<p>The rankings are out, and like many, I am disappointed. Unfortunately, as I have often warned, unless the University of Michigan changes its attitude, this would happen. Slowly but surely, schools like Tufts, Wake Forest, Brandeis, NYU and Boston College will overtake Michigan in the USNWR undergraduate rankings. It is not just Michigan that is going to drop. Schools like Cal, UCLA, UVA and UNC will drop too. As it stands, Emory, Notre Dame, Rice, Vanderilt and WUSTL have all separated themselves from Cal, the highest ranked public university. That is the USNWR MO. Drop the publics out of the top 25. And it will happen because it publishes irresponsibly. State universities have their hands tied behind their backs while private universities resort to creative stats publication. </p>
<p>Fortunately, the USNWR undergraduate rankings are becoming increasingly laughable. Nobody in the real world will accept a ranking that excludes Cal from the top 10 and Michigan from the top 15.</p>
<p>At any rate, there are some good things that came out of this latest ranking:</p>
<p>THE GOOD:
1) Michigan's Peer Assessment rating remains high. This year, Michigan's PA was 4.4 (good for #13 in the nation), tied with Brown and Duke, slightly lower than Cornell, Johns Hopkins and Penn and slightly higher than Dartmouth, Northwestern and UVa. The Peer Assessment score is a pretty accurate representation of what academe thinks of universities, so for students interested in graduate school, Michigan is definitely a heavy hitter.</p>
<p>2) Michigan's graduation rate. For a university that has such a large and excrutiatingly difficult Engineering program, an 88% graduation rate is very reasonable.</p>
<p>3) Michigan's Selectivity ranking (#24 in the nation, tied with Johns Hopkins and UCLA). Michigan is twice larger than all save one (Cal) university that is more selective than it. Even then, Cal's Freshmen class is still roughly 30% smaller than Michigan's and Cal has the benefit of being in a state almost 4 times as populous as Michigan and benefits greatly from the UC common application.</p>
<p>4) Although not at all reliable and not part of the ranking formula, Michigan was ranked #11 for undergraduate teaching. That was a pleasant surprise. </p>
<p>5) Michigan's professional programs continue to shine. Michigan's CoE was ranked #7 in the nation and Michigan's Ross school was ranked #4 in the nation. The types of companies that recruit Michigan students interested in those careers is impressive. Firms like Microsoft, Google, GE, McKinsey and Goldman Sachs list Michigan among their top 10 campuses nation-wide.</p>
<p>THE BAD:
1) Financial Resources. Although not too shabby at #37 in the nation, the calculation of this particular criterion is designed for private universities and the publics really get hosed on here. State schools are already highly subsidized as it and many universities resort to creative math...something publics cannot do. This is one criterion that should be separated according to university affiliation. </p>
<p>2) Alumni donation rate. There are so many flaws and so many ways of manipulating this data, that this criterion is complete nonesense.</p>
<p>THE UGLY:
Faculty Resources. Michigan's Faculty resource rank is 74th in the nation. That is pathetic. This ranking alone probably drops Michigan out of the top 20. Part of it is underserved since the faculty resource rank is not very well defined and measured (some universities REALLY overstate their student to faculty ratios and have very strange definitions of what constitutes a "class"), but part of it is Michigan's fault for not making an effort to limit its undergraduate population. But even then, Michigan's faculty resources are amazing and should not be out of the top 10 or top 15. This is truly a very glaring problem that has gone on for far too long.</p>
<p>At any rate, the USNWR needs to hire external auditors to go over those university figures very closely.</p>
<p>For now, I will tell all Wolverines not to worry. The USNWR are really not that important to anybody outside of high school. Besides, the results of this financial meltdown is going to hurt private universities far more than it is going to hurt public universities.</p>