<p>And look at the tuition!! Must admit I was shocked.</p>
<p>IIRC believe the US New’s methodology changed between 1988 and 1989 when it stopped being solely about institutional reputation and more about things that happen inside the classrooms, not the laboratories.</p>
<p>ETA: Yup, here’s one of Erin’s Dad’s posts from a thread I created about a year and a half ago on the methodology change <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/14668680-post16.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/14668680-post16.html</a></p>
<p>Those tuition numbers remind me why I was able to work PT and pay my own way through school… Even at $2.75 an hour…</p>
<p>Are those OOS tuitions? Instate Michigan Engineering upper level is only just over 9K now and was under the $8,828 that they have listed last year. But it seems off to live OOS tuition for public schools.</p>
<p>US News NEVER measured what happens in the classrooms. Just more inputs.
Yes, OOS tuitions</p>
<p>I can say that must be the OOS tuition for UNC-CH. When I went there in 1992, instate tuition and fees for one semester was $589, so $1178 a year.</p>
<p>In the first years of the USNews (83, 85, and 88) they relied on no methology. The rankings were nothing but an academic beauty contest without rules. The only remnant of that non-sense is still found the diminishing peer assessment that still let the “in circle” favor their friends and punish their foes without one iota of control. </p>
<p>When USNews add a bit of logic in the process, the rankings changed. For instance, Berkeley grabbed the position of … Caltech and landed in the 21st position. Caltech jumped to 3d. </p>
<p>[U.S</a>. News Rankings Through the Years](<a href=“http://web.archive.org/web/20070906213802/http://chronicle.com/stats/usnews/index.php?category=Universities&orgs=&sort=1988]U.S”>U.S. News Rankings Through the Years)</p>
<p>It’s a different list from what you see today - but only slightly. You get a somewhat different order, and a few schools have bounced on or dropped dropped off. But overall this ranking, along with nearly every other ranking ever devised, still manages to round up the usual suspects.</p>
<p>The usual suspects. It’s interesting to me that for all those people who think that WashU is such a Johnny-come-lately newcomer, it was on that list 25 years ago.</p>
<p><em>spits out water and stutters</em> Five. Hundred. Dollars???</p>
<p>I remember a formal protest on campus in '78 when state schools in Washington raised tuition to over $300/semester. Horrors, students were going to have to work 10 more $2/hour shifts at Taco Bell to keep up with the increase. Really. We were very upset. </p>
<p>We had no rock-climbing wall, no on-campus transit, no luxury dorms…but most importantly, the state supported the bulk of the costs! Fancy dorms are self-supporting.
I have a friend who teaches at my university, the funding ratio has changed entirely. OOS and international students pay the bills that the state legislature won’t .</p>
<p>Every year my dad would grouse about the $5000/year total COA at my private university, but assure me that by the time my kids went to college, I wouldn’t have to worry about shouldering the kind of burden he did because by then the government would surely pick up all the costs of higher ed. Ha! (He also told me it was just as easy to fall in love with a rich man as with a poor man…he may have been into something with that one!)</p>
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Yes, the rankings differences primarily relate to a change in USNWR methodology, not times changing or the colleges themselves changing. There was actually a slightly greater degree of change in rankings from 1988 to 1989 than from 1988 to present. For example, looking at colleges in CA, between 1988 and 1989 Caltech increased from #21 to #3, Berkeley dropped from #5 to #24, and Stanford dropped from #1 to #6. </p>
<p>I expect the tuition changes primarily relate to a combination of inflation and a greater degree of financial aid. That is the inflation-adjusted average tuition paid would show far less change than the sticker price.</p>
<p>IN the fall of 1967, Ivy-type tuition was about $1750 per year. By fall of 1971, it was about $3650 per year.</p>
<p>Loaves of bread were a lot cheaper back then, and cars could be bought for about the year number e.g. 1967 you could by an inexpensive sedan for about 2,000 dollars. This changed rapidly in the early 70’s as inflation really got going.</p>
<p>A friend of mine and I agreed that, since our hs in the late 60’s, the price level is between 8-10 times higher.</p>
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<p>Agreed. I have never understood the disdainful attitude toward WashU on this site. I would have been happy to go there or send one of my kids there if it appealed to them. In many ways it seems more desirable than a lot of the others on the list.</p>
<p>I think people’s only problem with WashU is that they have Tufts syndrome.</p>
<p>I don’t know about other universities but Penn has archives that list out tuition, fees and room and board from 1900-present. Here’s the table for 1960s: [Educational</a> Costs (1960-1969), University of Pennsylvania University Archives](<a href=“http://www.archives.upenn.edu/histy/features/tuition/1960.html]Educational”>http://www.archives.upenn.edu/histy/features/tuition/1960.html)</p>
<p>Tuition and fees in 1967 was $1960, 1971 was $2750. When my brother entered in 1975, it had risen to $3810 and by the time I entered in 1979 tuition and fees were $5260. When I graduated that amount was $8880.</p>
<p>The top 25 in 1988 is pretty much the same, isn’t it?, as today. Well, one thing does stick out. The public universities have dropped off the top 25: UNC-Chapel Hill, Michigan, UIUC, UW-Madison and UT-Austin and private universities have replaced them: Vanderbilt, Wake Forest, Notre Dame, Georgetown, CMU and USC (there are a lot of #23s this year).</p>
<p>^^^ and Slacker mom, I was accepted into Penn in 78, room and board is indelibly written into my brain, $7300, I went and checked, right on then numbers!!! When my kids were applying, I told that story to everyone… I STILL could not afford to go, even living at home. I got 1300 in aid, my father made $10,000 per year and our house was worth 13,500.</p>
<p>So like most first generation college student PA residents at the time, I went to PSU where tuition was $900 per year and 500 for room and board! And I got the same amount of AID??? I was able to finish out in 3 years and only 7500 in loans, that I used for spending money books and all so I did not have to work…</p>
<p>And when I was excepted to Medical school at Penn after, I remember saying " I WON" since I was not nearly in the hole as much as my classmates!!!</p>
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<p>No, the “problem” with WashU seems to be the East Coast provincialism on this site. You know - where if a school is mostly known in the East Coast (like a Dartmouth or Brown, or some of the New England LAC’s), it’s still a “national school” but if a school is mostly known in the Midwest (like a WashU) it’s a “regional school.” And when a Dartmouth or a Brown does mailings or visits to expand its awareness and footprint outside of the east coast, it’s just expanding its natural God-given footprint to people who should be grateful, but when a WashU does it, it’s trying to play with the big boys where it doesn’t belong.</p>
<p>Considering the example of Dallas in the Southwest, rest assured that WashU/WUSTL is well-known outside the Midwest. The school is also recognized for exactly what it is. It is on the lips of everyone who looks at the Ivy League and the other “in” schools, and often associated with Vanderbilt, Georgetown, Notre Dame, Emory, and perhaps Duke, and Chicago as perfectly fine schools that have (or had) not become as crazy selective as the schools at the USNews pinnacle. </p>
<p>Of course, the more people apply to the “easier to get in” schools, the quicker the targets become highly selective. And the vicious cycles repeat the next year with dwindling admission rates.</p>
<p>Fwiw, the disdainful or scornful reactions to WashU have never been about the quality of the school, but deeply concentrated on the school relying on the same tactics as Tulane --and Chicago in the past decade-- and perhaps a result of the affinity to avoid transparency with a questionable passion. Simply stated, the mass-marketing techniques were not seen very compatible with a highly selective school and left many to wonder why the schools had to be so darn aggressive. </p>
<p>Right or wrong, that fueled the negative perception.</p>