish so eminence must and should be primary.

The battalions that elite colleges have are money, the best faculty, and the best students, but acquiring the best students and faculty requires top amenities, a free and rigorous culture of research and scholarship, and great outcomes in terms of earnings, future wealth generation, admissions to the best professional and grad schools, and cultivating a blend of technical and soft skills so graduates attain the highest positions of power and leadership.

Lest you doubt that the power brokers at UChicago feel the same way as I do, here are some articles where the word eminence is repeated over and over again by the Chairman of the Board, Zimmer, and Diermeier. I could paste many more articles below but anyone paying attention to UChicago’s public statements should understand that the number one priority is eminence, just as it is at Harvard, Stanford, etc.

https://news.uchicago.edu/story/statement-joseph-neubauer-chair-university-chicago-board-trustees

https://news.uchicago.edu/story/emily-nicklin-head-university-chicago-medical-center-board-trustees

https://news.uchicago.edu/story/provost-daniel-diermeier-appointed-chancellor-vanderbilt-university

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This is what schools do now, they just call it ‘fit’, not ‘students who make us look better’.

Some counselors do tell students to assess their fit at a given college, based on their research of what colleges value…some students get this, some don’t. Those who do can create a good, on-point application.

But, in the end, the colleges are the final arbiters of fit, not the students.

Seems like everyone on this thread can’t agree on what Chicago’s mission is, or what they are looking for, which is problematic. It should be clear to students when they do their research.

College admissions has become a difficult process, try shepherding 17 year olds through it someday! ?

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  • Well, I just go off the data. When the school isn't a first choice school among most of the matrics, the retention and grad numbers are going to be worse.

The biggest change in UChicago, Cue, isn’t that they added a gym, RSO’s or better career services. The biggest change is that they converted the College into a first choice school.

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No @JBStillFlying - I don’t think it’s because chicago is now more of a first choice school. There are plenty of schools known as being “backup” schools that have great retention and grad rates.

To me, it’s because they made the climate at chicago more inhabitable.

This isn’t rocket science - if you change a climate from being (for many) un-inhabitable to inhabitable, guess what? People stay.

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The survey data is clear on this, Cue.

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What survey data @JBStillFlying ? Is there a survey out there that asks students why they stay at chicago, and students say it’s because it’s a first choice school?

Let’s use another comparator. West point is a first choice for virtually all who attend. They have around a 80% grad rate. Why are all these talented cadets dropping out, if it’s their first choice?

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Would you then conclude, Cue, that West Point is a failed institution? Washing out happens when the challenges are great. Some rise to challenges, some don’t. Some prefer the things that are hard, some prefer the things that are easy. The kids I knew once upon a time at Chicago who did not make it to the end had never signed on to the fact that the place was going to be hard. Today there are still some of those kids at Chicago, I reckon, but fewer of them, and the place has a greater esprit and perhaps a bigger carrot at the finish line. But do struggling kids hang in there just because the living is easy? Seems doubtful to me, from all I hear.

@Zoom10 , I didn’t see in those links the conclusive proof that you seemed to see in them that “eminence” is the principal objective of this institution, much less what we are talking about here - the objective of a Chicago education. Yes, the trustees were bragging about eminence, but it hardly follows that they thought that was what the institution was primarily about. They also spoke of values. Diermeir most certainly did. If you believe in the values of the place, you want it to achieve eminence. I like to see that as well. There’s room in my world for beautiful losers, but losing isn’t a virtue in itself.

The question is which comes first - the values or the eminence. If it was the latter then why bother with UChicago when you could get HYPS? I don’t think you believe this yourself, because you make a point of praising the U of C’s commitment to free speech. I believe you have said that that was your son’s principal reason for selecting Chicago. That’s a value. Are you suggesting that Zimmer and the trustees have formulated that policy in the spirit of brutal realism as part of a Machiavellian plot to achieve eminence? Some people actually say this, of course. Do you say it? Is that the reason you favor it?

@Mwfan1921 , at Chicago there will never be perfect agreement about anything. Everything is debatable, all ideas are in play. It’s best for any kid considering the place to understand that fact about it. There should be no irritable reaching for conclusiveness at this institution.

