re: SEC Schools are Well Represented on Forbes' August 27, 2025 Top Public Colleges List

This is where I call UT Austin out, they should be far better than they are based on finances.... UGA and UF punching far above their weight....

Endowment Figures at a Glance

1. University of Texas (UT) System / UT Austin

The overall University of Texas System endowment was approximately $46.9 billion as of spring 2025 .

A widely cited figure from 2023 also suggests the System managed around $44.9 billion in endowments .

Additionally, the UT System’s General Endowment Fund alone accounted for about $22 billion .


Note: These numbers reflect the system-wide endowment, not just the Austin campus. UT Austin benefits from this large pool, but there isn’t always a separate publicly reported figure specifically for the campus alone.

2. University of Florida (UF)

UF’s endowment is reported to be around $2.337 billion .

Some other sources and rankings place it slightly higher, for example:

**$2.29 billion** in a Power 5 SEC comparison .

**$2.45 billion** according to a more recent CollegeRaptor-endowed ranking .


Consensus: UF’s endowment is generally in the $2.3–2.5 billion range.


3. University of Georgia (UGA)

The UGA Foundation manages over $2 billion in assets, of which about $1.7 billion is endowed .

Alternatively, some earlier data sources list the endowed amount at $1.82 billion (2023) .

Less precise benchmarks (e.g., CollegeDB) show UGA’s endowment at about $1.36 billion, but these seem outdated or less representative .



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Summary Table

University / System Approx. Endowment Size

**UT System (incl. UT Austin)** ~$45–47 billion (system-wide)
University of Florida ~$2.3–2.5 billion
University of Georgia ~$1.7–1.8 billion (endowed assets)



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Quick Impressions & Insights

UT System: One of the largest in the U.S., largely funded by oil and gas royalties through its land holdings. It dwarfs both UF’s and UGA’s endowments .

UF and UGA: While still strong for public institutions, their endowments are considerably smaller in scale—UF roughly 3× larger than UGA.

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Unlike A&M, which has turned into a diploma mill.

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The problem with this dig is that A&M still consistently ranks well in most academic areas and is well-respected as a research institution. If anything they’ve steadily gotten better as their enrollment has grown. Certainly not worse.

This isn’t Univeristy of Phoenix.

Accepting more students isn’t a bad thing as long as things aren’t getting watered down. A&M has never lowered standards for the sake of accepting more students. Quite the opposite. We have a huge campus and can accommodate more students. Broader access to higher education is a good thing, no?

Forbes just came out with the Top 25 Public Universities. Despite this “diploma mill” thing, A&M is on there as is Georgia, Florida and UTA.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/fionariley/2025/08/26/forbes-top-25-public-colleges/

163 Auburn University
270 University of Alabama AL

I highly doubt that the competence of the faculty across the board at any SEC school is head and shoulders above another besides probably Vanderbilt. Just like any large state run institution each school will have some great employees as well as some shite ones. Additionally, I don’t think that it is more impressive on a resume if you went to one SEC school over another. The difference is that some schools have a faux sense of self importance and have raised admissions and others take the LSU approach which is if you can breathe you most likely will get in.

According to US News:
Vandy isn't listed because they are private (but nationally they are ranked above the others listed below.
UF - 7th
UTa - 7th
UGA - 18th
aTm - 21
Auburn - 51
Missouri - 52
UTknx - 52
USCe - 61
Okla - 68
Kentucky - 81
Bama - 92
Ole Miss - 92
LSU - 97
Ark - 103
Ms St - 116

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Oh no!

A bunch of fat, old and bald men don't accept Texas

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And yet here you are seeking their validation.

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Unlike A&M, which has turned into a diploma mill.

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A "diploma mill" who's graduates make more money after graduation than any other SEC school on that list. It even states it in the article.

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Broader access to higher education is a good thing, no?

