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[Anon]

I've never heard of Truman State. So public ivy it ain't.

[Hermeneut]

Brian Leiter has written an interesting article on so-called public ivies. It can be read at:

http://www.utexas.edu/law/faculty/bleiter/myths4.htm

[Sooner]

I especially like how the guy at Texas selects cases and methods that make Texas the best of the public ivies  . . .

[Sooner II]

Leiter's argument also ignores the fact that UT is more than twice the size of UVa.  And its library resources, while larger in number, are not proportionately better relative to the size of the school (which is a good metric).  Illinois has a much larger library than either UT or UVa, but its special collections don't come close to either, so there's another way to look at it.

Finally, if we're talking quality of undergraduate education, there's no contest--UVa is much better than UT.

UT is a very great university, but as Sooner says above, it kinda depends on what you're measuring.

[engineering_abd]

Or you could just say that Princeton is a private "Big Ten", because its engineering programs are as just as presitgious as those of Michigan and Illinois.  And you can say that Harvard is a private "Pac Ten" because its international programs are on the same level as Cal.

(I hope I've made my point about what a silly idea using the name of an athletic conference as a mark of academic quality....)

[To Engineer]

The term "Ivy League" has progressed from a literal designator of an athletic conference comprising a few old northeastern private universities to a widely understood metaphor for high academic quality.  This happened a long time ago.  No other college athletic conference has had this kind of evolution (nor is it possible, as you suggest, to call things "Private Big-10s" in the sense you're implying, as Northwestern is already private, so that would be what you'd be referring to).  Which reminds me, most other athletic conferences include a mix of public and private (e.g., Stanford and SC in the Pac-10; Wake, Duke, BC, and Miami in the ACC; Vanderbilt in the SEC; Baylor in the Big 12).

This function of the term "Ivy League" is similar to, say, calling something "Major League."  Much of the time, people aren't talking about the top level of pro baseball when they use this term.  "Coke" is the term for "soft drink" in large swaths of the country.  "PC" used to be the brand name of IBM personal computers--now it's used to designate pretty much any personal computer, though more precise speakers use it as a differentiator from "Mac," to indicate a computer that uses (generally) a Microsoft operating system.    

Sensitivity to the metaphorical and figurative uses of language is a good thing to develop.

[anon]

for Engineering and Computer Science, the U. of Illinois would certainly be on such a list...

[really]

I would include Truckee Meadows in the "Community Ivy".

And J.F. Kennedy H.S. in the "Secondary Education Public Ivy".

*Perhaps* Lil Tots in the "Preschool Ivy".....but, then, they're having some administration problems....so, you know....tough call....

[Cal]

Berkeley. Enough said!

[anon]

You are right up to a point. But no one uses the metaphor "that's major league" when they're talking about baseball; then it is used literally. If you said, "Wow, that batter is a major league player," most people would assume that he is on a team in the National or American Leagues, not that he is a really stellar high school player. There's a danger with using a term metaphorically within its original domain, like so many people are using "ivy" here. Within academia, "ivy" mean the Ivy League, a well-defined set of institutions. Sensitivity to figurative language is good; precision is also good.

In any case, if we are calling an institution that is not literally Ivy League an ivy, do we mean it is academically their equal? Their equal in prestige? These aren't the same things.

The institutions that comprise the Ivy League are Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Penn, Princeton, and Yale. One way we could define their "equals" is to look at who else in the US News rankings of universities falls within their rankings (Harvard and Princeton are tied for 1; Brown is 15). Other institutions within that range are Duke, Stanford, CalTech, MIT, Washington U (St. Louis), Northwestern, Johns Hopkins, and Chicago. You have to go down to #20, Berkeley, to find a public institution. (Penn is quasi-public, Pennsylvania having one of the most unusual higher ed systems in the nation.) Arguably, that means there is no such thing as a public equal to an Ivy.

But that's assuming US News means the same as "Ivy" does metaphorically, and I'm not sure we're all using the same shade of meaning here - unlike when we talk about our PCs.

[to anon]

Are you really using the US News to compare the quality of education? I think most serious academics would agree that the US News, with their bizarre method of quanitifying quality is NOT the best measure of academic quality. Rather, if we really want to look at quality, the NSF does a ranking every 10 years of graduate programs. As academics, I'm sure that we can all agree that ultimately, it is the graduate programs that bring "prestige" to the schools. Where do the Ivies rank in terms of their graduate programs? Sadly, most of them rank below many of our R1 PUBLIC universities.

When I think about "quality" of colleges, I often do think about cars - sounds silly but... A Honda Accord is perhaps the "best" car if we are talking about what a car "should" be about - turns on every day, goes wherever you want it to go, doesn't break down, etc. But, obviously, a Mercedes is a "better" car if you want the "perks" such as prestige, luxury, envy of others, etc. Now of course, given that the public R1s are not really the "best" places for undergraduate education, this analogy doesn't really work but...

[Penn is private]

Just for the record, anon confuses Penn State, the fine public institution in State College PA, with University of Pennsylvania, the Ivy in Philadelphia, founded by Franklin, which is not state funded.

[Penn State is quasi-public]

As Penn is private points out, Penn is ENTIRELY private. Penn State, U Pitt, and Temple are "quasi-public."