Earlier this week, Sam Houston got approved to open a med school in Conroe, which KatsFans.com claims keeps them at the front of the pack of the SLC academicallly. My first thought was "whatevs KatsFans", but then I got curious. Where does the SLC stand against each other academically.

Any thoughts on the best stats to compare? Entrance requirements? Some sort of grad statistics I can find? I'm happy to do the research & compile a table so we can compare, but wanted to get your thoughts on which metrics would be important for comparing academics.

Thoughts?

TallTexan,

Certainly Sammie is growing and growing fast. The best place to compare one school versus another (IMO) is to look at the "Common Data Set" for each university. Just google SFASU common data set. It will take you to the institutional research website and you can look up the reports for most schools. I looked a while back and for the record in the 2017 - 2018 Common Data Set you will see the 25th percentile and 75th percentile of SAT results for the entering class ... the look like this.

SFA 25% 990 75th 1180
Sam 25% 1000 75th 1140

So in essence, about the same. We are ten points lower in the 25th and 40 point higher in the 75th.
You can look at Lamar, McNeese etc. etc. etc. I think you will find (I don't recall the details) that SFA, Sam, McNeese and NW St. generally have higher entering scores than "most" of the rest of the conference. I have not looked at ACU but suspect it would be pretty high.

I'm sure each university has stats...it would be worth reporting # of undergrad programs, Masters, and Docs, graduation rate, grant $$ rewarded (maybe under each college..education, liberal arts, etc)...that is how I would start congregating the data...

Its also important to note that SFA's College of Ed practices from a scientist/practitioner model, as I would think several other advanced degree programs do too at SFA...so heavy on research grants, published research, etc.

Thanks guys, I'll check those items out & see if we can find some common metrics across all SLC schools & put a table together so we can compare. Will try to tackle it this week sometime.

BigJack85 said:

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This will sound cynical but..... we (the university) is in dire need of new leadership. I've been watching , looking, asking. I think there is an internal person that would be perfect for the position... Dr. Kimberly Childs She's seems to have all of the pieces. Well spoken, science orientated, respected, etc. Baker has done much for the university and he should be applauded. But. But. It's time.

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I don't know Baker's situation, but coming from the petroleum refining industry I've experienced some higher-ups in the organization who have thought the company couldn't survive without them. Turns out, it could and did. Several times. Maybe that's Baker's thinking, too.

BigJack85 said:

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This will sound cynical but..... we (the university) is in dire need of new leadership. I've been watching , looking, asking. I think there is an internal person that would be perfect for the position... Dr. Kimberly Childs She's seems to have all of the pieces. Well spoken, science orientated, respected, etc. Baker has done much for the university and he should be applauded. But. But. It's time.

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The university leadership just seems stale. Baker was the right man for the time, but now we need to take another step forward and hire our Brad Underwood.

And we should do it fast, because the next legislative session is fast approaching.