Where Do We Really Stand at the University of Minnesota?
Accountable to U (2007)

Yesterday the Board of Regents of the University of Minnesota met at the Morris campus, a fine undergraduate institution with a national reputation for excellence.

The lengthy agenda for the meeting included a report from the measurement and metrics (M&M) crew.

(Warning, this is a large pdf file.)

Selected information from that report is presented here in the hope that it will lead to a dialog within the University community about where we are and where it is desirable to go in light of this information. For another view of the situation, please see: "Oh Lord, It’s Hard to be Humble, When You Have Ambitious Aspirations."

From the M&M report:

The following institutions have been selected for comparison with the University of Minnesota:

University of Florida

University of Illinois

University of Michigan

The Ohio State University

Pennsylvania State University

University of Texas

University of California, Berkeley

University of California, Los Angeles

University of Washington

University of Wisconsin

(I would prefer that we compared ourselves with the other BigTen schools, Northwestern excepted, but be that as it may…)

Our 2006 ranking for Exceptional Students:

Top 10% of High School Class	10th
Average ACT Score	10th
2-Year Retention Rate	10th
6-Year Graduation Rate	11th

Exceptional Faculty

National Academy Members	8th
Faculty Awards	8th

Total Research Expenditures 8^th

Some Details

Percentage of freshman in top 10 percent of high school class

Berkeley	99 %
UCLA	97
U Michigan	90
U Washington	84
U Florida	72
U Texas	70
U Wisconsin	58
U Illinois	55
Ohio State	43
U Minnesota	39
Penn State	37

Our ranking by this index is 10/11. The actual figures are quite instructive and give further indication of the difficult task ahead of us if we believe that we can significantly improve our rankings in this index of quality.

Converted SAT and ACT scores of new, entering freshmen

Berkeley	30.0
Michigan	29.4
UCLA	28.5
Wisconsin	28.3
Illinois	27.8
Florida	27.6
Texas	26.7
Ohio State	26.3
Penn State	26.0
Minnesota	25.9
Washington	25.9

First and Second Year retention rates

Berkeley	96.2%	93.7%
Michigan	96.0	92.7
UCLA	96.7	`91.2
Wisconsin	92.9	89.3
Penn State	93.5	88.8
Illinois	92.6	88.5
Washington	93.1	87.1
Texas	92.5	86.9
Ohio State	91.5	84.8
Minnesota	86.1	78.9

Four, Five, and Six Year Graduation Rates

Penn State	64.9%	87.8%	90.1%
UCLA	62.6	86.2	89.2
Berkeley	63.9	84.5	88.9
Michigan	70.3	85.7	86.9
Illinois	62.5	77.9	81.5
Wisconsin	50.4	76.3	79.2
Florida	55.0	75.6	79.0
Texas	48.1	72.6	76.9
Washington	51.2	71.1	74.8
Ohio State	42.3	65.8	71.1
Minnesota	40.6	57.7	60.5

Pertinent question: What is Penn State doing right? Maybe we can learn from them? I understand they also have a football team...

National Academy Members

Berkeley	212
Washington	85
UCLA	73
Michigan	73
Wisconsin	71
Texas	56
Illinois	55
Minnesota	36
Penn State	28
Ohio State	22
Florida	20

Membership in the National Academies is a particularly interesting topic in trying to understand the folly of our ten year march to Greatness. Mr. B. believes that membership in the academy is correlated strongly with the perceived quality of an institution. For example there are many faculty members at the U of M who would be in the Academy if they were at institutions higher in the pecking order. And some members of the academy would certainly have been elected earlier than they have been if they were located elsewhere. This is an academic example of the Matthew effect: "Unto everyone that hath, shall be given" colloquially expressed as: "them as has, gits."

So the sad facts are: Berkeley - an astonishing 212 members [sic], UWashington - 85, UCLA - 73, UMichigan - 73, UWisconsin - 71, UTexas - 56, UIllinois 55, UMinnesota 36. There is a gap of approximately twenty between us and Illinois. At this point we should worry more about Penn State and Ohio State closing the gap with us.

So in round numbers Berkeley has almost six times as many National Academy members; Washington, UCLA, and Michigan have more than twice as many. We simply are not going to be able to catch up to these folks on any realistic timescale. Nor do we have the money to catch up by buying National Academy members. In fact quite the opposite. Texas recently bought one of our chemistry faculty members. We simply could not meet or even approach the Texas offer. This faculty member was subsequently inducted into the national academy having moved to Texas.

Total Research Expenditures and Percent Increase Over the Last Five Years

Michigan	809 $mil	47 %
Wisconsin	798	44
UCLA	786	48
Washington	707	34
Penn State	626	68
Ohio State	609	68
Berkeley	554	7
Minnesota	549	33
Florida	531	69
Illinois	500	34
Texas	411	51

In total research expenditures (2005) we ranked 8^th in the peer group. In our five year percentage increase we ranked 10/11.

Federal Research Expenditures and Growth Rate for the Last Five Years

Washington	606 $mil	56 %
Michigan	554	52
Wisconsin	478	71
UCLA	470	71
Penn State	359	82
Minnesota	320	39
Ohio State	294	122
Berkeley	291	40
Illinois	290	50
Texas	255	42
Florida	231	92

So in Federal research funding we ranked 6/11, but a disturbing trend is clearly evident. In terms of our increase over the past five years we rank dead last, 11/11. Thus our formerly very strong position enables us to look respectable but obviously it is steadily eroding.

Food for thought? Is it really credible to continue on with this "ambitious aspiration" to "become one of the top three public research universities [in the world]?" Let's admit we have some serious problems here and concentrate on fixing them. Let's also commit to getting the University of Minnesota at least to the mid-point of the BigTen rankings outlined above. That will be a difficult enough task.

In the hope that our administrators will soon get real,

Ciao, Bonzo