The University of Idaho Argonaut

Being a Vandal, I like to reduce the difference between the University of Idaho and Boise State University to a glib one-liner: they win football games, and we won the National Medal of Arts.
But again, that’s glib, and does a disservice — we win football games too, after all.

I was born in St. Luke’s Hospital, and except for a few years in Jerome, I spent all my youth in Meridian, a mere ten miles out of Boise. My parents are both alums of what was once the Episcopalian Boise Junior College, my father with an associate degree in business and my mother with a bachelor’s in technical communications. 

There are many ways in which Boise State has us beat: enrollment, football, and number of bowling lanes on campus. Academics is not chiefly among them, and numbers can tell the story.

For the most recent year in which data is available, the academic year ending in 2006, BSU awarded a total of ten doctoral degrees, all of them in education. UI awarded 99 doctoral degrees that year.

That same year, BSU awarded 662 associate degrees or certificates. UI awarded … none, for UI offers no associate degrees or certificates.

Many of BSU’s technical and vocational programs have since been spun off to the College of Western Idaho, a new community college in the area, so that number will no doubt decline. Nevertheless, it is indicative of the different roles the universities play.

UI has nearly $100 million in research grants and contracts yearly. Last year, BSU had their best year ever, attracting $37 million for sponsored projects — and that figure is double what it was in 2000. To employ a colloquialism, that’s not nothing, but it is 37 percent of $100 million.

The in-state rivalry is as lopsided academically as the football one has been, but it goes the other way. I don’t mean to disparage the students, professors and employees of Boise State. My family and friends are among them. I’m sincerely glad when any higher educational institution in Idaho does well, as a fan of both the state and of higher education.

Regrettably, football fans sometimes conflate issues, as one commenter on the Idaho Statesman’s Web site did in suggesting UI will become “Boise State University–North” following Saturday’s football game (in which BSU defeated an unranked opponent).

One last word about that: our other rival, Washington State University, was ranked seventh in the nation in 2003. The next season, they beat the University of Texas–Austin in the Holiday Bowl.

I’m glad Idaho has two good football teams this year, but there’s no law giving BSU its ranking forever more. Just ask WSU, 1-9 so far this season.

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