Top 60 research universities

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

or most of the good schools in the Northeast or West Coast.

Are you serious about the West Coast part?

Look at Cornell (ranked number 4). It's in Ithaca, NY. I wouldn't call that a large population center.

New York is.  Just because New Yorkers have to travel a bit inland doesn't mean it isn't a feed off the main city.

It's nowhere near New York. In fact, it's nowhere near anything but itself.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

First of all, college towns are so liberal in part because their full of people that basically don't live in the real world. Second of all, the "top" universities just have people with higher IQs not in the real world. Third of all, the most liberal state, Massachussetts, probably has among the worst public systems in the Eastern US, while Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee have three of the top public systems.

Note of course that some Democrats are apparently too stupid to distinguish public from private schools (such as Stanford), which of course are not funded by the government. Neither are any of the Ivy League schools, or most of the good schools in the Northeast or West Coast.

The private schools are good because the rich leftists send their kids there instead of the public schools.

At any rate, analysis is best done by someone with at least an IQ of 75, which unfortunately is too high a plateau for the originator of this silly thread.

LOL, I think I upset you. You claim that the NC, TN, and VA public universities are better than the UC system? That's too funny.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

Public univeristies in the top 20.
7 out of 8 of them are blue state.

UC Berkeley #2
Michigan #3
Wisconsin #5
UCLA #6
Texas #7
Washington #9
Illinois #9
Minnesota #13

[AuH2O]

First of all, college towns are so liberal in part because their full of people that basically don't live in the real world. Second of all, the "top" universities just have people with higher IQs not in the real world. Third of all, the most liberal state, Massachussetts, probably has among the worst public systems in the Eastern US, while Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee have three of the top public systems.

Note of course that some Democrats are apparently too stupid to distinguish public from private schools (such as Stanford), which of course are not funded by the government. Neither are any of the Ivy League schools, or most of the good schools in the Northeast or West Coast.

The private schools are good because the rich leftists send their kids there instead of the public schools.

At any rate, analysis is best done by someone with at least an IQ of 75, which unfortunately is too high a plateau for the originator of this silly thread.

LOL, I think I upset you. You claim that the NC, TN, and VA public universities are better than the UC system? That's too funny.

Actually, quality wise its not even close.

UVA and W&M are both on the same level as Berkeley (as is UNC-CH)... and better than every other PUBLIC school in California. Most of the UC system is garbage. Take away Berkeley and the system is below average.

jfern may not know that California has 33 million people or so, meaning the total number of schools is decent, though probably lower than even Virginia with a population of only 7 million.

This ranking system was obviously designed by someone who was a complete fool-- it basically is a measure of school size, which isn't necessarily a good thing, but which California, due to overcrowding, obviously has a lot of.

No serious ranking (US News, Princeton Review) looks anything like this nonsense.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

First of all, college towns are so liberal in part because their full of people that basically don't live in the real world. Second of all, the "top" universities just have people with higher IQs not in the real world. Third of all, the most liberal state, Massachussetts, probably has among the worst public systems in the Eastern US, while Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee have three of the top public systems.

Note of course that some Democrats are apparently too stupid to distinguish public from private schools (such as Stanford), which of course are not funded by the government. Neither are any of the Ivy League schools, or most of the good schools in the Northeast or West Coast.

The private schools are good because the rich leftists send their kids there instead of the public schools.

At any rate, analysis is best done by someone with at least an IQ of 75, which unfortunately is too high a plateau for the originator of this silly thread.

LOL, I think I upset you. You claim that the NC, TN, and VA public universities are better than the UC system? That's too funny.

Actually, quality wise its not even close.

UVA and W&M are both on the same level as Berkeley (as is UNC-CH)... and better than every other PUBLIC school in California. Most of the UC system is garbage. Take away Berkeley and the system is below average.

jfern may not know that California has 33 million people or so, meaning the total number of schools is decent, though probably lower than even Virginia with a population of only 7 million.

This ranking system was obviously designed by someone who was a complete fool-- it basically is a measure of school size, which isn't necessarily a good thing, but which California, due to overcrowding, obviously has a lot of.

No serious ranking (US News, Princeton Review) looks anything like this nonsense.

