A University of Virginia panel has proposed that the institution break many of its ties with the state government and operate more like a private school.
Such an arrangement which would need state lawmakers' approval and likely would meet opposition would allow Virginia's flagship public school the freedom to more easily increase tuition and accept more top-tier students from across the country and the world. Although it could increase U.Va.'s prestige and shore up its finances, such a move could also make it more difficult for in-state students to win admission and could significantly raise their tuition.
Preliminary recommendations from the "Public University Working Group," released this week, make clear that the school would remain a public university. University officials said that the discussions are part of a brainstorming exercise as President Teresa A. Sullivan develops a strategy for the university and that there are no plans to make such a move. In its report, the group acknowledged that such a dramatic change at U.Va. would be "complex and challenging..."
Well, this is quite bizarre. In the unlikely event it goes forward, VT really would become the "true University of Virginia!"
http://www.timesdispatch.com/news/state-regional/ap/u-va-panel-break-sta...
Comments
Some of the true-believer cavs think they're destined to become the "Stanford of the East."
that's funny, unc's prez said the exact same thing about them.
Yeah but I'm pretty sure U of Richmond is kicking their ass in that category. Plus, they actually have a pretty decent football team.
Not W&M?
W&M is a public school
It is?!?! Wow. The barn is private.
Yep, I'll upvote that. UR is a great school and going there was the best decision of my life.
And I believe Richmond could have beaten UVA this year... too bad they weren't on our schedule!!
I know their business school is good. What else are they good at? Keep hearing about their academics all the time; but they do have some kids who take a whole lot of time to graduate, like any other school. So what gives?
Their econ, law, medicine, and nursing programs are all highly rated. Have to give credit where it's due. They are a quality university. Their football is just really really soft.
I know a lot of business school graduates from UVA and while their school might be highly rated, I find the lessons learned to be fairly distasteful. Most of the attitude towards business that I've seen from their grads deals with finding tax dodges and shortcuts to making money. I cringe when I hear some of their stories/plans, as it feels to me like...a lack of business integrity? Something like that.
I've heard that our engineering symposiums with their school demonstrate without a doubt that our engineering school dominates in all ways. I haven't attended, but I've heard it looks like they're doing high school engineering.
That's rather concerning hearing about their business program. Explains why some companies would love them though. Hopefully their econ program isn't like that too - my brother goes their for econ & stats.
And yes, our engineering program trumps everyone in the state. If I remember correctly, they are building just their 2nd engineering building. They aren't committed to the program.
I was talking to one of the owner's of the project I'm on now and he asked me where I went to school. I told him Tech and he got excited. I figured he was a fellow Tech grad, but then he said I went to uva but I know all the best engineers come from Tech, and every engineer I've met from uva is a moron. So even uva grads know their program is a joke.
Did you ask him if he felt the same about himself? haha.
He's not an engineer. He's also nowhere near smug enough to be a real uva grad. Must have only attended grad school there or something.
When I was coming out of school I had a job interview with this aerodynamics company located in Charlottesville. The guy who founded the company was a UVA grad and they were looking at hiring an AOE student. I asked if he was interviewing any UVA engineers, and he said no, because "VT grads are better"
Turkey leg for your screenname.....former 4-yr. Vawter resident here.
Vawter here too.
Nice. It's a fake frat my buddies and I made up when we were students.
With regards to their law school, I know a LOT of trial attorneys in the Tidewater area and it is an accepted fact that UVA grads do not know how to try cases. They know contract law and mediation, etc. but as far as trials go, they suck.
Perhaps the lack of killer instinct prevalent in the football team infects the law school?
"To some extent, that is true. We do compete for students with William and Mary and Virginia Tech," Sullivan said at the board meeting. "But if you asked our faculty and our alumni if that was our aspiration, I think they would say, 'You're shooting way too low.'"
#LOLUVA.
When people talk about who our main football rivals are, I usually say Miami and, as a side note, LOLUVA because of the in-state thing. But when we talk about who we compete with for students, I usually start talking about GT, Michigan@AnnArbor, Texas@Austin, simply because I don't think we're on par with the Carnegie-Mellons, CalTechs, MITs, and Stanfords of the world...yet. USN rates us as a top 25 engineering program, and the third least expensive in that group. I'd love to see us in the top ten. This is our pride and joy as a university.
translation: We are NEVER going to win at football. Let's drop it and become a private school
"Wait... Miami, USC, Stanford, and Notre Dame are private and win at football?
..........
GO LACROSSE!"
they are mentioning private schools like harvard, yale and princeton. Not Miami, USC or ND. Stanford fits though.
But Stanford was still awful at football before Harbaugh got there and after the 70's and mid/late 90's.
