next »

[TBD]

When visiting my far from distinguished undergrad regional state college, was told that it was now a "public ivy."  I was also told that Truman State is now a public ivy.  But I doubt this.  As far as I know, there are only a couple real public ivies-- probably Michigan and Wisconsin (actually better than most ivies, as is Stanford, but it's not public.)

There's only really good regional state college-- SUNY Geneseo-- probably a public SLAC, to coin that phrase.  The other regional teaching colleges in its system are pretty miserable.

So does the term mean anything?

[Cornellian]

There is only one public ivy, in my book.

High above Cayuga's waters, there's a school...

Half is private - and in the Ivy league. How do I know this? I just went to a Cornell-Yale game.

Half is public - part of New York's state land grant college program. Want a pre-vet degree? Agriculture? Go to Cornell. Pay state school tuition for a world-class education.

Anywhere else is just - well - bogus posturing.

[raffles]

Isn't UPenn considered a public ivy? Or is it only considered that way by those affiliated with it?

[%sig%]

[LarryC]

My sense it that "public ivy" is largely a marketing term.  A brilliant marketing term!

[what?]

Penn is private, like all ivies.  Michigan, Berkeley, Virginia, maybe Wisconsin, are the "public ivies" I think.

[anon]

UPenn is private, pennstate is public.  there are no public ivy's...  there are people in the humanities and science that will make the claim that their school is equivalent, but ask a social scientist or an engineer...

[To anon]

Dude or dudestress,

Any engineer or social scientist who doesn't think Michigan and Berkeley are equivalent in those fields to the Ivies is full of....

By the way, Penn State is only semi-public.  Look it up--the only truly public institutions in PA are the group that includes Slippery Rock, Edinboro, California, Indiana, etc.  The Pitt and Penn State schools are "state assisted."

[Poison I.V.]

There are eight Ivy League universities:

    * Brown University
    * Columbia University
    * Cornell University
    * Dartmouth College
    * Harvard University
    * University of Pennsylvania
    * Princeton University
    * Yale University

Everything else is posturing and preening by Ivy league wannabes . . . Cornell  is a private college, founded in 1865.  A lot of people think it is public because it is the land grant college of New York State.  

I, of course, went to one of those schools in the Kudzu league, where we sell shirts saying "Harvard: The Rice/ Emory/ Sewanee/ Duke/ Tulane/ SMU/ Baylor/ Vanderbilt  of the North."

[What?]

ANY classification is simply that, a classification - as such, there is no "natural" Ivy category. It's simply a way for rich, private schools to attempt to set themselves apart from others - regardless of "quality." The history is also not very long as the "Ivy league" was founded in 1954, so there really is no actual history of considering these schools to be the "best" schools in the country. The "Ivies" didn't even exist as a special category before 1954. While all of the "IVY" schools (named so because they are a part of the Ivy league) are among the "best" schools in the nation, several private schools that are not Ivies are better than at least five of them, including Stanford, CalTech, JHU, and MIT.

As for those who don't think public schools outrank most of the Ivies in the social sciences, humanities, life sciences, engineering, etc., you might actually take the time to look up the rankings of these departments - Berkeley has more number 1 departments than ANY of the schools in the Ivy, Michigan has more top 5 departments than most of the Ivies, Wisconsin, Texas, and North Carolina do pretty well as does UCLA with more top 10 departments than most of the Ivies.

As for "public ivies" - that category was coined in 1985 by Richard Moll. While the "public ivies" did not do anything "official" to cement the relationship, they too could have easily formed some sort of consortium and labeled themselves as such, giving them the same "artifical" category and artifical officiality as the private ivies did. The original public ivies are:

1. College of William and Mary
2. Miami University
3. University of California (he considered UC to be one, big, giant school - which is how they like to "publically" consider themselves)
4. University of Michigan
5. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
6. University of Texas at Austin
7. University of Vermont
8. University of Virginia

Clearly, much like there are private schools that are "better" than some of the ivies, there are also public schools that are better than some of the "public ivies." But because the designation was never "formalized" in the same way that the designation "Ivy league" was formalized, many schools have claimed membership in the category.