California has more top universites than Virginia, even per capita.
You're the complete fool f you say that those schools come close to Berkeley's graduate research programs. 

The US News rankings are undegraduate programs with crappy methodology that seems to unfairly favor Harvard, gee they're #1 again, what a surprise.

[Grad Students are the Worst]

I just don't understand what is the political point to be made here?

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

I just don't understand what is the political point to be made here?

That most good research programs are in blue states.

[AuH2O]

Don't worry, there is no point. Most NASA facilities are in red states, so uhhh there. jfool will ramble on about anything, meanwhile he apparently isn't even sure what the difference is between public and private universities.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

Don't worry, there is no point. Most NASA facilities are in red states, so uhhh there. jfool will ramble on about anything, meanwhile he apparently isn't even sure what the difference is between public and private universities.

Hey, you idiot, I know the difference.
As for NASA jobs, what does that prove? They got rid of a lot of CA NASA jobs and moved them to FL a couple of years ago. That seemed like a move for political reasons to me.

So, yeah, when politics are involved, blue staters get screwed.

[Richard]

I just don't understand what is the political point to be made here?

He is trying to establish causation between "red states" and "stupidness."

[phk]

Don't worry, there is no point. Most NASA facilities are in red states, so uhhh there. jfool will ramble on about anything, meanwhile he apparently isn't even sure what the difference is between public and private universities.

Hey, you idiot, I know the difference.
As for NASA jobs, what does that prove? They got rid of a lot of CA NASA jobs and moved them to FL a couple of years ago. That seemed like a move for political reasons to me.

Cheap-labor.

[Rob]

Don't worry, there is no point. Most NASA facilities are in red states, so uhhh there. jfool will ramble on about anything, meanwhile he apparently isn't even sure what the difference is between public and private universities.

Hey, you idiot, I know the difference.
As for NASA jobs, what does that prove? They got rid of a lot of CA NASA jobs and moved them to FL a couple of years ago. That seemed like a move for political reasons to me.

Cheap-labor.

In the aerospace industry

[phk]

Don't worry, there is no point. Most NASA facilities are in red states, so uhhh there. jfool will ramble on about anything, meanwhile he apparently isn't even sure what the difference is between public and private universities.

Hey, you idiot, I know the difference.
As for NASA jobs, what does that prove? They got rid of a lot of CA NASA jobs and moved them to FL a couple of years ago. That seemed like a move for political reasons to me.

Cheap-labor.

In the aerospace industry

Well Cheaper Labor. Relatively speaking. Not bad in a way, if cost-of-living is lower.

[Q]

The methodology of this ranking is spurious at best.

Any correlation between politics and high-ranked schools should exclude private schools, because these are mostly national universities that draw students from across the country.


Couldn't we also compare these ridiculous rankings against not only voting patterns, but also population, or, what may have the greatest correlation, year of the state's entry into the Union?

[True Federalist]

Couldn't we also compare these ridiculous rankings against not only voting patterns, but also population, or, what may have the greatest correlation, year of the state's entry into the Union?

Already did population, which jfern already discounted because it tended to refute his argument as the top schools were much more strongly correlated with state size than with politics.  A quick glance at the list indicates that state's year of entry would have approximately the same degree of correlation as state politics, but I don't care to do a detailed analysis of that myself.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

Couldn't we also compare these ridiculous rankings against not only voting patterns, but also population, or, what may have the greatest correlation, year of the state's entry into the Union?

Already did population, which jfern already discounted because it tended to refute his argument as the top schools were much more strongly correlated with state size than with politics.  A quick glance at the list indicates that state's year of entry would have approximately the same degree of correlation as state politics, but I don't care to do a detailed analysis of that myself.

TOTALLY WRONG

The biggest 9 states have 51% of the population, and 50% of the top 60 universities.

The 9  biggest states, CA, TX, NY, FL, PA, IL, OH, MI, NJ have 223 Congresional districts, and so have about 51% of the population.

University count:
CA-8
TX-3
NY-7
FL-1
PA-3
IL-3
OH-1
MI-2
NJ-2

That's a total of 30

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

Here's a map.
40%=1
50%=2
60%=3
70%=4
NY has 7
CA has 8





Geographical analysis: The north-east, and mid-west do well.
The deep south does poorly, and they're old states.
The north-west does poorly, even though CA and AZ manage to do ok.