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Be careful. This may not align with the Trump Humpers ideas of dumbing down America. And I’m not one who believes in liberal ideas and woke bullshite. I own several firearms, vote for lower taxes, vote for fiscal responsibility, believe in matrimony as between man and woman, am all for enforcing border laws but I’m not extreme enough for MAGA because I don’t hate gay people based on how they choose to spend their private time and I don’t hate middle class blue collar workers. So now to this new amalgamation of the GOP I’m the bad guy. But I certainly wouldn’t vote for woke arse liberal policies like hate whitey and “reparations” bullshite.

So I decided to vote local and policies/levies only. frick the rigged arse national elections. Even the “savior” Trump said elections were rigged. So I’ll take his word for it.

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In my experience very few Texans outside of a line from about Texarkana to Tyler to the Gulf claim to be southern and actually hold southerners and the south in about the same regard as the morons in the NE and Pacific Northwest do. There is a heaping pile of Texas west of that line and you can't sling a dead cat in the first half of that pile of Texas without hitting a damned Texan....the second half of that pile of Texas you might have to tote a dead cat 70 miles before finding ANYONE to hit with it, Texan or not. They simply are not southerners and more than 2/3s of the state ain't in the south. And they don't give a frick....in fact most are happy they ain't in the south and they ain't southerners. There are some seriously telling tells about Texans which prove they ain't southerners and Texas ain't the south. Outside of their mistaken ideas about pigs and hickory trees being the basis of BBQ and losing to Ohio State. neither of which is an issue in the actual south. Texans drink beer and dance. Seriously. We drink beer in the south also but our grannies didn't, openly, and don't, openly. This is not so in Texas...everybody drinks beer and does so openly and without a bit of shame or regret. It is just something that Texans do and no one thinks poorly of them for doing so...in the south folks will drink beer but they will think poorly of anyone else who drinks beer. The same is true of dancing. Folks in Texas dance. Any community of any size has a dance hall where live music is played and folks drink beer and dance....folks in the south don't dance because they are afraid people will think they fricking standing up....not so in Texas. If 10 Texans, 5 men and 5 women. get together and drink 30 beers and there is some music to be heard at least 4 of the frickers are going to be dancing...and doing so pretty well. If you ain't in a bar in the south you are highly unlikely to find anyone dancing at all....in Texas they do it at county fairs....and its a BIG damned deal. Grown arse men in Texas can and do dance regularly...where most men in the south can't dance a lick and wouldn't do so on a dare for a small fortune. Not only do they dance but they appear to enjoy doing so. Apparently coonasses will do this also. Folks in Alabama? Not on a dare LOL.... Texans are also more prone to cos play than southerners. Dressing up like a cowboy in Texas is a real thing...grown folks will attend funerals and weddings and social events dressed up like a 5 year old and do so without an ounce of self doubt. You couldn't pay a grown man in the south to participate in cos play outside of hunters and fisherman who seem to pay more attention to what they are wearing than what they are doing. These are just a few observations I have made while studying Texans in their natural habitat. I have also found that they simply do not give a frick if anyone thinks they are strange. If they are dressed like Roy Rogers, drinking beer and two stepping they absolutely not only think its normal they are having a big time doing so. Its almost admirable their lack of self awareness but it does indicate they ain't from the south......

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Too much that is just flat wrong in that ludicrous rant to address it all, but it does seem to pint to you having spent all your time in one urban area and knowing nothing about the rest of the state.

Probably the funniest howlers are about drinking and dancing. There are not many counties in Texas that are still totally dry, but there were as late as the 80s. Check out this historic map to give a little indication:



Where alcohol was legal, the liquor store usually had a “Baptist window” so that our neighbors of an immersive persuasion would not have to acknowledge one another if, by chance, they ran across a fellow congregant in the store.

After getting my undergrad degree at A&M, I went to law school at Baylor, where dancing remained outlawed on campus for several more years after I left.

As to wearing cowboy boots and the like, there certainly is an Urban Cowboy effect (some of the people reading this won’t know why that term is capitalized and italicized, because they aren’t old enough to get the reference), but I can assure you that the folks we hired to work on our ranch weren’t engaging in cosplay.