The University of Oregon Ducks and The Ohio State University Buckeyes face off in this year’s NCAA College Football Championship Game, Monday, January 12, in the Jerry Dome in Arlington, TX. But, how do they match up in the classroom? Conventional wisdom suggests that the Big Ten – of which Ohio State is a member – is the academically superior of the Power 5 football conferences (which also include the ACC, Big 12, SEC, and Pac-12, of which the University of Oregon is a member). Moreover, the Big Ten – which has 14 schools – placed several colleges in the recent U.S. News and World Report (USNWR) ranking of the nation’s top public universities. Those schools include the University of Michigan (#4), the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (#11), the University of Wisconsin-Madison (#13), Penn State University (#14), Ohio State University (#18), as well as Purdue University and the University of Maryland (both tied for #20). Not far behind sit Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey (#26), the University of Iowa(#27), the University of Minnesota (#27), Indiana University (#30), and Michigan State (#35). However, in U.S. News’ rankings of the top public universities, the Pac-12’s University of California at Berkeley (#1) and the University of California at Los Angeles or UCLA (#2) hold the top two spots. Moreover, the conference’s only private university, Stanford, ranks fourth for all national universities, private or public. The highest ranked Big Ten school is my Alma Mater of Northwestern – also private – which comes in at #13 for all national universities. Unfortunately, after Berkeley and UCLA, the Pac-12 does not have a ranked public university in U.S. …
Continue Reading: Ohio State Crushes Oregon … In The Classroom
