Talk:Public Ivies

message: Contributors to this page may be interested in this article, which has been proposed for deletion:
Midwestern Ivy League
Please review the article and provide your input on that article's Votes for Deletion page. - 18.95.1.22 03:52, 23 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Midwestern Ivy League" ? 

message: For reference, here are the conference affiliations for each of the Public Ivies that play 1-A football...
Atlantic Coast Conference
* University of North Carolina
* University of Virginia
Big East Conference
* Rutgers University
Big 10 Conference
* University of Illinois
* Indiana University
* University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
* Ohio State University
* Pennsylvania State University
* University of Wisconsin
Big 12 Conference
* University of Colorado
* University of Texas
Mid-American Conference
* University at Buffalo
* Miami University in Oxford, Ohio
Pac-10 Conference
* University of California
* University of Washington
Southeastern Conference
* University of Florida
...And those that don't play 1-A football
* University of Vermont-No football, but plays most sports in the America East Conference
* College of William and Mary-Currently plays 1-AA football in the Atlantic Ten Conference, but will join its other sports in the Colonial Athletic Association in the near future 
CoolKatt number 99999 01:21, 11 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sorting out 

message: As I noted on the "Little Ivies" discussion page, this is an almost completely arbitrary label. What, exactly, makes a public university an "Ivy"? What differentiates Penn State, Rutgers, SUNY or Vermont from the universities of Maryland, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire and so on? The Ivy League -- which does not, of course, include Stanford, MIT, Duke, Chicago, Johns Hopkins, Georgetown, Northwestern, Rice or any of the elite liberal arts colleges -- is an eight-school football conference, not a comprehensive group of the top schools in the United States.
Take the term for what it is worth and what it represents. Those other schools you name are top notch private universities. These public ivies are schools that provide a similar enriching academic experience and ambiance to the ivy league schools in the Northeast.
:What it represents is completely wrong. Putting aside the merits of these schools and the Ivy League schools, these schools are not similar in ambience to Ivy schools. They feel quite different, as I know from personal experience. I'm quite flabbergasted that the people who created these lists feel otherwise. --C S 20:03, 1 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I can't speak for every school on either list (Public Ivy or Ivy League), but I can tell you that of the two schools I have seen up close and spent time at, the University of Virginia and Dartmouth College are surprisingly similar, given that one is in New England and one in the South. They are mostly dis-similar in size and not much more. The ambiance is very similar at the two universities, from the Palladian architecture to the frat boys, and I could easily confuse the Tuck School of Business for something that belongs near the Rotunda, or the Thayer School for SEAS (both tiny engineering programs not well known). Not to mention, both of the schools' strengths are the liberal arts, and both sets of student bodies are "preppie" faux-outdoorsy types. And, U.S. News would seem to agree with me. –Uris 21:07, 1 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Hi, I appreciate your feedback, and others have told me similar things about the University of Virginia. But I was thinking more along the lines of how the University of California (at Davis) compared to Cornell. They are so extremely dissimilar it's funny that anybody would claim the opposite. --C S 01:09, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

text: I happen to agree with you. But the prestige counts for those to whom prestige is important. It isn't doing anyone a service to pretend that the United States is an egalitarian, classless society. There are people whose goal is to become one of the Clintons or Bushes of the world. Gerald Ford proves that it is possible for a University of Michigan graduate to become President, but nevertheless the odd favor the Yale graduate. (Me? I wouldn't want to be President, those grapes are sour, anyway). Dpbsmith (talk) 23:57, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Comment 

message: This is an article about the public ivies... those other schools may be ranked by US News as the top public schools but that doesn't belong on this article
I will certainly grant that "Public Ivies" is a term that has been used in a published book, and therefore is not undeserving of mention. However, the "Public Ivies" do not exist as a group, in the same way that Ivy League schools do (The Ivy League after all is an organized athletic conference). To compare public schools to the ivies, and characterize them as similar to certain Ivy schools is fine, but to present Public Ivies as either a commonly used term or as though it were a set group is misleading. And given the diverse nature of the various Ivy campuses (urban, rural, large population, small, varied graduate schools, undergraduate schools, affiliates etc) comparisons between these Public schools and specific Ivies should be reserved for their individual article pages. I would suggest limiting the detail of this page to summarizing the content of those books that specifically mention the term "Public Ivies," so as to avoid boosterism and a "runaway" article. 
IvyLeagueGrunt 02:00, 15 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Clearly I went to a public school - I don't even know what the Social Register is. Rkevins82 01:07, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: See The Straight Dope and, of course, Social Register. Let's put it another way. In this great land of ours, anyone—even a graduate of the University of Michigan—can become President of the United States. However, the odds are noticeably better for graduates of Harvard or Yale. Dpbsmith (talk) 01:22, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

