re: Fournette to make decision Tuesday.

I still can't find this article. The link takes me to BleacherReport but the home screen.

Hope this isn't true:


Rivals Camp Series ?@RivalsCamp

#RollTide for 5-star Fournette? #UAALLAMERICA RT @starbo06 @_fournette just told me he gone room with me at Bama! Might have this one??????

"Fournette's family is among the many making the trip to Orlando on Tuesday, at which time the nation's top prospect hopes to discuss the options and choose his school.

Academics, with his plans to major in either business or engineering will be a big topic, he said."

Kudo's to Leonard for judging his potential education based upon the premise of undertaking challenging majors. He must do well presently in the class room. His parents must be extremely proud on many levels.

So Let's look at the BIG TOPIC of Academics for a moment [from many different angles]. If one was to look simply at USNews rankings [the bible of college academics], they would find LSU and Alabama are nearly identical with one another in these two schools at their respective universities. Both schools are tied with one another for 92nd for top engineering program [overall]. In Business, Alabama is ranked one higher than the other [but there are many ties, so it makes Alabama's tie for 58th look better than LSU's 72nd].

The overall rankings aren't as important as are the strengths of the individual focuses of engineering and of business, however, to most students. We also know the class room is definately not the football field. Despite one's fame on the field, professors are going to want their individual academic programs to shine from outcomes OFF the football field.

Viewing the same, I checked out a couple of other resources than US News as both of these majors tend to be under-represented by African American students.

LSU gets raves in Engineering as the #2 school providing Institutional Support of African American Students in Engineering with 36 NACME Scholarship Receipients [2011-2012]. Alabama isn't on the list.

On to the Business side of things:

The LSU E. J. Ourso College of Business also opened the doors of its new state-of-the-art home to students in fall 2012. It has 1,481 students in the program. It's top hiring industries are Financial Services 13%, Manufacturing 9%, Media/Entertainment 7% and Petroleum/Energy 6% while its top areas of study are Accounting, Economics, Finance, Human Resource Management, Other and Internal Audit. Average Starting Salary is $44,810 per year. Top Employers are Ernst and Young, Disney, Deloitte and Touche and PricewaterhouseCoopers.

The Alabama Culverhouse College of Commerce is pretty huge [6,520 students] which isn't necessarily a good thing at that sort of size [easy to get lost in the crowd and not have as many opportunities to grow]. Their Top Areas of Study are Accounting, Finance, Management Information Systems, Marketing and Operations Management. They don't list the industries where most get employment, but the top employers are Ernst & Young, BBVA Compass, Accenture and Hewlett-Packard

Both Schools have a Four Year business program [which can be very important to students wanting to get into the meat of their major sooner than later].

There, of course, are no clear answers from any of this, but hopefully this is the kind of information the Fournettes will be using when they talk with their son about his academic choices, rather than who he's been hanging out with.