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OT: What Does Rice And North Texas Have In Common ?

MeanGreen61

By MeanGreen61
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GL2Greatness Newbie

GL2Greatness

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The Forbes ones have us rated below UTA. LOL. It's all about the $$ with US News & Forbes. Not the quality of education, successful alumni, etc.

it is interesting how wrong some can be

http://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelnoer/2012/08/01/americas-top-colleges-2/

The rankings are based on five general categories: post graduate success (32.5%), which evaluates alumni pay and prominence, student satisfaction (27.5%), which includes professor evaluations and freshman to sophomore year retention rates, debt (17.5%), which penalizes schools for high student debt loads and default rates, four-year graduation rate (11.25%) and competitive awards (11.25%), which rewards schools whose students win prestigious scholarships and fellowships like the Rhodes, the Marshall and the Fulbright or go on to earn a Ph.D

http://centerforcollegeaffordability.org/uploads/2012_Methodology.pdf

so the Forbes methodology specifically includes nothing at all having to do with endowments other than the fact that some schools with a large endowment fund can keep tuition lower than those with a lesser endowment and therefor charge less tuition and have students graduating with less debt......but of course if you believe like someone below that is "hoarding cash" and is to be frowned upon.....that cash should instead be spent as fast as possible by maybe "investing it" in something like free tuition for everyone until it is all gone and then it is no reduction or free tuition for anyone because the money was all "invested" until it was gone

so while a comparison of endowment dollars on a total or per student basis is not a factor in the Forbes rankings I suppose if one did not understand the basics of investing, finance, actuary science, personal finance or really anything having to do with money at all they would view schools having larger endowments being able to keep tuition lower and hold down student debt as a bad thing VS just "investing it" by spending it all like a pro sports player in a strip club until it is all gone and there is little to show for any of it for the long term

and even with large financial endowments many private schools still charge a pretty steep tuition so endowment is hardly a factor in the Forbes rankings since student debt load is only 17.5% of the rankings criteria and that something that does not come close to being solely related to endowments even though endowments can play a part in keeping tuition down and offering financial aid to students.....which would play a part in student debt.....but of course many other factors can play a part in the 17.5% if the criteria that is based upon student debt as well

Agreed. Endowment (i.e. hoarding cash instead of investing) is vastly overweighted in both Forbes and USNWR.

um again how can 17.5% of the Forbes rankings that are "student debt" be "vastly overweighted" when that is a pretty small % of overall methodology and when endowment only is one of many factors that plays a part in student debt.....oh wait it can't be!

as for US Snooze

http://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/2012/09/11/methodology-undergraduate-ranking-criteria-and-weights-2

financial resources is 10% and alumni giving (not really endowment since yearly alumni giving is often not directly placed in the endowment and alumni giving is a pretty good indicator of satisfaction with the education received) and then one could also stretch it a bit and look at faculty compensation which is only marginally related to endowments for faculty that chair professorships and the like and faculty compensation is really pretty standard at top private and public universities regardless of endowment size and that is 35% of 20% or 7%

so you would be looking at 22% for "all about the money" and that is a pretty big stretch to include the full 7% or anything over a small portion of it and same with the full 5% for alumni giving.....so while endowments and "money" plays a larger part of the US Snooze rankings if you stretch the factors as far as you can it is far from a large portion of the overall rankings and at the end of the day endowment proceeds = facilities, student support, equipment, travel for research and on and on that can lead to a better overall educational experience for a lesser cost or with more financial aid offered......hardly something to consider without merit to consider or to dismiss as just looking at dollars

saying that endowments are "hording money" instead of "investing it" has to be one of the least intelligent things posted on GMG in possibly forever and that is right at the same time as a thread thinking that the CUSA might convince teams to leave the SEC and ACC for CUSA......so well done you went where it is nearly impossible to go!

