re: WSJ College Rankings 2018

Come see me when you were your own country.

I hate to agree with you on anything because you're usually a trolling ahole in threads like this but I think you may be on to something with both Auburn and Alabama's respective recruitment and enrollment priorities the last 10 years.

Auburn has focused on slow steady enrollment growth maximizing incoming student quality while Alabama has focused on rapid growth first and improving the quality of incoming students mostly through generous scholarshipsupport made possible by the rapid growth. Too rapid in my opinion. Ironically, Alabama's academic ranking has slowly slid while the quality and credentials of incoming freshmen have never been higher. Same with incoming Auburn students regarding student quality never being as high as it is now. The average ACT scores of incoming freshmen at each school is around 27 or 28 (with Auburn's being around .5 to .75 higher on average) so the overall quality of incoming student is practically indistinguishable between the two schools. Auburn could just as easily get to high 38k in enrollment like Alabama but would be wise to cap at no higher than 30k. I'd like to see Alabama roll back enrollment to no more than 32k. The higher enrollment at UA has led to a building spree and incredible new facilities that wouldn't otherwise be possible due to the relatively poor state support all schools of higher education in the state receive. It has come at a price though in my opinion. It's much harder to maintain a higher average salary with a school with 38k as opposed to one with 27k or 20k. There are exceptions to this though with Texas A&M being one that comes to mind. The mean salaries tend to drag down the higher salaries numbers more in a larger school. This is why the average 10 year salaries are dominated by not just small colleges but by relative small state universities imho.

Bottom line is chasing money through rapid enrollment increases is great for the university's coffers but not so good for maintaining overall per student quality. Auburn should continue their enrollment policy because it's effective. Now that Alabama has greatly improved their applicant pool we should start lowering our enrollment to raising our student metrics even further.

Question for the board about the salary ranking: Does the methodology for ranking the 10 year salaries say whether they're measuring THE latest class that would be at their 10th year in the workforce (class of 2007) or that graduating class and all classes prior together?

If anyone thinks a Tx A&M degree has more weight than any other SEC school, you’re wrong. There are private colleges, a few elite public, then big public, then small public. Trying to act like one is better than another because of a submitted paperwork ranking is just for fun. Has zero bearing in real life.

LSU grads are beating out aTm grads daily for jobs, same can be said for any other states.

I'm not a homer when it comes to evaluating the academic side of my school. I think Auburn has historically been a little bit better school overall academically than Bama for a couple of reasons. I think especially so once Auburn put a lot of money into its business school. I think Bama's business school is still slightly better overall than Auburn's when you include the graduate programs but the Auburn business school's reputation (especially its undergraduate degrees) has grown to the point where both are of a similar high quality. The lack of a business school decades ago, a medical school, and a law program are the only things that have traditionally distinguished the tworld schools. Now that both schools have solid business schools and the medical school is no longer under the UA(T) banner the only thing left UA has that Auburn doesn't is the law school. This is important because Auburn has far more specialities in the hard sciences with a long established history in engineering, agriculture,architecture, vet medicine, foresty, etc that Alabama simply doesn't have. UA does have a pretty solid engineering school but not quite up to the reputation of Auburn's. Throw in all those other sciences Auburn has that Bama doesn't and Auburn has a lot of inherent advantages over Alabama in rankings like this. You guys basically have every program and school we do with a law school as the one exception plus all the specialty sciences we don't have.

You'really probably right about the data used to come up with the average 10 year salaries. They look way off for most of the schools that are ranked.

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LSU grads are beating out aTm grads daily for jobs, same can be said for any other states.

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Now that both schools have solid business schools and the medical school is no longer under the UA(T) banner the only thing left UA has that Auburn doesn't is the law school.

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AU recently implemented a DO medical program

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You'really probably right about the data used to come up with the average 10 year salaries.

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It amazing the data they use. one of the recent ones that gets attention on here had data from less than 500 people per school( a few were less than 100) and the amounts of the salaries are based off what someone says they get paid. no corroboration

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If anyone thinks a Tx A&M degree has more weight than any other SEC school, you’re wrong. There are private colleges, a few elite public, then big public, then small public. Trying to act like one is better than another because of a submitted paperwork ranking is just for fun. Has zero bearing in real life.

LSU grads are beating out aTm grads daily for jobs, same can be said for any other states.

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It's pretty clear which schools have the best value.

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It's pretty clear which schools have the best value.

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Those salary numbers are BS. No way I exited school making more than a Vandy grad 10 years out of school.

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If you went in to an engineering field, it's very likely.