HL adds Oakland

[BigDFromUIC]

JCT, our friend Big D believes that US News is biased towards private schools. I tried to inform him that his assertion is incorrect, but he ignored me. All you need to do is look at the rankings and see that over half of the top 100 are public universities.

As I posted over there...his argument reminds me of this:


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Go,

Unless I counted wrong, I count 42 public schools in the top 100. Not sure where you see more than half. All you need to do is look at the methodology to see where Loyola has an inherent advantage over UIC and other large public schools.

http://www.usnews.com/education/best-co ... -weights-2

If you can't see that these categories aren't generally biased towards wealthy, small, private universities, which have wealthy alumni, small class sizes, high faculty compensation, high grad rates, high resources, then I don't know what to say...I'm not going to be able to convince you and we'll just have to agree to disagree.

63,

As for the peer score, yes, it is a joke, but I see no evidence of UIC receiving any benefit of affiliation with UIUC. Our score is 0.2 less than yours. Yet our programs are all ranked higher. How is this possible? Counselors and peers with an agenda, maybe? Just as you see an agenda from one angle, I think there's another factor here as well. It's only human nature for counselors, on average, to give the edge to the older private universities (the top 20 schools are all private). What brand new high school counselor is going to come in and bash Harvard, Yale, Stanford, etc., and choose to score these schools lower than the norm....they're going on name alone....schools that have been around forever, without having stepped foot in a classroom there. How can objective decisions be made? A counselor having no knowledge of UIC/Loyola would almost certainly score the wealthy, 100+ year-old, private Loyola higher than concrete-jungle, hyphenated Circle campus.

You (63) stated that UIC is better than most schools in the HL. Which school is better than UIC? And where is the evidence for it? My guess is you think it's one of the private schools because said private school has been around forever and has money (though maybe surprisingly to you, UIC has more...I'm pretty sure UIC now has the highest endowment in the HL). No offense, but it's herd mentality based solely on name and type of university. Show me the numbers that support you. You may point to class size, etc., but why does that mean better academics but program rankings and research power do not? I know private schools stick together, but come on.

In the end, UIC and Loyola are very different schools. UIC has better programs than Loyola, and Loyola has better programs than UIC. We give research exposure in a very diverse real-world setting...you give more personal attention if needed with more faculty resources and smaller class sizes. My argument here is simply that UIC does not have inferior academics to Loyola. People that value small class size and happy, generous alumni will say Loyola has better academics. Those that value the opportunity to perform research in their field and take part in highly-ranked programs will say UIC has better academics. You're in the former group; I'm in the latter. Neither of us are wrong...and it doesn't make UIC inferior (though I guess maybe it does to you...and, likewise, I could say Loyola is inferior to UIC and you'd throw a fit since it's really damn insulting to be honest). It's a disservice to people looking to make a college choice. They hop on google, search for some UIC/Loyola comparisons, and come across this page, where everyone argues that UIC is inferior to Loyola. Simply not true...UIC's just not for those that value the private school experience.

Btw, not sure if you noticed, but UIC and Loyola have agreed to a 4-year series...two home, two away...the first being at Loyola. We may not be able to settle this here...but it will be settled on the court.

[Rambler63]

I just noticed that BigDFromUIC was online, and before he bursts a blood vessel, I just want a couple of things out there for his consideration.

