In 1983, Reed was ranked #9. Today…they are sitting at #62.
If they stay the course, Columbia is gonna be looking up at SUNY Binghamton soon. I have my doubts it will impact the acceptance rate much.
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With respect to Reed, it would have placed 38th in its U.S. News category by a fair analysis according to the authors of a paper on the topic: Reed's USN Rank Estimated at 54 Places Higher Under a Fair Evaluation.
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I’ve kind of always figured them to be outstanding – just shows to go how competitive the LACS are: many, many quality schools.
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The CDS is supposed to reflect enrollment as of the sixth week of instruction, so WL students should be among that population. Several colleges do not include their Jan admits in CDS reports, which is accurate since they are not on campus in early October, but can still skew the outcome.
I just realized you may have meant that the schools omitted the WL students’ stats when reporting to USNWR. Am sure it happens!
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Columbia places 12th in this general ranking, which may suggest a potential position for it in the next U.S. News rankings as well:
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@Yonkers6thBoro
Rather than cross-post multiple times, Forbes uses completely different methodology and this year put Columbia higher than all other Ivy’s, except for Princeton:
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and this just prior: US News college ranking under scrutiny after Ivy League university plummets | US universities | The Guardian
They got moved to 18th place!
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Professor Thaddeus…this is a REAL profile in academic courage. Kudos to him for exposing this.
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That article is truly a damning condemnation of Columbia, based not simply on the scandal, but its reaction to the scandal as well as some other reveals by Professor Thaddeus. Thank goodness he’s tenured.
“It’s clear that the growth of university bureaucracies and administration has been a major driver of the cost of higher education growing much, much faster than inflation. We now have about 4,500 administrators on the main campus, about three times the number of faculty, and that’s a new development over the past 20 years,” he said.
Professor Thaddeus does not think that these roles have much to do with increases in regulation and that they are far greater than would be necessary for improved career services, mental health services, etc. Do people think that this is unique to Columbia, or that this is an increasingly common phenomenon with other universities (as they all seem to have a pretty big increase in tuition over the years)?
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I agree with this completely. I automatically assumed the university would have an external investigation (e.g., by a law firm reporting to the Trustees) to understand what really happened.
Apparently, CU is not and seems to be clamming up.
Dr. Thaddeus gets even more credit for identifying a critical source of the spiraling costs of colleges: the massive growth in admin bureaucracy. He spells it out so crystal clearly. A real eye-opener for me.
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There’s a small part of my reptilian brain that wonders if USNWR intentionally kept them at the bottom of the T20 instead of completely dropping them just to constantly leave them both in the spotlight but beneath so many other schools. I’m not proud of that part of my brain, but I own it. 
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I don’t want to derail this thread, but Prof Thaddeus (and others) have to look at NET cost of college over time, not the ‘list’ price.
This is a long report, with a lot of data (there are also other places to get similar data such as IPEDS, if one want to avoid anything CollegeBoard related). The narrative about college costs is necessarily different when looking at net costs (which are not growing faster than inflation).
Here is net tuition, room, and board costs (NTFB) in 2006/7, 2019/20, and 2021/22 (21/22 is projected, actual data thru 2019/20):
CCs (page 17): $9.4K (2006/7)/$8.9K (19/20)/$8.7K (21/22p)
Public 4 year colleges (page 18): $12.8K/$15K/$14.6K
Private 4 year colleges (page 19): $27.5K/$29.4K/$28.6K
CollegeBoard report here: https://research.collegeboard.org/media/pdf/trends-college-pricing-student-aid-2021.pdf
The annual discount rate is accelerating and is now at 54.5% for private colleges. NACUBO (Annual discount rate report) here: Tuition Discount Rates at Private Colleges and Universities Hit All-Time Highs
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Isn’t Professor Thaddeus laying the increase in tuition squarely at the feet of the admin bureaucracy and how the number of admins at Columbia has grown dramatically?
He is specifically mentioning his time as Chair of the Math Department and the apparent complete lack of responsiveness on financial and other issues in running a major department at a world-renowned institution.
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It seems so, but at the macro level the increased admin burden/spend of colleges isn’t translating to greater-than-inflation-rate growth in net costs.
Some of the admin increase is due to governmental reporting requirements which continue to become more onerous, while some is due to market demands, for example, greater investment in health/wellness services. I don’t have a good handle on whether admin growth is an issue within specific academic departments.
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I appreciate the links to the research on the difference in growth of list prices as compared to net prices for college tuition. I do wonder, however, whether there are some schools/states that are using some loopholes to look better than they are. For instance, our state flagship shows that tuition has actually decreased over the years (inflation-adjusted). However, they have significantly increased fees, because the state has a scholarship that many resident high school graduates can qualify for that covers tuition. When legislators started balking at the costs, tuition seemingly froze (or decreased) while the fees have soared.
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True on the fees, that CB report also has net COA, in addition to net tuition, room, and board (which is what I pulled because sometimes the other costs like fees, health insurance, etc, can make results quirky).
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If you follow anything that Scott Galloway writes, his time at NYU has given him some pretty strong opinions of where things are out of whack. This is from a piece he wrote following the debt forgiveness plan approved by Biden…
The last class I taught, at the peak of Covid, was 300 NYU Stern students (all via Zoom). We charged each student $7,000 to take the class. That’s $2.1 million (much of it in debt) for 36 hours of bad Netflix.
It’s true Biden did right by terminating federal loans for fraudulent for-profit college institutions, including Corinthian Colleges. But the notion that defunct for-profit colleges are the only institutions guilty of defrauding students is laughable.
These are problems of our own making: a rejectionist culture, university presidents making $5 million a year, and an obsession with a four-year degree format.
Administration…marketing…bloated admissions… non-academic creature comforts… are all to blame for the increases in cost.
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I’m not a Galloway fan, I would ask him why he continues to be an employee of NYU if he feels the institution is defrauding students? It’s also on him if he provided a bad experience via zoom for his students.
I am sure he would have many employment options should he choose to leave, and likely he’d be able to increase his take home pay as well.
Not sure I agree with bloated admissions, or marketing…I haven’t seen data on that. Again, at the net cost level, we aren’t seeing significant increases in college costs. And, most colleges still accept most applicants.
I do agree with him that we need a 3 year college model here, and one such college called NewU just started (in DC). Will be interesting to see how that goes.
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