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Public Ivy

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A Public Ivy is a public institution that "provide[s] an Ivy League collegiate experience at a public school price." The Public Ivies are considered capable of "successfully competing with the Ivy League schools in academic rigor... attracting superstar faculty and in competing for the best and brightest students of all races."

Origins of the term

The term "Public Ivy" was coined by Richard Moll in his book Public Ivys: A Guide to America's best public undergraduate colleges and universities (1985). Moll, who earned his Master of Divinity degree from Yale University in 1959, was an admissions officer at Yale, and the director of admissions at Bowdoin College, University of California, Santa Cruz, and Vassar College. He traveled the nation examining higher education and in particular, identified eight public institutions (the same as the number of Ivy League members) that he thought had the look and feel of an Ivy League university. In addition to academic excellence, other factors considered by Moll included those that were visually like an Ivy League, aged as an Ivy League, had traditions like an Ivy League, and so forth.

The original eight Public Ivies

The original eight Public Ivies list by Moll (1985):

East coast

Inland & west coast

Moll also offered in the same book "a list of worthy runners-up" and brief summaries of them:

Greenes' Guides

The more recent and expansive Greene's list (including a list of approximately 30 schools) had one focus alone: public schools with academic quality comparable to an Ivy League institution. Greenes' Guide, according to some, has become a more widely accepted list because of its emphasis on academics. It was believed that Moll's methodology was flawed considering that Ivy League schools themselves had nothing to do with age; for example, the Ivy League was originally an athletic conference.

The Public Ivies according to Greenes' Guides

A later book titled The Public Ivies: America's Flagship Public Universities (2001) by Howard and Matthew Greene of Greenes' Guides expanded upon the list in the first book (italicized below) to include 30 colleges and universities.

Eastern

Western

Great Lakes & Midwest

Southern

Other Public Ivies

Other schools are sometimes referred to as Public Ivies as well, partly as a result of the acceptance of the term into popular culture and in other cases as a result of marketing efforts by the colleges and universities themselves. Though not included on the above lists, Murray State University includes the phrase "Kentucky's Public Ivy University" on its official logo.

Institutional comparisons

Academic comparisons and rankings

Moll and Greenes' did not address the issue of prestige associated with the various schools reviewed. No direct comparison was made between a Public Ivy and any other school.

Many of the institutions categorized as "Public Ivies" have a large number of faculty, or alumni, who have been awarded prizes for their achievements in their respective field including the Nobel Prize (See Nobel Prize laureates by university affiliation), Fields Medal, and the Pulitzer Prize.

Several schools considered as "Public Ivies" are consistently ranked among the top schools in the multitude of surveys on American colleges and universities undertaken by U.S. News & World Report. For instance, U.S. News and World Report ranks the mechanical engineering program at University of California-Berkeley in the top three, and the University of Washington medical school has been consistently ranked as the top program for Primary Care and medicine, and the law school of the University of Michigan is always ranked in the top ten.

The Public Ivies are ranked very highly when compared to other universities worldwide. In the Academic Ranking of World Universities, 8 of the top 25 schools in the world are American public universities.

However, in general undergraduate rankings, U.S. News and World Report consistently ranks Ivy League institutions just above the Public Ivies. For example, the highest ranked Public Ivy, the University of California at Berkeley, ranked 21st in the United States, while the lowest ranked Ivy League institution, Brown University, ranked 14th; but this may be attributable to the inclusion of endowment size in the ranking process which puts public universities (who are less reliant on private funding and thus tend to have smaller endowments) at a disadvantage.

Athletic comparisons

One sharp distinction between the Ivy League and most "Public Ivies" is their participation in intercollegiate athletics. One of the Ivy League's distinguishing characteristics is its prohibition on the awarding of athletic scholarships (athletes may only receive the same financial aid to which they would be entitled even if they did not play a sport). In contrast, many of the "Public Ivies" participate in major athletic conferences such as the Big East, Big Ten, Big 12, ACC, SEC, or Pac-10; award athletic scholarships; and rely on profits, if any, from large-scale football and men's basketball programs to support the athletic department as a whole.

See also

References and other resources

Citations

Books

  • Greene, Howard and Greene, Matthew. The Public Ivies: America's Flagship Public Universities (New York: HarperCollins, 2001). ISBN 0-06-093459-X
  • Greene, Howard and Greene, Matthew. Hidden Ivies: Thirty Colleges of Excellence (New York: HarperCollins, 2000). ISBN 0-06-095362-4
  • Moll, Richard. The Public Ivies: A Guide to America's best public undergraduate colleges and universities (New York: Penguin (Viking), 1985). ISBN 0-14-009384-2 or ISBN 0-670-58205-0
  • Princeton Review. The Best 361 Colleges, 2007 Edition (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton Review, 2006). ISBN 0-375-76558-1



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