[Q]

Does that map resemble recent presidential elections?

[??????????]

Does that map resemble recent presidential elections?

Yeah, 1896 or something, lol.

[Ebowed]

What?!  No top universities in South Carolina?!  I'm dumbfounded.

Ok, not really.

[Gabu]

Here's a map.
40%=1
50%=2
60%=3
70%=4
NY has 7
CA has 8

Here's a map of populations:



Tossup = < 2 million
> 30% = > 2 million
> 40% = > 4 million
> 50% = > 6 million
> 60% = > 8 million
> 70% = > 10 million
> 80% = > 12 million
> 90% = > 14 million

Gee, that map looks kinda familiar.

Now let's take a look at the Democratic vote in each state:



Tossup = < 30%

No, I kinda think that the population map looks a bit more correlated.

[True Federalist]

What?!  No top universities in South Carolina?!  I'm dumbfounded.

Ok, not really.

We could probably have one if we didn't try to support so many different universities.  Our public higher education effort is diffused among too many different schools and for the past few decades we've focussed our efforts in starting new schools such as Francis Marion and Coastal Carolina instead of on making our flagship schools into premier schools.  Ideally, we'd do both, but that would mean raising taxes, and we can't have that, can we?

[Storebought]

There's too much snobbery as far as Uni's go, period. Over here there's only one Uni that is genuinely bad (Thames Valley) and even it's improving.
The only reason why certain Uni's are hard to get into is because it looks good to have certain Uni's names on a degree.

Reminds me of an episode of Rowan Atkinson's "Blackadder"

"Everyone knows that Oxford is a complete dump!"

Why Rice University is ranked nearly 50 spaces after UT only goes to show that either the professor or the agency which created the statistics has a massive political axe to grind.

That list, like most of what you post, is pure garbage.

EDIT: Having read the NRC's reprt, I will revise my original post only by saying that, while the political axe is there, more important is the data they used to draw up the ranks. Outside of the obviously top ten schools (which does not include Wisconsin, UT, or Washington), the school rankings get more and more subjective

[Ebowed]

What?!  No top universities in South Carolina?!  I'm dumbfounded.

Ok, not really.

We could probably have one if we didn't try to support so many different universities.  Our public higher education effort is diffused among too many different schools and for the past few decades we've focussed our efforts in starting new schools such as Francis Marion and Coastal Carolina instead of on making our flagship schools into premier schools.  Ideally, we'd do both, but that would mean raising taxes, and we can't have that, can we?

True, but all I mainly hear about is Clemson and College of Charleston.  People tell me that in the 1980s CoC was the "party school."

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

There's too much snobbery as far as Uni's go, period. Over here there's only one Uni that is genuinely bad (Thames Valley) and even it's improving.
The only reason why certain Uni's are hard to get into is because it looks good to have certain Uni's names on a degree.

Reminds me of an episode of Rowan Atkinson's "Blackadder"

"Everyone knows that Oxford is a complete dump!"

Why Rice University is ranked nearly 50 spaces after UT only goes to show that either the professor or the agency which created the statistics has a massive political axe to grind.

That list, like most of what you post, is pure garbage.

EDIT: Having read the NRC's reprt, I will revise my original post only by saying that, while the political axe is there, more important is the data they used to draw up the ranks. Outside of the obviously top ten schools (which does not include Wisconsin, UT, or Washington), the school rankings get more and more subjective

You have a point with Rice, it does do reasonably well in some of the five areas listed (Arts & Humanities #44, Engineering #22, Phys Sciences & Math #18, Social and Behavorial Sciences #49). It's not listed in the Biological Sciences which probably unfairly hurts it.

The average helps schools like Texas, it actually ranks lower in each area than it does overall.

I think you'd get similar results if you looked at the areas, though.

Arts and Humanities: First 9 are blue state
Biological Sciences: First 9 are blue state
Engineering: First 9 are blue state
Phy Sciences & Math: First 10 are blue state
Social & Behavorial: First 17 are blue state

Looking at the top couple of rankings this way, you get that the best university is UC Berkeley, and the next best 3 are probably MIT, Stanford, and Harvard.