text: The talk page is for discussions about the article, not criticisms of its subject matter. Dave 05:08, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: [[User:Dmlandfair|Dave] I think it's borderline but on-topic because it relates to what ought to be in the article. Anon, the prestige conferred by Ivy League schools comes, or traditionally came, from the selectivity they exercised in their admissions which was not based solely on academic merit but on judgements of "lineage," social standing, etc. I agree with the "who" factor, but the prestige of the Ivies depends on part on "who" attends. The prevalance of Ivy Leaguers in the Social Register and in the White House is not completely explained by the academic excellence of the Ivies. It's all very unpleasant (to me), and I believe the "social" factor in Ivy League selection is less important than it was some decades ago, but it still exists. Dpbsmith (talk) 10:58, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Public Ivies do not exist as a group

message: The UC campus is Berkeley.  & . I'll bet the SUNY campus is Binghamton, but could be Stony Brook.  MARussellPESE 18:33, 4 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually, [1] and [2] are unreliable. They both are copies of old Wikipedia data. I am willing to bet it is Berkeley, but would just like confirmation. -James Howard (talk/web) 19:02, 4 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Location, Location, Location

message: Maybe this is just my opinion, but isn't Minnesota more of a Public Ivy than Penn State or Indiana? Consistently, it seems to have more top-notch faculty members than either of the other schools and is generally recognized as less of a "party school" (IU) or a "jock school" (PSU). 129.105.104.223 00:28, 3 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: A few things: 1. these ratings are dated, 2. these ratings do not appear to be based on a great deal of obective criteria, 3. Penn and Indiana are both very good schools, as is Minnesota. I'm not clear on what you mean by "jock school" or even "party school." The three have similar admission profiles, athletic programs, and college drinking cultures. My experience has been that students either overrate their school's reputation in one of the categories (if they approve) or overrate another school (if they disapprove).
This is the point of other editors - what separates a Penn State from a Rutgers, Wisconsin from Minnesota, Cal from UCLA. Rkevins82 00:53, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

text: Yeah, has this one been up for deletion? I think the whole "x Ivies" categorization is, to be blunt, stupid. The Ivy League isn't the end-all be-all of American education that all other schools strive for. Why people continue to use terms like "small ivies" or "public ivies" is beyond me. Let me put it this way: if I were an engineering student, I would rather graduate from Illinois engineering or Michigan engineering than ANY Ivy League engineering program. Isn't it something of an insult to continually use such term? Arbitrary, pointless article. Sonofabird 20:32, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't think it has been up for deletion. It just rehashes the books and explicates a somewhat common term, no matter how useless. Rkevins82 20:48, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Big Ten Schools 

message: There seems to be an issue with the side pictures in Firefox 1.5 on my computer. I made this edit correct the problem, since reverted by an anonymous user. On my version, the section edit links appear next to their section headings, as appropriate. On the preceding and succeding versions of the page (current version as of this post), all the section edit links are clumped together at the bottom of the page, with "See also"'s underscore running through the links. 
There is a little bit of discussion mirrored on my talk page and Rkevins82's talk pages about this. 
I'm not trying to make an edit which breaks the appearance on everyone else's browser. Can other people take a glance and tell me if it looks right or not? 
To note, the problem isn't reproducible without editing the page and breaking WP:POINT, because section edit links do not appear in archived versions or previews. -- stillnotelf has a talk page 05:14, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Side pictures and edit links 

message: What would y'all think about getting some photos of some of the Ivies that look similar to those photos we already have of the Public Ivies? Instead of eight shots down the side, we could have, say, three sets of pairs of photos demonstrating visually the similarity in aesthetics. JDoorjam 21:51, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  A new design idea 

