Published: August 23, 2010

Miami, say hello to the new U.

After decades of fighting to shed its party-going, Club Med-type reputation, the University of Miami appears to have done exactly that. UM these days is a hotbed of research activity, as well as the favored destination for some of the nation's brightest high school seniors.

U.S. News & World Report magazine is the latest true believer in the "new" UM, as the magazine last week ranked UM 47th in the nation among all national research universities -- high enough to be Florida's top-ranked school.

UM, ranked 50th last year, has never held the state's No. 1 spot before. The longtime owner of that title, the University of Florida, dropped from 47th to 53rd this year.

"We obviously are in the top ranks of American universities now," UM President Donna Shalala said. "The only way you move up in the rankings is by getting better."

Just nine years ago, UM ranked 67th in U.S. News' annual tally. Jumping 20 spots in less than 10 years is a rare feat, and almost certainly makes UM the envy of many other schools.

The 2001 hiring of Shalala -- who served as secretary of Health and Human Services in the Clinton administration -- on its own served to bring a certain level of gravitas to UM's lushly-landscaped Coral Gables campus. In both 2004 and 2008, UM hosted a U.S. presidential debate, and Clinton himself was at UM in April after choosing the school as the site of his most-recent Clinton Global Initiative University forum.

PRESIDENT'S RESUME
Aside from serving in the Clinton administration, Shalala's résumé also includes previous stints leading both the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Hunter College.

One of Shalala's particular talents has been wooing donors, as UM in recent years became the first Florida school to ever raise $1 billion in a single fundraising campaign. Charismatic and unafraid of ruffling feathers, Shalala is a natural at asking someone to cut a multimillion dollar check.

Alumni giving is one of the statistics tracked by U.S. News. Another is student selectivity, where UM has also moved the needle quite a bit. Nearly 70 percent of incoming freshmen now rank within the top 10 percent of their high school class.

Ten years ago, that figure was 45 percent.

Richard Williamson Jr., chairman of the Faculty Senate and a professor of law at UM, offered the hypothetical example of a student who, seven years ago, would have qualified for scholarships under the school's admission standards.

"It's not just that we wouldn't give him aid anymore, we wouldn't let him in the door," Williamson said. "The credentials of our students has gone up pretty dramatically."

Critics of the annual U.S. News list argue the magazine's criteria favor private institutions -- something echoed by a Chronicle of Higher Education special report -- and include no measurements of whether students are actually learning.

Earlham College President Douglas Bennett has been among the most vocal opponents -- refusing to even fill out the subjective ``peer review'' questionnaires that U.S. News uses to grade a school's national reputation.

"It's just junk science," Bennett said. "Americans love ratings, whether it's beer, refrigerators or beaches."

Bennett said resources such as the College Board and the Fiske Guide to Colleges offer parents and students information that can help narrow the college search -- minus the arbitrary numerical pecking order. The most important consideration is finding a school that is a good fit for individual students, Bennett argues.

"The institution that will draw the best out of you, challenge you, stretch you, in the best possible ways," he said.

GRAD RATE RISING
Still, some components of the ranking system, such as graduation rates, are generally accepted in academia as important measurements of a school's success.

In that arena, too, UM improved dramatically under Shalala's tenure -- this year, the six-year graduation rate reached 80 percent for the first time.

"Not that long ago it was 70 percent," said UM Provost Thomas LeBlanc. "And probably 15 years ago it might have been 58 percent."

UM administrators have pledged to get student athletes to the finish line as well, and that push appears to be netting results. Football coach Randy Shannon ranks third among all active Division I football coaches when it comes to the academic progress of his players, according to The Center for Research on Sport In Society. The two college football teams that perform better in the classroom are Air Force and Navy.

That's a far cry from the conduct of UM players and coaches in the past -- a legacy of brawls and scholarship violations that at one time earned the Hurricanes the nickname "Thug U."

"Student-athletes who come to the University of Miami are going to be just that -- students first, and athletes second," UM Athletic Director Kirby Hocutt said.

Hocutt said the graduation rate for UM athletes now stands at an "all-time high" of 86 percent.

BYE, BYE BOWL
There have been some football-related disappointments. The Hurricanes, while hardly pushovers, have not played like the championship juggernaut of decades past, and UM's decision to relocate games from the Orange Bowl to Sun Life Stadium angered and alienated some fans and alumni.

But for Shalala, perhaps the biggest headaches of the past decade came not from the classroom or the gridiron, but from a years-long controversy over how UM pays its janitors. News reports began highlighting the plight of the janitors -- who earned poverty-level wages with no health insurance -- in 2001, but Shalala did not take strong action to boost the workers' pay until five years later.

In the interim, there were student and worker protests, criticism from prominent Democrats who knew Shalala from her time in Washington, and both local and national news coverage, much of it unflattering.

On Saturday came a bit of déjà vu. The university's cleaners voted to authorize a strike.

UM's quest to elevate the profile of its medical programs has also carried its own challenges. The university's purchase of Cedars Medical Center two years ago cemented UM's status as not just a school, but a healthcare provider. The purchase has caused some friction with the stewards of publicly owned Jackson Memorial Hospital, who are concerned that UM will forever skim off the paying customers and leave the uninsured to Jackson, right across the street.

FOCUS ON MEDICINE
Now that UM runs a major hospital, it is subject to the ups and downs of that industry. In April, for example, Moody's Investor Services downgraded the investment rating of UM's bonds, with one of Moody's concerns being "significant exposure to healthcare operations. . . . Nearly half of the university's revenue is now derived from patient care."

To be sure, there are lots of perks to UM's intensified focus on medicine -- not the least of which is establishing a reputation as a serious research institution. Federal grants often follow, as do interested future doctors.

Incoming freshman Brittani Campelo, for example, chose UM's pre-med program because of the internships and other hands-on training opportunities it offers. Other schools she considered were Duke, Notre Dame and Cornell.

Though not the deciding factor in her college search, Campelo said she also took note of UM's rising status in U.S. News & World Report.

"When you graduate, you graduate with a more-prestigious degree," Campelo, 17, said.