thinking like the above is why the USA is filled with a massive number of people that don't have a weeks worth of savings to their name and it is why pretty much every level of government in nearly place in the USA is broke

endowments ARE investments they ARE NOT "hording cash" unless one gets their financial sense and advice from pro sports players and lotto winners and politicians

anyone that has even the most basic of financial sense, knows what actuary science is or that can spell finance and financial planning or investing knows that money that is invested to produce a return on investment is not being horded and they also understand that when you spend money on things that you intend to own or maintain for the long term those things require investment to keep them serviceable, to keep them from falling apart, to keep them relevant to current conditions, and to be able to afford to staff, use or run/operate them

if someone that is "running" the CS department for a major university goes out and spends millions of dollars on a Cray 1 super computer back in 1978 and in doing so they "invest" pretty much all of their endowment funds in that single machine.....well in about 12-15 years from then when Moores Law (and a host of financial and actuarial mistakes) caught up to them they would have a computer that is a nice piece of history, eats up a ton of electricity, has fewer and fewer people that are interested in programming it and that can be outperformed by a Linux cluster that cost millions less to build, uses a ton less power, is much more powerful, and has plenty of people that can program it to perform a very wide variety of calculations and task and their leading edge computer department of 12-15 years ago would be a broke nothing of a department with no resources to keep "investing" and no faculty willing to stay around or come in new

it is the same with a large telescope, a mass spectrometer, scanning electron microscope, electrophoresis equipment or genome sequencing equipment and on and on....if you "invest" all of your funds just to buy some piece of equipment and you leave nothing for the future to keep current or to operate the machine then you are just setting yourself up for future failure

it is like an NBA player or a lotto winner that gets a huge check and "invest" it in a house for mom, some stupid looking gold jewelery, high dollar cars, and making it rain at the strip club with dolla dolla bills and "ace of spades'.......sure a house COULD go up in value, but we have all seen how that works lately and more importantly a house (even one that goes up in value over time) does not throw off dollars to maintain that house, pay the taxes, keep the lights on, or get new carpet after people put their Kools out on the floor (shout out to Billy Ray Valentine).....and same with a high end car.....even IF (and that is a HUGE IF) the value of that car stays the same the only way to actually keep a high end car holding it's value is to regularly pay tens of thousands of dollars for a certified technician to go over it and make adjustments, change out wear parts, and most importantly to DOCUMENT that a certified technician has done that at all the scheduled times to do so.....and that car affords ZERO return on investment while you own it so if you have "invested" the vast majority of your wealth in houses and cars and you have little or no money left over to keep those things up or pay the taxes or the operating expenses when your making it rain catches up with you and you have to liquidate those assets and they have not been properly maintained and people know you are in a bind.....at best you get 40% or 50% on the dollar for them and the lifestyle you could have afforded for life takes a huge hit FOR LIFE and all you have is the memories of the mammaries at the "club" and you have to go get a real job selling insurance or cars and your dreams of opening a chicken wings restaurant or a bar are faded and gone

this is also why you see university auctions where formerly very expensive lab equipment is being sold for pennies on the dollar if it evens sells.....because no one wants used up dated junk that performs more poorly (or can't even perform) the same as newer, cheaper to operate, and more advanced equipment.....but the only way a university can afford to keep doing that is if they actually INVEST their endowment VS SPEND IT

and financial planners, actuaries, retirement experts, CFPs and the like that specialize in INVESTING (not spending) say that a person, business, trust fund, investment portfolio, endowment or any sum of money that one wished to take, earn a return on from INVESTING (not spending) and have the corpus of that money remain in place AND more importantly keep up with inflation and allow that person to maintain their lifestyle and the things they have PURCHASED (spent money on not INVESTED) is that you can spend from 4.5% to 5% of the corpus of your investment yearly over the long term and weather the ups and downs of the markets AND keep up with inflation (because only an idiot wants to live in $100,000 in 1980 and roll into 2040 still living on $100,000 per year)

so if one has ONE MILLION DOLLARS in investments the most they should look to spend is $45,000 to $50,000 per year....that is why people that say stupid things like "if I had a million dollars I would buy a house, a boat, and a nice car and retire" (some real idiots would call that "investing")....because #1 they have not even put that ONE MILLION DOLLARS to work for them yet and right off the top they are cutting down on the future earnings of that ONE MILLION DOLLARS by a huge portion.....if they spent $200,000 of it right off the top they would then be looking at a corpus of $800,000 and a SPENDABLE RETURN of $36,000 to $40,000 so they have lowered their yearly income drastically just by spending (investing to some fools) money right off the top VS putting the full ONE MILLION DOLLARS to work for them and allowing it to generate income before they start spending

take a university as an example.....if they have a paltry $100,000,000 endowment they can spend $4.5 to $5 million per year and have that endowment last in perpetuity (provided they have decent investment advisers) .....but if they listened to the brain dead of the world they could also "invest" that money in a new $100,000,000 science research building and equip it with all the latest equipment.....and then (especially at a private university) they would wake up a few years with no endowment, a building that needs to be maintained and a bunch of labs filled with broken or dated equipment that needs to be replaced....and since science lab buildings are generally not income producing and there is nothing that guarantees that by building a science lab more income to maintain it will come in they now have infrastructure that they can't maintain and that is not only not attracting students, but is is driving students and faculty away because it is worn and filled with dated crap