message: And here, for some reason, I thought at least the aesthetics section would be non-controversial! (I thought we could all agree with "everybody's pretty", eh?) My concern with the "U.Va. should come first because it's a World Heritage Site" logic is that, as you state, it's the only college campus that's been given such a designation... so it's not much of a comparison, is it? I mean, it's neither something that stands out as contrasting all or most (my favorite phrase, I know) of the Public Ivies from the Ivy League, nor does it bring them all together... it seems to simply be a flattering thing to mention about the University of Virginia. Is there an explanation as to how the World Heritage site designation makes U.Va. more Ivy-like, especially considering the other world heritage sites are mostly non-Ivy-like national parks like Yosemite and Yellowstone, or the Statue of Liberty? -- JDoorjam
:Point taken about World Heritage, I have removed it. However, you yourself admitted that Dartmouth had not built the similar buildings until much later than U.Va. did, yet you say that "predate" is undocumented? You seem to not believe yourself. Also the quote by the New York Times is a comparison between U.Va.'s campus and all others in the country including those of the Ivy League. Did you expect them to say "a better campus plan than any of those in the Ivy League" instead of comparing its aesthetics to all others, such as Stanford, as well? –Uris 17:01, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: This isn't U.Va's page. If you want to put that on U.Va's page, please do -- it seems factual and relevant (and I'm sure it's already there). But yes, if you're going to put it on this page, then that's exactly what I expect: a direct comparison between the "Public Ivies" and the Ivy League. Just because it has to do with U.Va., and is factually true, does not mean it belongs here. JDoorjam 17:08, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: It was a relevant comparison between U.Va. and the Ivy League. Between the "Public Ivies" and the Ivy League, no. The whole section was only about U.Va. and W&M which is why, sadly, I did delete it. I don't think the other Public Ivies are comparable in those ways to UVa and W&M due to the limited history of the other states. In the days these universities were being founded, New England and Virginia were much more prominent than what is now the rest of the country. Uris 17:14, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Then perhaps that section should say that some are similar and some are dissimilar. My point remains the same: that the New York Times thinks U.Va. has an excellent layout really doesn't have much to do with its similarity to the Ivy League. But, IMHO, I think that this section might be worth bringing back at some point if it can say "these are similar, these are not." JDoorjam 17:21, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Perhaps..... it seems like it would be an unusual section though? Uris 17:40, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Aesthetic comparisons 

message: The public Ivies are said to provide a collegiate experience and quality of education comparable to the Ivy League. They are not comparable to the Ivy League in social prestige. Despite some degree of egalitarianism in the United States, there is still a social pecking order, and the George W. Bushes of the world go to Harvard and Yale, not to the University of Wisconsin. Dpbsmith (talk) 01:19, 26 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: An MIT degree does not confer much if any social prestige on its holder. This is probably because MIT admissions have always been pretty much meritocratic. You'll notice, too, that no MIT graduates have reached the White House (although Carter attended Georgia Tech). The presence of "MIT" on a resume certainly opens some doors, above and beyond the actual academic achievement of the candidate, but they are not the same doors that are opened by Williams or Yale. Dpbsmith (talk) 17:57, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

text: What exactly is the point you are trying to make? The original statement was that public ivies don't hold the same *prestige* as the real ivies, and you arguing back that there are successful people who didn't go to an ivy. No shit, but that doesn't counter anything the original poster said. It's a subjective statement so perhaps there is no point in arguing it here anyway. Please sign your comments with 4 tildes (~). Rm999 00:46, 14 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Not "prestige." 

message: Cornell? What's Cornell doing here? Cornell is an honest-to-gosh member of the Ivy League, nothing public about it. Dpbsmith (talk) 01:15, 26 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Cornell

message: 13:08, 11 August 2005 208.254.206.41 inserted the sentence saying that the term was
:coined by the writer William Faulkner to describe the University of Virginia, where he served as Writer-In-Residence from 1957-1962. 
I can't find a source for it. Googling on "William Faulkner" "Public Ivy" turns up dozens of Web hits... but most of them seem to be derived from Wikipedia, or don't themselves give a source.
Anyone have a source? Dpbsmith (talk) 01:03, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Faulkner? 

