University of Florida President Bernie Machen ranked UCF as adequate in a 2009 U.S. News & World Report, but considered UF distinguished, according to public records obtained from The Gainesville Sun.
The report asked Machen to rank a number of universities from all across the country out of five categories: distinguished, strong, good, adequate and marginal. The magazine requests assessments from university presidents, provosts and admissions officers from all participating schools.
Machen ranked his own university as distinguished, along with most Ivy League schools. Machen listed Duke and Pennsylvania universities as strong, FSU and Miami as good and UCF and USF as adequate.
Although the magazine keeps all university responses confidential, The Gainesville Sun obtained the record of Machen's form through a public records request.
On the actual survey form, it showed that Machen listed Duke, Stanford and the University of California as strong before later changing them to distinguished. Machen also listed the University of Michigan, where he once served as provost, as distinguished. When asked to explain his decisions in the poll, Machen declined comment.
According to the UF News Bureau, neither Machen nor UF have issued a statement regarding this matter. UCF has also not made any official statement in response to the poll.
John Poulard, a UCF chemistry major, said he believed it was only natural for Machen to give the highest rating to the two schools that held his involvement.
"Unfortunately, this was not his job," Poulard said. "He was supposed to give an unweighted opinion on the subject matter at hand, and I cannot give him the benefit of a doubt with such a blatant facade that he has put up.
"If he could possibly explain his choice, instead of avoiding questions regarding such a brash decision, then the choice would seem possibly more pious rather than one filled with pride."
As far as the rating that Machen gave to UCF, Adriano Rampolla, a junior aerospace engineering major, said he doesn't take offense to the ranking.
"It just means that we have the motivation to keep expanding and working harder," Rampolla said. "I mean, we're UCF, Under Construction Forever, which is the way it should be. We're constantly making improvements that not only benefit the student body, but also the university as a whole.
"And for the UF President to be so conceited to think that they're on the same level as Harvard or Yale or Princeton … well, honestly, that's just sad, because that means there's no reason for improvement at UF other than to maintain what they've already got."
Despite Machen's rankings, UCF is listed in The Best 361 Colleges: 2006 Edition by The Princeton Review. In the 2008 edition of US News & World Report, UCF is ranked as a Tier 3 National University and the seventh best up-and-coming university in the nation.
However, it is not just students who have an opinion on this matter. The poll had both FSU and UM ranked above UCF.
"Though FSU is a lot older than UCF, it seems that it has become increasingly more difficult to get accepted into UCF than FSU," UCF English professor Mark Kamrath said.
According to The Gainesville Sun, USF spokesman Michael Hoad said the poll imbibes a great number of objective measures.
"USF prefers to be ranked on scales that use measures of research, admissions standards and scholarly activity, rather than the opinion of people who may not know us very well," Hoad said.
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17 comments
I’m surprised you didn’t add a “white power” to the end of your tirade.
"UCF allows rampant cheating in the Engineering department in the Graduate Program. They deserve a rating of less than adequate."Thus is the culture at the great University of Florida too. The students in the labs gather old test and projects and keep them on file for when they take the class. If you are not a part of a lab then you are screwed.
And when you say:
"Go to the Research Park. It's abound with foreign students and researchers. WHERE ARE THE AMERICANS?"This just shows that you have your own bias. Did you know that the #1 most subscribed to youtube channel in India is an online engineering channel? They come to this country to learn, not to play video games.
While I would agree that our country needs to improve in the math and sciences, I wouldn’t blame our lack of competitive advantage on a foreign student. The last I knew people had issues with being taxed too much and Republicans LOVE tax breaks. I find it odd that our republican legislature tried to argue against taxing a cigarette company to bring in money for schools.
As UCF's admissions standards go up, let’s raise the bar as far as what we teach to our students. We have a lot of EXCELLENT students that choose to go to UCF because of the opportunities available to them in Orlando that are not available to them in Gainesville. If we look at UCF across the board though, a rating of “good-adequate” would seem most fitting.
I was a UCF alumni and I am currently a UCLA graduate student. Without question, UCLA's courses are much more rigorous than UCF’s but I’m fairly convinced that the top 50% of our students have the same talent that you will find at UCLA and real “Ivy Leagues”. Students will only work as hard as they are pushed, and we are intellectually capable of being pushed to a much higher standard than what is currently expected of us at UCF.