if they were a university that was properly run, that had anyone in the math or finance department that had a clue and a voice they would know this and they would instead spend $4.5 to $5 million dollars to renovate a lab in an existing building for a program they were already strong in and then they would have that endowment still in place for the future and they could afford to maintain hat lab and keep it current as technology advanced and that would serve to maintain their reputation for that program as one that has the available resources to keep current and on the cutting edge of the discipline....instead of having the reputation of the NBA star of that field of study that shot their wad one time and made it rain and now is old, worn, tired, broke down and dated and of no use to anyone and a liability VS an asset

in 2008 right before the financial crash one of the biggest collections of some of the dumbest people on the planet called the US Congress had some of their most stupid members calling for investigating why Harvard and the like for having large endowments and only spending what those illiterates considered to be a small fraction of that money ( all the more ridiculous considering many of those same idiots were life long trust fund babies with their own massive investment portfolios)

shortly after that when the market crashed Harvard as one example went from having 34 billion in endowments in 2007 to 36.5 in 2008 to 25.6 in 2009......so Harvard had lost 10 BILLION in investments in a single fiscal year and in 2010 it was 27.5 and in 2011 it was 31.7

in 2013 Harvard had an ANNUAL BUDGET of 3.7 BILLION

so Harvard spending 5% of 36,5 billion would have $1.825 billion to spend (they usually spend a 3-5 year rolling average of endowment funds not just a yearly %) and then in 2008 it would have been $1.280 billion.....so their available money for their 3+ billion dollar total yearly budget would have declined over $500 million

and worse of they had listened to the completely and totally financially ignorant and "invested" more of that endowment by SPENDING IT it only gets worse......because for every extra dollar you spend you have fewer dollars working for you in the future.....and for every dollar you spend on something like a building or lab equipment or lowered tuition.....when the down market years come you now have less money in your endowment, less money coming in from the proceeds of that endowment and you have additional labs, buildings or students to fund or you have to reduce financial aid and raise tuition all at the same time to make up for the fact that you were "investing money" by SPENDING IT......so you have taken a triple hit because you listened to the financially illiterate and ignored all sensible financial and actuarial advice

it is difficult to believe that anyone that is in college much less has graduated from college would not understand even the most basic principles of investing and long term financial planning, but at a time in society when spending is viewed as investing and saving and investing in a conservative fashion is seen as hording or taking something from others that they could make better use of I suppose nothing should come as a surprise especially when dealing with the most financially challenged couple of generations in the history of ever

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PlummMeanGreen Grand Master

PlummMeanGreen

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Actually, there is sort of an opposite thing working with our 2 schools, too:

Our alums are said to love eating rice and theirs have a liking for eating (mean) greens.

(Some of yall out there will remember when ex UNT athletic promotion man Bill Vogel actually had some company can some

turnips greens(?) and put an actual label on them that said........Mean Greens? (True story).

GMG!

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JesseMartin Explorer

JesseMartin

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He's actually not that bad, he sent me some info before and does a good job finding a ton of it. He's just really pessimistic and long-winded. And quoting him just takes up way too much space. Basically what you tend to miss is:

1) You're wrong.

2) Okay, maybe you're not wrong, but here are some stats.

3) My research makes UNT look worse than what you posted.

4) What I posted kicks ass, so UNT is in the crapper.

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emmitt01 Grand Master

emmitt01

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He's actually not that bad, he sent me some info before and does a good job finding a ton of it. He's just really pessimistic and long-winded. And quoting him just takes up way too much space. Basically what you tend to miss is:

1) You're wrong.

2) Okay, maybe you're not wrong, but here are some stats.

3) My research makes UNT look worse than what you posted.

4) What I posted kicks ass, so UNT is in the crapper.

5) All of this makes up for my small penis, swear.

FIFY

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ragpicker Newbie

ragpicker

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Rice and North Texas are the only New CUSA schools (Tulane leaves in 2014) that are among the 86 US universities that are members of the Universities Research Association.

http://www.ura-hq.org/universities/index.html

Nice find MeanGreen61. I also believe we are the only two long time D1 programs in Texas not to have ever received NCAA sanctions for rules violations. I read that somewhere. Someone correct me if I'm wrong. I have certainly been wrong before.
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