message: There must be an unbiased way of pointing out the incongruity of a school like the University of Virginia claiming to be a Public Ivy and granting athletic scholarships at the same time. Admittedly, the "Public Ivy" ethos (if one exists) does not ban scholarships, but the Ivy League generally does, and it is, after all, officially an athletic league at heart.
In the ongoing discussion of how to phrase this, the article has acquired a few statements to the effect that "Ivy League sports programs and in Division I-AA and don't generate much television revenue; some Public Ivies are in big leagues and depend on such revenue and therefore give their players scholarships." Doubtless that's the way the world works (isn't it like responding "But the sex is given in return for money!" to a charge of prostitution?), but it's missing the point: the Ivy League is staking out an educational policy position when it restricts the emphasis on athletics, a position that many of the Public Ivies (presumably for very good reasons) decline to adopt even as they are being commended in this article for imitating all of the other aspects of the league (except the price, of course).
:The "public ivies" do not imitate or resemble the Ivy League schools in all aspects. The only respect in which they are said to be comparable is: 1) academic quality, and 2) "collegiate experience." I rather question even the latter. I can't personally speak to the "collegiate experience" at Moll's original list of eight;—I can believe the College of William and Mary might be very Ivy-like—but the undergraduate experience at a place like the University of Wisconsin or the University of Colorado is not very Ivy-like. There is a fine education to be had at these schools, but a student needs to be proactive to get it, and students frequently sink and drown without anybody noticing, much less pitching them a life preserver. 
:By the way, I was digging up some stuff on Harvard president Charles W. Eliot, who pretty much turned Harvard into a modern university (and set the model for other universities), and, boy, did he ever hate football. He tried (unsuccessfully) to abolish it altogether at Harvard. Dpbsmith (talk) 02:30, 8 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: See University of Chicago if you like Charles Eliot's animosity toward football. Rkevins82 08:19, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

text: I've done some work on this section; IMO, it's worth mentioning the difference (as the Ivy League is itself technically only an athletic conference), but not over-emphasizing it. The Ivy analogy can only go so far, as large public universities have a different mission. VT hawkeyetalk to me 17:31, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Comparisons to the Ivy League as an Athletic League

message: The Ivy League, particularly Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, and the "little Ivies," have or had a special and privileged relationship to the U. S. power structure. This can be shown objectively by the overrepresentation of graduates of these schools in the Social Register. 
Cause and effect are not clear, but certainly during, say, 1920 to 1970, these schools' "selectivity" in admissions included many factors other than academic merit, such as "lineage." Graduation from these schools is or was considered a stamp of social approval as well as certification of academic accomplishment.
The "Public Ivies" admissions is meritocratic, and graduation from a"public Ivy" does not convey the same kind of social prestige.
All of this is ugly and not clearly spoken of, because in the United States we are reluctant to speak openly of the class structure that exists here.
I'm working on trying to find good, neutral sources documenting the social differences between universities. I don't have them lined up yet, but they exist.
Meanwhile, "Ivy" implies that the school indeed shares some characteristics with the schools of the Ivy League. In the case of the "little Ivies," this includes social prestige. In the case of the public Ivies (with the possible exception of William and Mary?) it does not.
Three Presidents attended "little Ivies." Jefferson, Monroe and Tyler attended William and Mary, but there have been none since. Aside from that, I believe Gerald Ford, who attended the University of Michigan, is the only President to have graduated from a "public Ivy."  Given the huge disproportion between the total enrollment of the "little Ivies" and the "public Ivies" that, I think, speaks fairly clearly to the situation. Dpbsmith (talk) 17:30, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Social prestige 

message: It's interesting to do a Google site search on the University of Vermont, "public+ivy"&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8 site:www.uvm.edu "public ivy" . Scanning the hits reveals numerous references to the university's "Public Ivy era," with the clear implication that that era is in the past. DId the Greenes or anyone else pronounce the University of Vermont to have lost its "public Ivy" status? Dpbsmith (talk) 21:14, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  UVM's take on itself 

