UT, Mizzou, and OU administrators/fans "concerns" about lower SEC academics...

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Missouri - #39

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if true

Do you have the avg SAT/ACT scores of studetns at those schools. Aren't those rankings based on a lot of factors combined like cost of tuition, number of students, acceptance rate, cost of room/board, etc. Or are they just education and academics???

It isn't a real concern. It is an excuse to cover up their reluctance to step it up in competition.

holy crap I had no idea Iowa State was a decent school...

i think the factors that hurt some schools (incl. LSU) is the #of students studying abroad and the amount of money spent on research. no matter what the rankings are, STUDENT ATHLETES ARE NOT HELD TO THE SAME ACADEMIC STANDARD AS OTHER STUDENTS. in other words, texas football players aren't any smarter than MSU's.

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in other words, texas football players aren't any smarter than MSU's.

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Vince.Young.

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Vince.Young.

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proof that there are no academic barriers at UT

t.u. doesn't feel like they would culturally fit in and I agree. Although we are pretty different from them too and have been together forever.

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The problem with USNWR rankings are concerns with the subjective nature of the methodology..

"The measures fall into seven broad categories: peer assessment; graduation and retention rates; faculty resources (for example, class size); student selectivity (for example, average admissions test scores of incoming students); financial resources; alumni giving; and, only for national universities and national liberal arts colleges, graduation rate performance and high school counselor undergraduate academic reputation ratings."

Like anything else this is going to be entirely subjective and more importantly there can (and has been in the past) some abuse of the soft metrics in the ranking system.

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While there is some truth to this, the same can be said about ALL the other rankings systems. They ALL have methodologies that can be fairly criticized.

For example, the methodology AAU uses to deem whether or not a university is worthy of inclusion is both highly political and very highly favors schools that have either large graduate medical or engineering research programs under the main campus's umbrella. This makes it practically impossible for a large research university in a university system of other branch campuses to EVER reach the research measurables to gain AAU status.

You can look at the state of Georgia to see how prejudice the AAU is. Georgia Tech, a VERY VERY good school didn't even get invited until last year. Georgia, a school which has quality numbers very competitive with a lot of Big 10 schools, still isn't an AAU member. The AAU is no better than USN&WR report imho when it comes to the subjective nature by which it judges schools.

FWIW: The Big 10 averages a ranking of 22 with 46 being the lowest in Nebraska. The SEC averages a ranking of 50 with MSU being the lowest. The only thing that help up Nebraska to get in the Big 10 was their academic standing and there's wasn't even that bad.