As was Miami before Schnellenberger.
They're doing this as leverage to shake down money from the state. Though you left out the most LOLUVA part of the article:
""To some extent, that is true. We do compete for students with William and Mary and Virginia Tech," Sullivan said at the board meeting. "But if you asked our faculty and our alumni if that was our aspiration, I think they would say, 'You're shooting way too low.'"
I think that gif covers all of our reactions perfectly. It's like a "I wish I could choke you to death with my eyeballs" sort of look
so how does that make their current and former students feel? "well you were good enough at the time but thats just because the state made us take you."
however, i will never talk shit on their hospital or n.i.c.u. because they quite literally saved my daughter's life when my podunk local hospital (augusta health) couldnt even get a goddamned catheter in my wife properly. at least they knew at the first sign of real trouble to send us over the mountain to uva.
While I'm very happy that the hospital, specifically the NICU, worked out for you, I have different feelings towards the two of them. They are REALLY bad about trying to diagnose developmental issues way too early rather than using some common sense. Unfortunately though, they have some of the more advanced NICU equipment there so a lot of children go through them.
i know there's a lot of people that had a way worse experience than we did, i saw it with my own eyes, and i'm sorry that happened to you. i found that dealing with the drs and the senior nurses they seemed to give a worse case scenario, while the nurses on the floor actually caring for the children really told us what was what.
i can tell ya what though, that's a highly stressful situation to be in. i cant imagine spending your career in that environment. the day we brought her home i said i hope i never step foot in that building again. then 4 days later the hokies annihilated appy state, and it was steamroller from the opening kickoff. it was nice.
Agree.
The faculty, hospital in Charlottesville is excellent.
But props to outlying facility that recognized the need for transfer.
If they're doing it as leverage, Sullivan has an awful poker face.
'In a related article, uva board of visitors voted to cut ties to the state of Virginia, and change it's name to a ' O->' symbol, or 'the university FORMERLY/FORMALLY known as uva .
'We expect our enrollment to drop somewhat, ' said current chancellor Umbert Flenacker III, 'likely to about 5 students. Of course, all 5 students will be required to have perfect SAT scores, mixed ethnicity, hail from out-of state, and be possibly related to obscure past minor dignitaries. The tuition will be raised to $173 million/year, not including book fees; but this is necessary to eliminate the majority of rabble that may want to pursue higher education.
In fact, our motto will be changed to 'Higher education is not for just anyone'.......in Latin, or even better yet, Sanskrit.'
Tuition would include total laser body-hair removal, though.
The university formerly/formally known as uva would immediately halt any athletic teams and events to save monies and avoid defeat at the hand of their lessors.
All classes will be given in hot-air balloons and students will be required to live in all-glass houses on The Lawn.
There will be only one degree tract: a combined B.S./Ph.D. in 'Multicultural interdisciplinary studies of self-importance' and graduates will immediately be hired to a United Nations think tank and solve all of the world's problems.'
sheesh.......
Umbert Flenacker III...that was hysterical
Back in the late 70's while an undergrad in the business school, and again in the early 80's while getting my MBA at night in the VT NoVA extension, we competed against UVA and several other schools in real-life, business situation-type competitions. It seems like we kicked the UVA teams' ass every time. Never figured out why their Darden business school was always rated so high, and why Pamplin was rated so low.
My experience with UVa academics was that I once used my two years of high school Spanish to write a paper for a business school friend there so he could fulfill some sort of requirement for graduation. He's now a national sales manager for a major corporation.
Anyway, once they separate themselves from the state, they can kindly reimburse the state for 190 years of rent, then move to Massachusetts.
I was told by one of the most famous VT professors in 2002 that this would happen in 10 years. About on track. UVa gets a ridiculously low % of their funding from the state but is held back by their admissions requirements. Not being a land-grant school, they don't owe the Commonwealth anything.
This was a big underlying part of the fiasco with UVA's admin last summer.
I had a professor at W&M suggest the same thing back in 2002. Basically, VT, UVA and W&M are forced to take more in-state kids than they would like due to politics but the amount of money coming from the state keeps dropping. VA has to keep those three schools somewhat happy or else they'd have a situation where those 3 flip the bird to VA and JMU becomes the flagship, but it's not an easy thing for the top 3 schools to do at the moment.
I've known 4 UVA engineering grads as coworkers. One was same age, graduation year, years of experience, etc. I ran circles around him in terms of engineering ability.
One was a structural/bridge guy. He designed the bridge at the Busch Gardens interchange on I-64. The word was when they delivered the girders, the VDOT bridge department had not properly check the shop drawings and some metric to english conversions (because the plans were metric but the suppliers converted everything to english units because they couldn't manufacturer to metric) were messed up and girders were actually sized wrong. It was said our engineering group was never forwarded the shop drawings to check, but it happened before I started so who knows. They were involved in other aspects of construction.