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“UChicago was 67% of students top choice, which is coincidentally very similar to UChicago’s yield of 66%. Students who said UChicago wasn’t their top choice on average applied to 11.2 schools and were accepted to on average 5.5 of those schools. Students who said UChicago was their top choice on average applied to 8.0 schools and were accepted to on average 5.2 schools.”

https://www.chicagomaroon.com/article/2016/9/14/class-2020-survey/

“In admitting between sixty and seventy percent of the applicants in recent years, the College has brought in a number of students for whom it was their third or fourth choice. These students are not likely to have looked as carefully at Chicago as those to whom the faculty point as ‘self-selecting’ Chicago. They, in turn, contribute to the College’s relatively high attrition rate.” - Vice President of Enrollment Michael Behnke to Faculty Senate, 2/23/1999

“Over time, these trends [in application numbers, quality of matriculation pool, and yield rate], which transformed Chicago into a school of first choice, led to significant improvements in student retention as well: the College’s freshman retention rate was 90 percent in 1994, but had increased to almost 99 percent by 2012.” - Boyer, John W. The University of Chicago. University of Chicago Press. Kindle Edition.

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@JBStillFlying - the logic presented by Boyer and Behnke seems like… frankly, administrators offering the lowest-hanging fruit. Absent any analysis into why students stayed at Chicago, these admins provide the easiest answer: “more people really want to attend, so they stay!”

That seems like a gross over-simplification of a more nuanced, complicated reason (one, by the way, that would require some quantitative and qualitative surveys).

Moreover, there are lots of comparators that fly in the face of that analysis. See, for instance, the retention rates at West Point or the Naval Academy. See also, for instance, markedly high retention rates at schools known for being “back-up” colleges (U. Rochester, Emory, etc.). If these are backup schools with poor yields, why do they have 98% freshmen retention rates?

See also, somewhat static grad/retention rates at schools that have moved from being “backup” schools to “first choice” schools in the past generation (see Penn and Columbia in the 90s to now. They had good grad/retention rates then, and continue to do so now, even though they are cited more often for being “first choice” schools. There hasn’t been a lot of change there.)

There’s just too much evidence to the contrary of the simple assertion “we’re a #1 choice, so we retain our students!”

Swarthmore, again, is a good example, as is Amherst. Both were seen as not-quite-first-choice schools in the 80s and 90s (read “the Early Decision Racket” - google the article, for more info). They used ED more heavily, and more students saw it as a first choice in the 2000s. But, retention rates have remained fairly steady from the 90s forward.

A lot more goes into retention that being a first choice school. Otherwise, the West Point analogy boggles the mind. You think a West Point administrator is sitting in her office thinking, “we were the #1 choice for all these students! Why are 20% of our students leaving?!”

(And, @marlowe1 - I don’t see West Point as a failed institution at all. Quite the contrary. I see all of this as another example of schools utilizing these numbers as targets - and striving to hit the targets, for good or ill. How is it all these schools have a 95%+ retention rate, similar rates of racial and geographic diversity, etc. etc.? The military academics just don’t play this game.)

110

I mean come on… per even just the knowledge on this thread, how does everyone think that a large group of private colleges (maybe 30 total?) each year hit their FA budgets, sport roughly the same racial and geographic diversity, have SAT scores within 100 points of each other, have sky high freshman and retention rates… oh, and magically have roughly the same faculty:student ratios, all have the same number of classes under the magical number 19, all have acceptance rates under 20%, all have yields about 50%…

What do people think is going on here?

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  • Competition.
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West Point is a good example of a seeming anomaly. However, I wouldn’t be comparing West Point to UChicago or Harvard. I’d compare it to freshman retention or grad rates at other service academies, including those that might be deemed a “backup” to Westpoint. Cue7 - what are those stats?

It’s the same in art school - another example of a specialized collegiate program. RISD is the gold standard and the freshman retention - at 94% - is tops . . . for an art school. But I wouldn’t be comparing RISD to UChicago or Harvard either (even though it has been nicknamed ‘the Harvard of art schools’ :wink: ).

Cue, you may disagree with Boyer and Behnke. As I mentioned upthread, I’m just going off the data and the surveys and they are two - in my view - reasonable experts. IMO, if a school is a backup to a backup and the student kind of landing there without really looking into it, they are probably not going to last very long if it turns out not to be the best fit. It would be too expensive, and too frustrating.

113

^ Cue - here is a Part 2 that will make you like Boyer more:

"Second, the College sought to adopt a series of new interventions to address problems of campus climate and student life. In May 1996 a faculty committee chaired by Susan Kidwell had called attention to a host of problems that hindered a positive sense of belonging and personal success among College students. Kidwell’s report drew on the results of the earlier survey on the quality of campus life undertaken by Richard Taub, which found that as many as 35 percent of current students had given serious thought to leaving the College at one time or another, as well as on many qualitative interviews with current students and staff. The findings of the Kidwell and Taub reports underscored the need to create a more supportive and friendly campus environment while preserving the highly intellectual nature of Chicago student culture. The idea was not to change or weaken that culture but to surround and infuse it with a much more student-friendly set of interventions and institutions, on the assumption that what would be most distinctive about Chicago graduates in the future would be their genuine intellectualism, their love of the University and its community, and their commitment to their own and their fellow students’ personal and professional success during and after college.

