I’m not disputing your info, but since you did the research and presumably already know the answer …
What timeframe was Teikyo doing this buy-up? And with what stated intention?
No gotcha, just curious. A small Midwestern university near where I used to live in St. Louis MO
had been struggling for a long time and in the ~90s got new management and a huge infusion of money from ??? which recovered them to considerable success within their small-scale milieu. With lots of local grumbling that it had to be some sort of pump and dump that somehow hasn’t dumped yet 30 years later.
It’d be interesting to compare what went wrong and right.
The closest thing to that, I suspect, is Clark University. It was founded around the same time as Stanford University, Johns Hopkins University, University of Chicago, MIT, and Caltech, well after the Ivy League ones. Those six universities were all the best private universities other than the Ivy League ones (well, Cornell is partly state-supported) in the early twentieth century. All six still exist, but I suspect that most people have never heard of Clark.
Does the OP’s “well thought of” mean “has a high reputation among those who know universities” or does it mean “has high visibility in popular culture”. The OP probably meant #1 while this
I’ve never heard of Clark. I also pretty much ignore all of New England about almost anything, so my ignorance is not surprising.
But is Clark considered quality by the people who rate universities? I do note it’s tiny compared to any of the given peers except Caltech. Caltech is an oddball with a much larger graduate headcount than undergrad headcount. AFAIK very few US universities can make that claim.
Tiny says very little as to quality, but a lot as to notoriety.
No, it’s not considered one of the top universities in the U.S. anymore. It’s ranked as being number 142 out of the most significant 439 universities. Again, in the early twentieth century, Clark University, Stanford University, Johns Hopkins University, University of Chicago, MIT, and Caltech were considered just a little below the eight Ivy League universities in quality. So it was at least the 14th best university in the U.S. Now it’s considered the 142nd best. It has nothing to do with size:
On what basis are you saying that Clark University was considered just below the Ivy League in the early twentieth century? Is there an early twentieth century equivalent of the US News rankings?
Thanks for the additional info. I wasn’t trying to be contrary; just trying to figure out what you meant. Sorry if it came off more contrary / nitpicky than intended.
Yeah, clearly they have not kept up in the quality sweepstakes over the last ~100 years.
That discussion at Quora mentions Mount Holyoke College and Howard University. Both obviously are aimed at groups (women and blacks) who were excluded from most schools, so I wonder if that’s the reason for their drop in prestige, given that those groups have more choices today.
Another thing you should realize is that the reputation of the Ivy League universities around 1900 was not basically about how good the teaching was there. It was also about the fact that the students came from rich families and most of the students were the children of alumni of Ivy League universities. Yes, the students were mostly reasonably smart, but there were a lot of children of alumni and other rich people would got in despite not being particularly smart.
They were also at the center of the world when it comes to football back then. People like Walter Camp were changing the game and Yale, Harvard and Princeton were regularly national champions.
Even today, the primary benefit of an Ivy education is not the education itself, but the networking, in that it lets you connect with other Important People, and looks really good on a resume.
And this Doper’s alma mater. Proud (well at least surprised and relieved) BS graduate in 1968. During my years there it was the venerable ivy covered college campus of red brick buildings with big white columns. Less than 500 students living on its picturesque, bucolic campus. Established in 1832 as a genteel Presbyterian seminary for women. When I arrived as a freshman, it was still a college only for women. My sophomore year in 1969 it became coeducational bringing about 30 men students on campus. I was an admissions office volunteer and gave campus tours to National Merit scholar high school seniors the College was trying to recruit. In the spring of 1969 I gave a tour to two Catholic HS seniors from Omaha and the rest is history. Married one of them and the other one became my brother 16 years later when his parents legally adopted me.
It was a traditional liberal arts for learning’s sake institution then. Becoming coeducational seemed to work out. As @LSL said, something happened in the 1990s-like it did for many other small private colleges. Lindenwood changed vastly under a new President and Board, but it survived. The new guard ended tenure, teaching was done by a vast cadre of adjuncts, lots of career majors were added. Yada, yada, you can guess the rest. Now it has 16,000 students instead of 466, many of whom never step foot on campus, which would be unrecognizable to me. It survived, people are being educated but it no longer delivers the classic liberal arts education I received.
There is a cagey, almost spooky black ops secrecy to this day about where that turnaround money came from and certainly who master-minded it. The new guards tossed out the old guard but no one is saying who that new guard was, much less is. But heh, at least now we have a Division II football team when before all we had was the likes of me racing up and down a field in a short kilt playing varsity field hockey.
Any of you find out who that new $$$ and new guard, plus let me know. Until they restore faculty tenure they sure aint getting any of this alum’s money.