message: Recently added:
:The phrase "Public Ivy" is also used to refer to the age of an institution.  At the time of the signing of Declaration of Independence, only nine colleges were in existence: Harvard University, Yale University, Princeton University, Dartmouth College, Columbia University, Brown University, University of Pennsylvania, College of William and Mary, and Rutgers University.  The last two, now public institutions, are as a result commonly referred to as "Public Ivies."
However, the source citation supposedly supporting this is Rutgers: Public Ivy of National Distinction.
Yet, Rutgers own (self-promoting) article opens:
:What It Means to Be a Public Ivy: Rutgers has recently been listed, along with such institutions as Berkeley, the University of Virginia, and William & Mary, in The Public Ivies, a volume in the Greenes' Guides to Educational Planning Series.  The term "Public Ivy," introduced by college admissions officer Richard Moll in a 1985 book, is meant to identify a distinct class of public universities offering educational opportunities similar to those found at schools like Columbia, Harvard, Brown, and Dartmouth, but at a much lower cost.
This is in complete accord with what our article already says. It accepts Greenes' Guides as the current defining authority, it mentions Moll, and it gives Moll's definition: "Public Ivy" = Ivy-League-like educational opportunity at lower cost.
It then goes on with a second paragraph "Although many 'Public Ivies' are, historically speaking, of relatively recent date -- Berkeley, for example, was founded in 1868 and the University of North Carolina in 1795 -- a few are much older.  Rutgers belongs to this group." In other words, Rutgers is not saying that being a "public Ivy" has anything to do with age. It is boasting about being a public Ivy that happens to be venerable in addition to being old. An extra added attraction, above and beyond its "public Ivy" status.
If someone can point to evidence that the Greenes or Moll considered institutional age to be an important factor in deciding whether an institution qualified as a "public ivy," that could reasonably go in the article... with a source citation. But I don't think they did.
Digression: Most of the "public Ivies" are, in fact, very roughly the same age: dating from a wave of such foundings that occurred after the Civil War, between 1870 and 1890, connected with the Morrill Act and with a new American conception of the "university" as nonsectarian and career-oriented... often with founders drawn from the ranks of businessmen rather than scholars. 
Not only do many public Ivies belong to this wave:; so do Stanford, MIT, and the University of Chicago—and the Ivy League school, Cornell. It's true that the Ivy League is called the "Ancient Eight," but that's extension of the older phrase "Ancient Three" for Harvard, Yale, and Princeton; Cornell is an Ivy League school that is conspicuously not "ancient."
Anyway, Rutgers and William and Mary are notable for their age, but I don't think age factors in at all into the definition of what it means to be a "public Ivy..." any more than it is is requirement for belonging to the Ivy League itself. Dpbsmith (talk) 17:25, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  I don't think age factors in 

message: I'm reinserting, in slightly modified form, the recently removed statement to the effect that the Public Ivies "generally rank below those of the Ivy League." The statement now reads:
:Five of the top public universities rank among the top 30 national universities in the U.S. News & World Report rankings for 2006. Public universities have accomplished significant achievements, especially in their graduate-level and research programs. U. S. News ranks Berkeley's mechancal engineering program higher than that of any Ivy; all three of the top-ranked pharmacy programs (UCSF, University of Texas—Austin, and UNC-Chapel Hill) are at public universities. Still, as colleges, U. S. News generally gives them a ranking below those of the Ivy League. For example, in 2006, the highest-ranked "public Ivy" ranked 20th, while the lowest-ranked member of the Ivy League ranked 15th. Nevertheless, the refusal of both the Ivies and the "Public Ivies" to publish standardized test results, such as LSAT, MCAT, GMAT and GRE scores, for their students makes objective academic comparisons difficult.  Martens, J. “For the Ease of Masters” Barron's 26 August 2002  
I think this is valid because the phrase "public Ivies" implies a comparison to the Ivy League (as do the phrases in the opening paragraph about "an Ivy League collegiate experience at a public school price" and "successfully competing with the Ivy League schools in academic rigor." 
I changed "many" to "several" in the phrase "many of the top public universities rank among the top 30 national universities" because, by my count, in the 2006 list, I see UNC, Michigan, UCLA, UVA, and Berkeley. I don't think four (Moll's list) or five (Greene's) quite qualify as "many."  
But I'm bothered anyway, because I'm not sure why the dividing line was set at "top 30." "Top 10," and "Top 20" seem like natural breaks. "Top 30" does not. Had the dividing line been set at "top 20," only Berkeley would have make the cut. I have to wonder whether 30 was picked in order to bring in several others. 
I'm also bothered by the vague comment about public universities having "accomplished significant achievements, especially in their graduate-level and research programs." I'm leaving this in (and giving some sourced particular examples), just as I'm leaving (but particularizing) the "top 30" comment, but they both seem to me to be an attempt to put a positive "spin" on things. 
In any event, on the current U. S. News list, the "public Ivies" as a group does not even overlap the schools of the Ivy League. Dpbsmith (talk) 22:28, 20 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Academic comparison with Ivy League