Dr. Savoie Retiring

[CajunFun]

"Admissions standards."

Which simply mean, how did you do in your grades, and on the ACT or the SAT?

Those in turn predict exactly one, and only one, thing. They predict how you will do when you take tests.

You can look at the leaders in any industry, including leaders across UL, and most of them did not have great grades or scores.

On the other hand I have worked with a number of people, some of them MDs, with impeccable scores. And they were morons.

"Standards" are, too often, simply ways to sniff at those who didn't get in.

The way we use them now, they're not of much use.

[RedTails]

Fun, what would you do if you had unlimited magical power but only over UL? Specifically, in regard to academia and athletics.

Give us two scenarios. An idealistic fantasy world with no chance of happening, and something more realistic with a sense of verisimilitude.

Seems like a fun thought experiment.

[CajunT]

Fun, what would you do if you had unlimited magical power but only over UL? Specifically, in regard to academia and athletics.

Give us two scenarios. An idealistic fantasy world with no chance of happening, and something more realistic with a sense of verisimilitude.

Seems like a fun thought experiment.

Seen it before, accept his Master Plan never worked out.

[CajunFun]

"Admissions standards."

Which simply mean, how did you do in your grades, and on the ACT or the SAT?

Those in turn predict exactly one, and only one, thing. They predict how you will do when you take tests.

You can look at the leaders in any industry, including leaders across UL, and most of them did not have great grades or scores.

On the other hand I have worked with a number of people, some of them MDs, with impeccable scores. And they were morons.

"Standards" are, too often, simply ways to sniff at those who didn't get in.

The way we use them now, they're not of much use.

[RedTails]

I'm no college athletics historian by any means, but as a hobbyist I believe Tulane sided with the PAC/PCC in the altruistic (naive?) effort to implement and enforce academic standards and focus more on a university's main endeavor: education. They left the SEC in the 60s to focus on research/academia. Today, 84% of Tulane's enrollment is out of state and were an afterthought when it came to athletics until a few years ago.

I would err on the side of caution thinking of taking a similar route as a state public school without a medical or law school.

[ULGrad@HOU]

Probably having the dorms closer to the stadiums would have been better in the long run for student involvement. The big p4s i think for the most part dont have separate academic and athletic campuses. Although some may have more contiguous distance students need to traverse than we have

This is certainly a problem with getting on campus students to the games. It simply is not convenient.

[ULGrad@HOU]

There needs to be some serious conversations on these points. It's not just a question of whether or not winning athletics brings in donors and students. It's a question of what kind of donors and students?

What serious student picks a university because they have a football team? And the kind of donors that big-time athletics bring in, just want even bigger-time athletics.

We have a problem right now, the students aren't going to the games, the more we win, it seems the smaller our crowds get, athletic costs have jumped the track, NIL & the portal are making a mockery of the entire concept of a university.

Meanwhile, we have become the state's leaders in research.

Why do we want to continue playing to LSU's strengths?

Particularly since we are passing them up in what they were supposed to have been doing for the past 160 years.

Are we absolutely confident that the best way to build a university, today, is through athletics?

Absolutely yes, and specifically Football. It raises general public awareness a thousand times more than an announcement of a new degree program. It's a very loud commercial for the University. It brings pride and name recognition. That's not to say you can't improve Academics at the same time. They can go hand in hand. We have ignored this huge opportunity in the past, because I firmly believe that in Louisiana, with so much athletic talent in it's backyard, it would be less difficult to obtain than other locations.

[Cajunrunner]

Come on, guys. Get on board.

We need to be more like Brown and Cornell University, which have produced folks who have filled high paying STEM jobs all over the Gulf Coast to support our region.

[JamesTheJeweler]

Fun, what would you do if you had unlimited magical power but only over UL? Specifically, in regard to academia and athletics.

Give us two scenarios. An idealistic fantasy world with no chance of happening, and something more realistic with a sense of verisimilitude.

Seems like a fun thought experiment.

Why hasn't anyone asked Fun to do this already?????

[zeppelincajun]

It’s one thing to be dismissive of the importance of admissions standards if you have a track record of producing graduates at a high rate. You know when you can tangibly show that most of the people you’re letting in to college based on the notion that, “they just aren’t a good test taker” are actually succeeding in the environment that you’ve told them is a fit for them. If that is NOT the case and you are propping up your enrollment numbers with students who will struggle mightily in college, you have crossed the line in to thievery and done so in the name of inclusivity as a cowardly way of hiding your greed. Take a look at our 4 year and 6 year graduation rates compared to the peers we’ve supposedly left in the dust. Draw your own conclusions. IMO we are puffing our chests out a little bit too much about the money we throw at research.