1. I went to Loyola for 4 years on the undergraduate level and UIC for 2 1/2 years in graduate school. So I'm not just "trashing" UIC and "pumping up" Loyola for no particular reason--- it has a lot to do with my personal experience attending both schools.
2. UIC can be a fantastic and exceptional school under the right circumstances. I really enjoyed a lot of my time there and got a lot out of it. But the red tape of the administration and the lack of follow-up, counseling, and fairness at UIC is abysmal. The reason I emphasize I spent 2 1/2 years at UIC is because I had to sit out a full semester because I was banned for not providing proof of immunization. I had been immunized for the disease in question when I was in 2nd grade, 2000 miles away. The records of that immunization were hard to acquire, so I was delayed six months in my education and had to get re-immunized at a local clinic to satisfy UIC's ban on me.
3. One of my professors in graduate school at UIC was from Syria. He was an expert in GIS mapping. During the semester, he returned to Syria to visit family and was detained by the regime there that wanted to use his knowledge of GIS for military purposes. All of the work I'd done in that class was scuttled, and I never got credit for the class. UIC never allowed for the work that was done or attempted to compensate the students for the disruption in their scheduling.
4. When I was done with school, I owed more money from my shorter time at public UIC than my longer time at private Loyola. And then, when I owed a mere $1200 for fees and an extra class I had to take as a result of my delayed progress toward graduation that was not my fault, UIC garnished my wages.
5. When I was at UIC, the school had a policy whereby UIC undergraduates were automatically admitted to any graduate program. It was a highly disruptive policy, as many of the worst and most unqualified students in the first year of my graduate program were UIC undergraduates that weren't up to the task. That might not seem significant at first blush, but there's a lot of teamwork involved in classes at the graduate level.

I've got a few other complaints that I could go into, but I don't really want to dwell on why I feel so much more allegiance to Loyola than UIC. I'm happy that BigDFromUIC feels a lot of justified pride in his fine school, and I hope that Loyola and UIC can continue to play each other in many sports in the future. I have a lot of fond memories and powerful learning experiences from my time at UIC, and I'd like to focus on that...

Glad to have you on this board, BigD, and I look forward to perhaps one day meeting you in person.

[LU Rambler12]

Btw, not sure if you noticed, but UIC and Loyola have agreed to a 4-year series...two home, two away...the first being at Loyola. We may not be able to settle this here...but it will be settled on the court.

Nice! Glad to see that we're keeping the rivalry going!

Now if only DePewl would man up and let us beat them again...that would be exciting.

[GoRamblers]

Go,

Unless I counted wrong, I count 42 public schools in the top 100. Not sure where you see more than half.

I understand the confusion. The rankings push numbers for ties. The top 100 schools "end" at Mizzou (which is ranked #97 but is literally the 99th school on the list). That would be 45 schools. The next 5 are listed as #101 (Iowa St., Cal Riverside, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Tennessee). You have to count those additional 5 schools or you would have only 99 in the top 100.

As for the "more than half," I'll admit that I made an error with 2 or 3 schools that I thought were public but are, in fact, private. That said, my argument still stands. You'll find that it's fairly evenly split (even the top 200) between public and private.

If you can't see that these categories aren't generally biased towards wealthy, small, private universities, which have wealthy alumni, small class sizes, high faculty compensation, high grad rates, high resources, then I don't know what to say...I'm not going to be able to convince you and we'll just have to agree to disagree.

Are you going to tell me that only private schools have wealthy alum that donate to the school? That's just as crazy as suggestion that high graduation rates shouldn't factor into a schools ranking. Further, when considering salaries...some private schools average higher salaries for professors. But, as of 2009, public professors earned an average salary of $77,009. Private institutions with religious affiliation (i.e. Loyola) paid their professors an average of $71,857. So, if anything, that metric should favor UIC...

Finally, the argument that public schools have less resources than private schools is absolutely insane. Sure, if we limit the private schools to the Ivy League, that'd make sense. But in no world does Loyola have more resources than Illinois (or UIC which is affiliated with Illinois).

Basically, your entire argument is a stretch. Loyola is a better school than UIC. In the past 10 years, we have made huge efforts to make it a better school. If you looked at the rankings a decade ago, I'm almost certain that you would have seen UIC ranked higher.

[Rambler63]

Evidently, BigD and I posted messages around the same time discussing similar issues. But the one thing that slipped through the cracks on our concurrent posts was BigD's pique that I wrote "UIC is better than most schools in the HL." Well, perhaps I was thinking of the HL that I once knew, which recently had Butler, Loyola, UIC, and Detroit in it. I also think UW-Milwaukee has the potential and resources to be a school of the caliber of UIC. But I didn't want to be nasty and say: "UIC is now the best school in the Horizon."