Another one, he did a pump design that when it was installed and turned on, it didn't work right. Lots of cavitation, etc. Turned out he'd majorly screwed up the system head curve for the pump design. Turned out we could swap a new impeller in there, and make it work.
Last one was a lady that was being groomed to be a PM when I first started because she liked being bitchy to everyone else. Office manager thought she had the guts to be a PM that wasn't afraid to jump in someone's face. Anyway, on my very very first pipe design she was trying to tell me some things to do, that I could tell were wrong. And another of her designs in NoVA (a big water vault with multiple really big high pressure mains coming in) had the thrust restraint design screwed up and blew out 6 months after it was built. Blew a giant hole in Chain Bridge Road in the middle of the night.
All four also had countless change orders on hordes of jobs.
I can honestly say that I've solved many problems that others couldn't, and have never had a change order on a job due to an engineering error related to my own personal work. And I also can honestly say the total change order as % of original construction cost on the projects I've designed both as a designer, and then now a PM managing others, is less than 2%. Including not a single one in the last 4 years.
As far as I'm concerned, VT Engineering beats UVA Engineering (and lots and lots of other schools as well) hands down.
Such a Uva move. I see this as them backing down from a challenge (shocker). As more of our in-state universities climb the academic ranks and encroach upon their "higher echelon of education" they are forced to do one of two things to keep their nose up and pinky out. Be creative and work harder to ensure they carry that "Flagship University" title. Or, take the cowardly way out and secede. Instead of wanting to provide an semi-affordable education at a historic university to the public they would rather throw in the towel and abandon the ideals of higher learning for the pursuit of financial gain. I guess that UVa. panel is having trouble realizing that if they continue on as a public university that in 10 years they may find themselves a little lower on those annual "best public university" lists as their neighbor in the mountains continues to climb.
I have a lot of respect for the other school in the State as it is truly a great university. I have friends and co-workers that attended. Unfortunately, I see the "I am the superior" trait within nearly all of them. With that attitude comes an unwillingness to cooperate, work smarter and simply follow the rules of business/life. I work with a lot of fellow hokies and a few wahoos. For the most part, when a hokie co-worker is asked to do something the task is completed on time and correctly. The wahoos always want to have a debate as to why they don't think the task needs to be completed and their work suffers from it. When business slows down me and my fellow hokies always like to help the wahoos pack up their desks :)
How is this backing down from a challenge? UVa receives a pittance of their operating budget from the state. If they were able to break free from the state, they would enjoy a fair amount of autonomy. It makes good business sense for them to do this.
That said, it would drastically hurt UVa's in-state enrollment and go against Jefferson's vision.
I don't want them to do it, because I don't think it's good for Virginia, but if I were a decisionmaker there, I'd strongly consider going down this route.
This is the same president that was fired by their board that led to such a huge outcry from faculty and students that eventually the governor had to get involved and reinstate her right? Now her great idea is to tell current students that they're not good enough, tell faculty that by privatizing (which will lead to lower enrollment) that they will no longer be needed, and to tell high school kids that she is going to make college so expensive that they will never be able to attend?
This is the EXACT reason she was reinstated. What could possibly more #LOLUVA than this? She's a perfect fit!
It's obvious isn't it?
This is everything that is wrong with UVA. I feel bad for the youth of Virginia who want to go to one of the best universities in the world at in-state tuition rate.
So if UVA goes private and ups their standards, does that mean that we start getting those 5 stars in the 757 that want to stay in state because they don't qualify at UVA? I don't know what the difference in standard is for us compared to a school like Stanford, but it seems that is UVA's dream.
Go drink a Zima and shut the f--k up.
Enough said.
To me, this just proves a stereotype I've had with UVA for a long time now. They think they are better than everyone else for some reason.
Don't get me wrong, it's a great school but this is just a slap in the face, especially that comment about us and W&M. This is truly where my loathing of UVA is. I don't hate their athletic teams. I hate this mentality.
As for UVA engineering; if you want to be an engineer and go to school in this great state, come to VT. Anyone who says they'd rather do engineering at UVA, or any other engineering school in the state, is just hiding the fact that they got reject at VT. Pamplin is a very well respected business school, and oh yeah, we just started a medical school a few years ago that has been getting very good reviews so far. Don't foget our Architecture program.
UVA can keep their "class" and their uppity mentality, I'm damn proud of VT's roots as a Land Grant school. We are here because of government money and I think represent good ole' VA well. Let UVA go private so we can claim to be VA's University like we rightfully should be anyway.
