The Oracle MONDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 2014 I VOL. 52 NO. 40
Inside this Issue
C O R R E S P O N D E N T
Zombies chase humans during campus-wide game. Page 4
Montage
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UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH FLORIDA
University ranks high on social mobility index
By Allison Leslie
LI F E STYLE
The Index
News.................................................................1 Lifestyle......................................................4 Opinion.......................................................6
After years of classes and student debt, graduates hope they’ll have a better of chance finding a well-paying job with a degree than without one. Fortunately, a new social mobility index created by College Net ranked USF as 48th in the nation for boosting graduates’ chances of climbing the economic ladder. The list factored in tuition, graduation rate, future earnings and percentage of lowincome students. The index weighted low tuition and a high percentage of low-income students the heaviest when calculating rankings. The index reported that
30.6 percent of USF students are low-income and averaged tuition at $6,410 a year. It also cited a 51.4 percent gradua-
University ranked 29th and the University of Florida ranked 40th. One of the factors that gave
“The subject of social mobility is an important one. The biggest contributor to social mobility for people who come from poorly educated families, of course, is higher education.” Paul Dosal Vice Provost for Student Success
tion rate and a median early career salary of $43,100. The state of Florida ranked 4th overall for social mobility, with three schools making the top-50 list. Florida State
FSU and UF an advantage over USF is a higher graduation rate. Paul Dosal, vice provost for student success, said USF must get its graduation rates up if
it wants a higher score in the future. Dosal also said weighing a university’s endowment may have also skewed the results. “Of course the University of Florida – 100 years older than us – has a much larger financial endowment,” he said. “Since they weigh that, we were put at a disadvantage and we show up below Florida.” Donald Bellante, an economics professor at USF, said a good college education enables people to move up the economic ladder and should motivate potential students to attend universities. “The subject of social mobility is an important one,” he said. “The biggest contributor to social mobility for people
n See MOBILITY on PAGE 2
Health workgroup endorses downtown med school By Wesley Higgins N E W S
E D I T O R
USF took the first formal step toward a downtown medical school Thursday after the Board of Trustees (BOT) Health Workshop unanimously voted to recommend the move to the full board. A sketching of the project showed a 12-story Morsani College of Medicine with floors for dining, classrooms, laboratories, a library and a clinic. It also featured a parking garage across the street, able to fit an estimated 1,750 vehicles. Charles Lockwood, senior vice president of USF Health, gave a presentation that argued a downtown medical school would mark the university as a major player in national health education. The proximity to Tampa General Hospital was presented as beneficial to the educational relationship with
n See DOWNTOWN on PAGE 2
If approved, the 12-story medical school building would be around a mile from Tampa General Hospital and the Amalie Arena in downtown Tampa. Special to the Oracle