Whats up With Emory?

bernie12
Wed, 20 Jan 2016 00:45:46 +0000

@a1b2c3d5 : Hate to be blunt, but that is a shallow opinion as Emory of course wants to rise in the rankings (also, stop limiting the conversation to USNW rankings…they mean a minimal amount: Getting good attention in the media or having impact appears more important than our rank as indicated by last year’s application volume which spiked once it fell outside of the top 20. Focus on real outcomes such as job placement, grad. school placement, Rhode Scholars, Goldwater Scholars, Fulbrights, etc. The products that Emory produces speak loads of the school and it is important to enhance it further. But again, we’re already beating and have always been beating or competing well with schools ranked above us. However, the products are what make Duke and Hopkins and any super elite what they are. Usually the ranking comes later). It just hasn’t found a way of doing so yet and does not want to employ the same admissions tactics as some other schools (that is a short term fix often to compensate for the fact that said schools are not academically equivalent to schools they want so badly to rank with) that are more or less in a rush to rise so will find ways to make their “numbers” jump to solidify a certain spot. The fact is: Duke and Hopkins worked really hard to be where they are and it mostly has to do with their research infrastructure. It took them a while. Unlike Emory, they did not become research universities in 1995…they’ve had more time to figure things out and make mistakes (for example, JHU has been known for letting the quality of UG education, especially in STEM, slide. I looked at recent documentation for them to rectify it and, quite frankly, while I would like Emory to try a few things they were considering, for the most part, we are ahead of the curve and have already implemented some of their suggestions on an increasingly large scale) followed by many good moves.

Emory has never really had a hard time attracting top faculty (obviously, the faculty are more reknowned that many of the near peers, the private ones at least), and its inability to attract nobel level faculty likely has more to do with facilities than rankings. Very top institutions and ones who worked hard and took a while to rise establish several institutes that can host big time faculty. For example, Emory, even with its new chemistry could not host a Nobel level faculty member because they would have to dedicate tons of labs to that one person (an example of this already happening is Liotta) and they would likely need special equipment. Liotta is just lucky because Emory has traditionally had the infrastructure he needs for drug discovery. Others who are big and do not use the type of equipment or collaborations he has will flat out need another building. Places like Harvard don’t really have that problem because they will just throw these people in something like Sloan or its many institutes. Emory’s biggest research institutes for say, scientists, are Whitehead, Rollins, Yerkes (not that large but supports and hosts things like the Drug Discovery Center and Vaccine Center), and then the new Health Sciences Research Center. Some of these buildings are quite large, but their equipment is rather underwhelming and uniform.

In the social sciences and humanities, Emory has done very well (there is a reason Creative Writing and English have become so big at Emory) and is extremely well-funded to support serious faculty members and it shows (again, our non-science/engineering research fund allocation far surpasses essentially all peers, including aspirational ones percentage wise). However, Emory has a hard time keeping some promising faculty in this dept…mainly because it won’t pay them more money to stay and higher ranked schools can come poach our faculty (Emory used to be the one doing the poaching for a while).

As for what that trustees member said, they are wrong (or maybe right in that since, but things do need to be done differently). And a current policy that I see in play concerns me in terms of the academics (graduate and undergraduate level). I have an issue with this over-emphasis only on what we are strong at right now and then throwing even more money at it and neglecting weaker but extremely important departments. I don’t know too many schools aspiring to be leaders in undergraduate, graduate education, and knowledge dissemination that decide to essentially let their physics, math, and economics department struggle like hell. Those departments are among the best or ones that have improved dramatically at some top schools (like Duke and Hopkins). This one-dimensional focus on throwing money at life-sciences and health-care affliated fields is a huge weakness and ultimately limits Emory’s influence. I see some effort to rectify this such as more biophysics/physical biology/bioinformatics faculty appointments and the QSS, but Emory doesn’t have great IT/computational infrastructure (especially for a school so rich).

Emory’s current policies with regard to enhancing things at the departmental levels seems much like its pre-professional students…risk averse, which would explain the re-allocation of monies to things we are already extremely good at (like, at the UG level I recommend life sciences at Emory over most of our near peers including Brown and Cornell except for many more specialty things like wildlife/marine biology…where Cornell would shine. Graduate level…obviously Emory is pretty competitive even if it lacks prestige in some senses. NRC rankings in those areas reveal that Emory’s reputation among the raters lags behind the actual quality. The quality metrics fare well against schools more prestigious than Emory but, the reputation ranking is usually lower)…

If you are concerned about USNW rankings, then you are more so concerned about communications and marketing (Emory has always suffered with peer and counselor ratings which suggests a mixture of a) counselors don’t know Emory and b)peers are aware of the bad press from things like the department closures/rearrangements. Emory could also afford to increase its graduation rate I suppose, and I think that has already risen slightly) more so than substantive metrics that really measure what the school is doing to and for students. And yes, communications and marketing is something that needs to be improved. However, they’ve recently hired someone for that and their work is kind of obvious. Go look at most of the grad/professional school websites, most of which have been revamped to something far more eyecatching than before. I believe the ECAS website is next and the admissions website may also receive modifications or another overhaul so moves are being made in that arena already and other media platforms I believe. Emory may also need to try being more aggressive with recruitment and start to pad its incoming statistics some. It need not go the route of WUSTL, Vandy, or Chicago, but maybe at least a Georgetown is a reasonable goal. That way, at least the selectivity metric won’t be the thing working against it. Instead, only more “meaningful” metrics will be what Emory needs to improve.