Ok, I'm done ranting now. Sorry, this just really really bugs me on a very fundamental level.
If you want to be an engineer and you go to UVA, you're taking the easy way out.
Kind of like those loser horses that use the ellipticals?
Way back in 1982, I was accepted to both VT and LOLuva coming out of a NOVA high school. Cannot begin to express how grateful to God I am that VT accepted me first and that I decided to attend there instead of LOLuva. Even though the drive was twice as long, even though the winters were colder, even though I had to run across our huge campus in uniform to make it to some classes on time, I am eternally grateful to have gone to VT and NOT to LOLuva.
Please go private BooHoos, my disdain for your elitist ways knows no boundaries. Be what you secretly want to be, a southern Ivy-league wannabe. With the rise of other institutions like ODU, JMU, Radford, GMU, VCU and with the continued excellence of VT, the great State of Virginia really doesn't need you all that much anymore to serve its resident students. The marketplace is quickly making you irrelevant. Rant over, man that felt good.
Reminds me of a visit I took to UVA med school when I was at Tech.
The enrollment officer was speaking to a large auditorium of prospective applicants from various universities in the state. He was asked if there was any favoritism towards uva grads in acceptance to medical school at uva.
He replied 'Certainly not. All applicants are weighted in light of their undergraduate achievements.'
He later showed a slide of the previous accepted class and their undergraduate schools. It was comprised of about 50% uva grads and then a smattering of other varied schools.
The audience was puzzled and one student raised their hand and asked 'I thought you said that there was no favoritism towards uva grads?'
He replied (in all seriousness) 'No, I said each applicant was weighted towards academic performance, and the committee understands that a uva undergrad degree is more difficult to obtain than that at other schools.......'
He was promptly laughed at and booed by the students in attendance.
So kind of on the topic of UVA... Any northern Virginia Hokies probably remember Keith Payne who dominated at Oakton and went on to have a few good games at LolU. Anyways, he now is fat as fuck and playing pickup ball at the local Y. He reps UVA gear every time I see him and I try not to laugh because it's almost like he's actually proud to wear that.
Oh and this whole "Stanford of the east" is such a load of shit. They're both prestigious schools, but the mentality at Stanford is totally different. People go there because they are truly gifted at something; the school really seems to promote the entrepreneurial spirit and students there run with it. UVA is the exact opposite. I came from a high school that had a bunch of students go to UVA and they were all the exact same person: not outgoing, studied their asses off, and never took risks. These types of kids would be nobodies at Stanford, but they fit right in at UVA.
I grew up in Blacksburg and went to Blacksburg High. My group of 5 best friends and myself all went to college, 5 of us went to the greatest school in all the land right down the street, and the other guy went to LOLUVA. He was also the smartest in our group, highest grades best SAT/ACT score all that jazz. Well now, us 5 Hokies are prospering in our diverse majors that include business/engineering/geosciences and the uva kid.....he dropped out because "I cant stand the atmosphere of these god damn snobs I literally want to rip my ears off everytime i talk to them, whats worse is that the teachers are FIVE TIMES WORSE" he goes on to rant but after that he is now very happily pursing a career as a writer. UVA should go private it'll match their arrogant personalities. They cant compete with us anyways.
If you're from a rural area and you go to UVA expecting to be respected, you're gonna have a bad time.
Yep, rednecks not wanted in Boohooville. Kinda like "facial profiling" from Duck Dynasty.
I was accepted by VT, UVa, W&M (& UNC). I ended up going to W&M for my undergraduate degree and UVa/Darden for my MBA, but I was born a Hokie, so I like to think that I am smart enough to know who to root for! My problem with this thread is that people are not distinguishing between the institution itself and some of the obnoxious people associated with it.
Like it or not, the founding of UVa by Thomas Jefferson will always impart a certain cachet as will the World Heritage site main campus. A number of the programs are nationally top rated and have been consistently so. Unlike one of the earlier posters asserted, my education at Darden emphasized ethics and integrity. I do believe that UVa imparts a quality education.
My issue has always been with the superior air that its alums maintain. I went to the same college that Thomas Jefferson attended which should give me a leg up on UVa alums. So what! Who cares! It's who you are and what you stand for that matters--and that goes for VT alums as well. That's why Ut Prosim is so profound. Look, we all know the excellence that is Virginia Tech. The problem here is when UVa is referred to repeatedly in the article as the premier Virginia university. That simply isn't accurate. I celebrate all the great schools in the Commonwealth. Let's take the high road, and GO HOKIES!
Ironic that this school was founded by Thomas Jefferson to create public college education in the new United States. At that time, William & Mary was the main Southern university, and it was primarily a seminary.