<p>coollege, I also believe stacking it up against UF is a good thing, along with UGA. The simple fact is UF is in our conference. UF is a strong state school. It isn’t because the US News ranks it in the top 50, it is because it has about 3 times the endowment funds that LSU does. It is deeper than some stupid US News rankings. Anyone realize that harvard, the topped ranked school in the US News, also has the highest endowment of any school in the US. Not to mention, it has about 10 billion more than every other ivy that is ranked with it. Money is the key to being a good school. More money for reaserch, more money to pay well known professors, more money to give out financial aid to the needy, more money to build state of the art facilities for engineering/science research, etc. The reason why I compare it to UF is UF has a quality engineering program, they put out solid research, and there grads are recognized as quality engineering grads. As for LSU, one of the prof. said himself that companies are just starting to realize that our eng. grads are quality products of the university. I read that in the Daily Reville last year. The plans for LSU’s future are bright, such as building a new chemical eng. facility, chemistry building, and business complex. Although, I am interested in seeing how the recent budget cuts will affect all of these future plans. The more money we shove in the endowment the better off the university will be in the long run. I also interested in seeing if we moved up any from the bottom level of the Tier One system. I mean come on, Florida State is ranked higher than us, that it is not considered the flagship of the state of Florida. As the leading univeristy in our state, we need to shoot to be the example university, the model univeristy. Hopefully, in the next 15-20 years, we’ll finally be there, but the funding has to be there if we ever will reach that position.</p>