To that end the University invested large sums of money to construct new facilities, including a transformed student center in the Reynolds Club and a major new athletic center and swimming pool named in honor of alumnus Gerald Ratner. Most significant, two new residential facilities were constructed, the Palevsky Residential Commons on land surrounding Regenstein Library and a second new residential commons south of Burton Judson Hall, named in honor of an alumna of the College, Renee Granville-Grossman. Ground has since been broken for a third large residential complex of eight hundred beds in place of Pierce Tower on Fifty-Fifth Street, and a fourth residential commons is likely to emerge on the eastern side of the south campus.

These new halls were not simply dormitories but sites for the endless conversations about academic issues and intellectual controversies that have traditionally fascinated and engaged Chicago students beyond the classroom. Equally important, the College set as a firm goal the desire to house at least 70 percent of its students in new, well-designed, and well-equipped residence halls that would be located on or adjoining the central campus. These residences would strengthen student engagement with the physical campus and deepen social ties and friendships among students during their entire time at Chicago; they would also foster a new sense of loyalty and support among alumni communities. This decision was a direct repudiation of the University’s earlier strategy of acquiring older properties off campus to house students, which had turned masses of College students into de facto commuters."

  • Boyer, John W. The University of Chicago. University of Chicago Press. Kindle Edition.

There’s more about the investment in better career placement services.

BTW, note that they had pegged the location for WRC as early as 2012-13.

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  • "Eminence" in these articles all refer to or are in the context of academics or research. Is that what you meant, Zoom? Not following your discussion with marlowe too closely, but if you equate "power broker" with top leadership in the area of academics and research, I completely agree with you! To me, Hannah Gray was a powerful leader when she ran the university. She was also an eminent scholar :smiley:
115

Cue, you ask: What do people think is going on here? Answer: all these elite (T20) private schools are competing with each in the marketplace for eminence.

Marlowe, you ask: which comes first - the values or the eminence? Answer: this question is somewhat of a false dichotomy because eminence is the primary goal while “values” are simply ways of achieving or furthering the goal of eminence.

Using the marketplace of luxury cars as an analogy, Lexus is clearly in the Top 10 of luxury brands but market research surveys consistently tell Lexus management that it is ranked below Audi, BMW and Mercedes, not to mention Porsche, Ferrari, and Aston Martin in overall prestige and status despite Lexus consistently outperforming their competitors in areas like reliability, safety, and comfort (analogous to Nobel Prize winning faculty, rigorous academic culture). Lexus is frustrated that despite these wonderful attributes car buyers associate with the brand, its prestige lags behind its European peers. So Lexus hires McKinsey to try to improve its eminence and after a thorough analysis, McKinsey tells Lexus that it should copy best practices and benchmark itself more explicitly against its European competitors by making its cars more sexy, faster, and fun to drive because luxury car customers value those attributes even more than safety and reliability. So Lexus adopts McKinsey’s recommendations to copy all best practices of its competitors while not sacrificing at all its traditional values of safety and reliability. 20 years later, new market research shows that Lexus has surpassed Audi, Mercedes and BMW and is only slightly behind Porsche and Ferrari in eminence. When customers were asked why Lexus has gone from Top 10 to Top 5 in their minds, customers cited that Lexus cars were now sexy looking, fast and powerful, and fun to drive while also being safer and more reliable than its competitors. This has caused Lexus’ stock price to shoot up and its management team to get big raises because they were willing to follow what the market wanted while also staying true to the values that made them distinctive.

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^ So, Zoom, in your view what changes did Chicago make to become more “sexy?”

