You're right, it is subjective. One reference is US News on the overall school rankings.

SUNY Buffalo is AAU. So that's another thing that it has over NDSU. Its also a doctorate university in the SUNY, one of only four. Miami U of OH is also a Public Ivy School, and has that over NDSU. Also, the bigger the state, the more likely that there is more resources and better quality of education. Thats not always the case. But more often than not it is. Western Michigan is Michigan's 4th most comprehensive university and either it or Michigan Tech claim to be the 4th biggest research university. Its also the 4th or 5th engineering school in Michigan. U of M, MSU and Michigan Tech, in that order, are tops and Wayne State and WMU would battle it out after that. I didn't say anything about my ranking being for sure or definite. But from a national perspective, I bet an engineering student looking at schools would look to Miami, Ohio, SUNY Buffalo and Western Michigan (probably also Southern Illinois and Northern Illinois) before North Dakota State (save unless they were from Minnesota or South Dakota as well as North Dakota).

US News, in their latest rankings has the University of Alaska at Fairbanks and North Dakota State University as the only flagship/land grant statewide type schools ranked in the 4th Tier. UND, SDSU and USD are all third tier, so is U of Wyoming, U Montana, Montana State, U of Idaho, U of Maine, U of Hawaii, and U of Rhode Island. U of Vermont, U of New Hampshire, and U of Delaware are 2nd Tier schools. (In comparison of statewide flagships in states with less than 1.5 million). Also, U of Nevada at Reno is 3rd Tier.

There are also a number of regional/Normal/urban/metro schools that rank higher than this 1 statewide North Dakota flagship/land grant. They include Western Michigan, Bowling Green, Ball State, Southern Illinois, Illinois State, UIC, Temple, UAB, UMKC, East Carolina, Southern Miss (most years), Cincinnati, USF (most years), Louisville (some years), Wayne State, MI (most years) and of course Miami U of OH and Ohio U which are not really regional/normals per se. Then there's also schools like William and Mary and George Mason (which are like Miami U of OH and Ohio U). A flagship/land grant status in a small state doesn't necessarily place that school at a higher academic reputation than a regional/Normal/urban/metro school in larger states (which are usually regarded as not as high of academic rep compared to most flagships/landgrants located throughout the nation).

There are not that many other nationwide comprehensive rankings that include NDSU other than US News from what I have seen. Take that as it may.

NDSU is not a liberal arts/law school/med school university. It makes no attempt to be one.

It's an agriculture/hard science/engineering research school.


If that means that the likes of US News and Richard Moll rank schools like the University of Vermont over NDSU, then so be it.

That says nothing about the quality of engineering program being run.

All land grants, including NDSU, have evolved since their original mission and purpose laid-out in 1862. The are not only ag/engineering schools. They expanded over the years to include liberal arts and sciences, like all major flagship universities. Thats why almost all North Dakota Agricultural College, Michigan Agricultural College names were dropped and _______State Universities were adopted. They needed to expand their liberal arts curricullum in order to recieve the peership with the other statewide flagships. Their research initially did this, but the liberal arts expansion was needed to be considered more like a university. Without a comprehensive liberal arts, humanities, and science component to a land grant university, they would be nothing more than a community college. The history of colleges goes back to the Greeks. You can't have a university or a college without liberal arts. Even professional engineers can't be engineers without some liberal arts in your curricullum. Even DeVry, ITT Tech and the University of Phoenix require liberal arts, sciences and humanities, or they would be called community colleges.

Miami University's Public Ivy status has much more than to do with than just their liberal arts, but the quality of education overall at the university. They even suggest in that wikipedia article that Georgia Tech could be considered a Public Ivy, and that is ten-fold more tech and hard science than NDSU.

Miami is a very old, well known education college. That says nothing of their engineering.

What about Georgia Techs agriculture program? They don't have one, which means they aren't a land grant school.

Ten times what? Ten times the research grants (in total grants or total dollars)? Nope.
Ten times the number of students enrolled in the engineering colleges? Nope.

Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!

Let's review this thread, shall we?

Your argument has become circular. You criticize me from making a subjective claim, without any facts, and you're the one that started out with a subjective claim without any facts.

Take a look at this post:




Where is your evidence to make such a claim? The very same arguments you are claiming about my claims can be applied to you. We were not talking about engineering schools before this post. I don't know why you all of a sudden wanted to talk about the engineering school for. But once you brought it up, I stated my opinion. Which is what you did here.

You can not make a claim that you are providing a objective opinion that NDSU has a better engineering school as NIU, SIU, Western Michigan, Wayne State, UIC, Miami U, Ohio U, SUNY Buffalo without any actual rankings to back it up and then criticize me for my subjective opinion. Your argument has become hypocritical and circular under such a claim.

Georgia Tech is not a land grant. But it is most modeled after MIT. That is its closest comparable. Its not quite on the level of MIT, as that is the Harvard of all Engineering schools. But even MIT understands the importance of liberal arts. Noam Chomsky? Ever heard of him? Highly respectable Luinguisitics professor from MIT. MIT knows that without liberal arts quality you don't have a strong academic institution and don't produce great engineers and scientists. Liberal arts train a student more for critical thinking than any pratical field of study.

At the University of Nebraska, a Morrill Act of 1862 Land Grant University, the first three courses to be taught when they opened for classes in 1871, were Latin, Greek and Math. A University and college status and stature is based more on teaching people the ability to think critically rather than on practical education. People's knowledge of what you learn in college diminishes through time. Practical education has more of a tendancy to become outdated. Therefore a college education over the long haul of one's life is important for one to have the ability to know how to learn new things. A liberal arts curricullum helps teach people how to learn in a much more broad way than any specific practical education can over the long term. That is why liberal arts and humanities and science are required for every single degree program granted from a university or a college. That "learning to learn" has the ability to transcend time and have applicability than a practical education does. It has a lifelong application.

But Georgia Tech engineers simply put have way more name recognition than someone from NDSU. The Land Grant status is not really relevant if you are just talking about high tech school. UGa is the land grant and if you want to talk about ag colleges, that school has more national academic noteriety than NDSU.

The point of this thread is which of these schools would be considered for the Big 10. All of them are extremely unrealistic and extremely hypothetical. But considering the ones above and similar schools not listed and given that the Big 10 is a academic alliance as much as an athletic conference, NDSU would be extremely low on this list. Ohio U, Miami U, SUNY Buffalo, Western Michigan, BGSU, Illinois State, Southern Illinois, Northern Illinois, UIC, Ball State, Michigan Tech and Wayne State would have a much better chance of joining the Big 10 considering their relatively better (though not even close to any current Big 10 school) their academics than NDSU. Considering just the Dakotas, the Big 10 would look more at UND, SDSU and USD before NDSU. Speaking in a very extreme hypothetical situation of course.