Some folks on the UIC board have posted on multiple fora that the exchange of Loyola for Oakland is a net positive for the Horizon, sometimes with a belligerent tone. I didn't want to be that obnoxious and provocative, so I simply wrote, "UIC is better than most schools in the Horizon."

I'd hope that my previous post shows a level of consideration and rationality that recognizes admiration for the very good qualities of UIC without diminishing the academics of any of the other Horizon schools.

[Rambler63]

Basically, your entire argument is a stretch. Loyola is a better school than UIC. In the past 10 years, we have made huge efforts to make it a better school. If you looked at the rankings a decade ago, I'm almost certain that you would have seen UIC ranked higher.

10 years ago, UIC wasn't even ranked in the top tier. They've moved from Tier 3, to Tier 2, to the lower margins of the top National Universities in that time.

From my personal experience attending both schools, I think Loyola is a far better school than UIC. Loyola suffers in its reputation by being a religious affiliated school. I know from personal experience that most people actively working in higher education-- forget laymen--- have no idea that there's a difference between Jesuit education and Catholic, Baptist, or otherwise religious affiliated education. Whenever a crackpot TV evangelist who has started a school says something stupid, Loyola's reputation goes down, because the vast majority of people simply don't know the difference between the Jesuits and crackpot, fly-by-night TV evangelists with a goofball college.

Big D won't get it, because he has a deserved passion for his school that would blind him to rational analysis. And Big D is one of the people who should have some sense about it all-- I was very disappointed in his complete dismissal of smaller class sizes, graduation rate, and admission exclusivity as a measure of academic quality.

[Chuck A]

Our old friend Chuck A from UIC had this to say on the MVC board

We the fans of the Horizon League would like to thank The Valley for taking Loyola off our hands, which allowed the HL to invite a program that's leaps and bounds ahead of LU. We finished 3 spots behind the MVC. With our respective additions, The HL has just closed the gap further.

http://www.oakland.edu/view_news.aspx?sid=34&nid=10102

Sour grapes much?

Yeah, that was me and yeah, it was sour grapes...I will not lie. I put that on the Valley board to see what kind of response I would get. It was pretty much what I expected...you guys became united against a foe!

I actually was looking forward to going to the Valley, but the Presidents...well they are the Presidents. It has passed and now I'm resigned to the Horizon League, which is not a bad league. We finished 12th, 4 spots in back of the Valley. The Conference is better, in spite of what you guys might think. I understand your anger and dislike for the HL. That's mainly due in part to the fact that other private institutions have left and the replacements, for the most part have been public universities. The Horizon League, has lost its vision as it pertains to the private universities. I get that, and in some respects I felt for our private brethren. I surely feel for the Titans as they don't have the wherewithal to do much of anything. I also see that there are other conferences where publics outnumber privates that are doing extremely well...The B1G (Northwestern) and ACC (Duke, Wake Forest, Syracuse, Boston College, Miami, Notre Dame) to name a couple.

When the Valley sent their reps to scout out Valpo, UIC and Loyola, the most ready and reasonable choice was UIC. They were impressed with our facilities, which were better (no matter how you want to spin it); our academics were on a par with Loyola (I don't do the US News numbers and such, we both know that both of our schools are good academically); While Loyola's endowment was huge, ours was over 240 million.

Now this is what was told to me by a person who has the most intimate detail of anyone involved in the process outside of the Presidents (you can believe it or not). It was mentioned to me that if the Presidents voted for UIC, making the public/private split 7/3, there would have been dissention. It was also said that the Valley ADs were livid because Loyola, with no baseball, was chosen to replace Creighton. I was also told that while the Valley is content with 10 members and thinks that works better, the MVC would not be adverse to further expansion to 12.

The move has been done, I have no reason to lie (sour grapes not withstanding). Just thought I'd share my thoughts on the move. Also, like Cigar Boy said, I think both moves will benefit both teams (Loyola's move to the Valley and Oakland's move to the HL). The HL also will not be picked apart or have a mass exodus. As a matter of fact, further expansion for the '14-'15 season has not been ruled out. The HL will definitely have 10 teams and possibly 12 for the '14-'15 season.