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It became more sexy looking, fast, powerful, and fun to drive by the things you and Cue have mentioned: it built luxury megadorms and improved quality of life thru student amenities like new gym and more RSOs; it went from grade deflation to a reasonable middle ground between grade deflation and inflation; it improved athletics and arts (Logan Center); it built a state of art career services center to improve outcomes into the most prestigious and sought after fields like banking and consulting that Ivy grads pursue like sheep; it dramatically increased applications, lowered admit rate, and improved yield rate which validated to its customers that Chicago was every bit as selective and desired as its peers; it offered new majors/tracks like ME and Business Econ to signal to its customers that it was serious about not falling behind in STEM by offering real engineering (but in a distinctive way), and that it was also serious of building a pipeline to banking/consulting; it aggressively pursued kids from both the elite prep schools as well as 1st gen, low SES, rural, police/fire/military communities; its administration eliminated any negative connotations with pre-professionalism (these negative attitudes about pre-professionalism might still exists among some alumni, faculty and current students but the admin has sent a clear signal that it is perfectly OK, respectable, and even preferable to pursue lucrative and prestigious careers instead of a PhD in Egyptology).

And it did all this while still preserving its image of rigor and free expression of ideas. Remarkable, isn’t it?

118

The problem with “eminence” as a mission is that it is devoid of all content. Eminence for what? You veered off into a very imperfect simile about marketing a brand of car and did not address the more pertinent instance of a value (the Chicago commitment to free speech) which I know you strongly approve. I doubt that your reason for approval is that free speech makes Chicago eminent (whether or not that is the case). You would surely approve that policy as a value in its own right. Do a thought experiment: Suppose free speech principles and the long tradition of open inquiry and vigorous debate at Chicago was found to result in ridicule, loss of prestige, loss of big donors - in short, a diminishment of eminence. That’s not an entirely unlikely eventuality, by the way. Would you therefore jettison free speech? And if doing that would lead to praise, more prestige, larger donors, more eminence, would you do it for that reason? If eminence is the mission and all else is subsidiary to it, you must answer in the affirmative.

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Sorry Zoom. That type of “sexy” has been built up everywhere - on campuses all across the nation in the past 20 years. UChicago is nothing special in any of these amenities. And NO ONE goes to UChicago for the food, the dorms or Ratner. Logan - sure, I can see that, actually. Career advancement I can see as a parallel reason for attending.

I wouldn’t worry too much about the pre-professional complaint. A great university will continually change up its undergraduate offerings to stay current, as well as offer the classics - such as those undergrad courses taught by the scholars in Egyptology. UChicago’s Near Eastern programs are among the best. Be sure to check out the Oriental Institute when you are on campus (hopefully this fall). For the record, you should know that the “Great pre-professional Debate” occurred among faculty (as it should). Admin had little to do other than watch as the major was proposed.

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Marlow. again, you are making a false dichotomy when you ask: “Suppose free speech principles and the long tradition of open inquiry and vigorous debate at Chicago was found to result in ridicule, loss of prestige, loss of big donors - in short, a diminishment of eminence. That’s not an entirely unlikely eventuality, by the way. Would you therefore jettison free speech? And if doing that would lead to praise, more prestige, larger donors, more eminence, would you do it for that reason?”

Just as no car buyer would ever assert that safety and reliability aren’t highly desired attributes (“I don’t care if my car is unsafe or unreliable as long it’s sexy and fast”), NO university would ever claim not to value free expression of ideas or academic rigor. If they ever did, that would immediately result in ridicule, loss of prestige, and loss of big donors. Can you imagine Harvard ever saying: “we decided to give all students free A’s because it’s more important that they spend their time pursuing leadership activities than studying in the library.” Or Stanford saying: “our faculty love that so many students come here to study CS so that they can network with the all the startups and VCs in Silicon Valley instead of attending class.”

However, what these schools publicly say is oftentimes different than how they act.

Harvard imposed sanctions against its students who sought to be members of certain social clubs (The policy—which applies to the Class of 2021 and all successive classes—bars members of single-gender final clubs, sororities, and fraternities from holding leadership positions in recognized student organizations, becoming varsity captains, or receiving College endorsement for prestigious fellowships.): https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2017/12/6/sanctions-explainer-v2/

Yale fired one of its residential college head simply for issuing this extremely respectful and thoughtful email about Halloween: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/11/the-new-intolerance-of-student-activism-at-yale/414810/

Surely you are aware of colleges all across the country banning controversial figures (always with conservative viewpoints) from speaking despite being invited by faculty or recognized school clubs, just because a small minority of vocal activists bitterly complained to the administration.

When these things happen, does Harvard or other colleges ever say that they decided to change their value of free expression? Of course not, because admitting to this would invite widespread ridicule, loss of prestige, and loss of big donors. Instead, they simply say that freedom of expression is a fundamental value for all universities and justify their exceptions by invoking hate speech or insensitivity or inclusion, which only leads to ridicule, loss of prestige, and loss of big donors among moderate and conservative observers instead of all observers.