[public snoot]

Virginia and Berkeley and Michigan.
Maybe UT Austin and Chapel Hill.

[sluggo]

There are many excellent public universities, but why should they be called Ivies?  There are also top private universities that are not part of the Ivy league.  Ivy League means something specific, as far as what universities are best, well it depends on your field, and grad vs. undergrad...  For that we have things like USNEWS, NSF rankings, Carnegie classification, but just because a place is good does not mean it should be called Ivy.  Were I associated with a top, non-ivy major university then I would take particular offense at using the term Ivy for best.

[Starbuck]

Ivies refer to a set of schools that are old and historically good. That's it. Some are better than others. Some non-ivy schools are better than some ivy-schools. Stanford is a good example mentioned by one poster.  Duke would be another.

I agree with sluggo that Ivy League means something specific. But people use it to me "best of the best" and that's not what it means. Even within the Ivy League, I've heard many people refer to the "sub-ivies". I won't name which schools all of the official ivies are good, they're just not all created equal.

I hate when people say things along the lines of "It's like an Ivy" by which they mean it's a top school. Why not say top school instead?

[Poison I.V.]

No, sometimes  a term has a very specific meaning . . . when you call something outside the Ivy leage "Ivy," you diminish the long-term prestige and distinctiveness of those institutions.  You make it a superficial marketing term that is an effort to coopt prestige and compensate for a perceived insecurity.  Where is the brightline of distinction drawn?  well, the Ivies once were clearly delineated, and when you say "Oh, let's throw in Chapel Hill and Ann Arbor and Madison and Palo Alto," there is no reason that Truman State can't call itself a "public Ivy."

It is like calling tax cuts "revenue enhancements," efforts to stifle faculty freedom "academic bills of rights," or an effort to destabilize the bill of rights a "Patriot Act."  You destroy the distinctiveness of the term by twisting it or diluting it or perverting it.

There are Eight Ivies, Seven Sisters, and a whole lot of really good schools that can't get past the fact that they are not Harvard.

[anon]

Isn't the term really still meant as a collection of schools that play eachother in sports? - that it has been co-opted to mean something stature/prestige-wise. It's a sports league, like the ACC, Big Ten, etc.

[Good Lord]

"Public Ivy" is an obvious shorthand for people who don't spend all their time (unlike those of us on this board) talking about higher education.  Everyone (I would have thought, until I read this discussion) knows what people are talking about when they use the term.

And, some of the so-called "public ivies" (UNC, UVa, William and Mary), have long histories that are arguably as distinguished as those of most if not all of the Ivies.  In fact, if you're talking about national impact, NO Ivy school is comparable to William and Mary, which is sometimes (I agree, rather preciously) called "Alma Mater to the Nation."  NO Ivy was founded by Thomas Jefferson (of course Penn was founded by Franklin, which is a parallel situation).  

The issue to me would be using "Ivy" as the normative term for excellence, and that does, indeed, somewhat devalue the other schools.  It's like referring to everything published in the 18th century as "pre-Romantic," which implies a teleology that has its proper expression in Romanticism, as higher education has as its proper expression Harvard and Yale.  That IS a problem.

As for Truman State, that's another issue; it's more like a public SLAC (and no SLAC, even Williams, Swarthmore, etc., is an "Ivy," though I suspect they are a lot more like the Ivies originally were than the Ivies are now, except possibly for Dartmouth).   Truman is a member of COPLAC, the Council of Public Liberal Arts Colleges (see COPLAC.org), a group that also includes SUNY-Geneseo, Evergreen, the New College of Florida, Minnesota-Morris, Georgia College, Mass College of Liberal Arts, Ramapo (NJ), UNC-Asheville, and a few others.  SOME of these are easily among the best small public colleges in the country.  An argument can be made that they are in some ways comparable to top SLACS.  But Ivies they definitely are not....