Are public universities hurt or helped by USNWR methodology?

<p>sakky,
Your game theory example incorrectly assumes that the student quality at an elite university is uniformly higher than the student coming from a less prestigious school. It is not. Employers only have to hire a student, not a school, and they can find good students at many schools. </p>

<p>A second problem with your response is that it makes no allowance for the huge impact that geography has on recruiting. If Goldman Sachs were located in Los Angeles rather than NYC, they would be hiring huge numbers from USC, UCLA, Pomona, Harvey Mudd, Claremont McKenna, etc. rather than Brown, Dartmouth, Columbia. IMO, only a very few schools have true national recruiting appeal (HYPSM) and even that will vary depending on the industry. </p>

<p>Third, your definition of the most elite employers is biased. These are the most elite to you and perhaps to students of those schools you mention. If you asked students in a variety of other cities or regions of the country, the responses would differ. Very few students at U Texas want to go to Wall Street, but there are a lot of very smart and talented students there. Employers in the South and Southwest know that and recruit there heavily. </p>

<p>Fourth, the elite companies you reference recruit at those schools because of the pre-selection done by the college, the geographic location of those schools and the prevalence of their alumni at those companies. Students from outside of that group of colleges, eg a top student from a public school outside of the Northeast, with varying degrees of difficulty, can also gain positions at those companies.</p>

<p>Fifth, the relationship with employers is commonly not as adverse as you paint. Employers understand that their hiring decisions are not a single point, but rather part of a multi-year, perhaps multi-departmental connection. They have an interest in perpetuating a positive relationship while also having the unique position of being able to judge the quality of graduates from a variety of schools. </p>

<p>As for the employer survey results, if they compare the graduates of a state university (eg, U North Carolina) with those of a top private (eg, Duke, Wake, Davidson), then that is very useful information for a student to know and consider in making a college choice. And it would be a lot more relevant than the current PA measurement.</p>

<p>Sakky, I said more than the data is incomplete. </p>

<p>"but just understand that you are rejecting the validity of a mainstream social science principle. If that's your position, then that's your position. Fine."</p>

<p>No. I'm not. Take the paper to a professor in logic.</p>

<p>I agree with you the other rankings out there are flawed.</p>

<p>It doesn't matter if somebody tries to make a ranking based on technicals. If the ranking is flawed, it's flawed.</p>

<p>As for the Williams, NYU and UCLA comparisons. You don't need studies to know this. The information is everywhere. </p>

<p>Just look at the amount of applications these schools get. </p>

<p>There is this idea that lacs like Williams, well, there are tons of students that want to go to schools like this. No there isn't. There is a subset of students that want to go to schools like this.
Then people take this subset, like people involved with rp, and expand it and say it is not just the subset of students that prefer these schools, most students prefer these schools.<br>
No they don't. More students and more top students prefer NYU and UCLA over Williams, for example.</p>

<p>Sakky, I have no idea why you are arguing in favor a study that you know is flawed.</p>

<p>You are arguing in favor of this study because there is nothing better out there? What's that? That's the criteria people should use? We should accept the least flawed studies no matter how inaccurate they are?</p>

<p>This study is so flawed I would have been embarrassed, as a student, to turn it in to a professor.</p>

<p>dstark,</p>

<p>obviously more people go/would rather go to NYU and UCLA than Williams--they get more applicatons because they are larger. But if you are going to say that </p>

<p>"Just look at the amount of applications these schools get. </p>

<p>There is this idea that lacs like Williams, well, there are tons of students that want to go to schools like this. No there isn't. There is a subset of students that want to go to schools like this."</p>

<p>then you realize that that argument can be used to describe any school. Ohio State gets more applicatons then Harvard does. Does that make it more desirable than Harvard? Only a small subset of students actually want to go to Harvard--the really smart and motivated ones, and the ones who have their parents push them to it. I'm sure the vast majority of the bottom 50% of high school classes (probably bottom 75%) think Harvard is a "nerd school" while a bigger proportion would think OSU would be "cool" because it has a good football team and lots of parties. Hell, I'm sure if you really churned the numbers, you'd find more people desire Bob Jones University than desire Harvard. </p>

<p>Besides the fact that I don't know why we're arguing about the RP survery, the truth is, the RP is quite a meaningless survery. Its a poll of a bunch of 17 year olds who know nothing about colleges. Look at the results. MIT is in the top 5. You really think all high school students want to go to MIT? Are you serious? I did great in high school...and I thought it was a nerd school. I'm going into my 4th year of college and I still think its a nerd school. 99% of students would rather be at the University of Miami than MIT...</p>

<p>jags861, I love Ohio State. I'm not going to say anything negative about OSU. </p>

<p>More people would rather go to Bob Jones than Harvard. That's kind of a scary thought.</p>

<p>"obviously more people go/would rather go to NYU and UCLA than Williams"</p>

<p>That's enough. The survey doesn't measure why.</p>

<p>I thought the real issue with that study is that they used a small subset of students to show HOW a ranking COULD be done. Their results were not meant to be used as a ranking. Their findings were simply an example.</p>

<p>I am sure there is a grad of every Ivy school working at a Starbucks somewhere. We had a Dartmouth sociology grad at mine. She was excited to finally get a job as an admin asst at an advertising agency.</p>

<p>The article below, from the May 25 edition of The Chronicle of Higher Education, addresses several of the issues that have been raised in this thread. My interpretation is that the article raises several valid points about measurements that may hurt public universities, but does nothing to comment on the validity of the measurements (class size, student-faculty ratio, financial resources, etc) nor on the impact of these measurements in the USNWR survey in contrast to other measures that typically help public universities (PA, Top 10%, 6-yr vs 4-yr graduation rates, etc.). </p>

<p>"In the 1980s, when the U.S. News & World Report rankings of colleges were based solely on reputation, the nation's public universities were well represented at the top. Four of the 14 national universities that were ranked in 1983 were public institutions. In 1987, the first year that the rankings expanded to a top 25, eight were public.</p>

<p>But as soon as the magazine began including its "measures of excellence," statistics intended to define quality, public universities nearly disappeared from the top. In 1989, the first year that the rankings included such statistics as graduation rates and financial resources, the University of California at Berkeley, which had been ranked fifth, plummeted to No. 24.</p>

<p>As the rankings methodology has evolved to include even more statistics, public universities have never returned to prominence. Berkeley is still the top-ranked public institution, at a tie for No. 21. Only three public universities even make the top 25.</p>

<p>Have America's public universities fallen that far behind their private competitors?</p>

<p>Brian Kelly, executive editor of U.S. News, says yes.</p>

<p>Public institutions, he says, "are not doing as well, and I think it reflects the reality on campuses. The states are not investing in their universities, and they are being surpassed."</p>

<p>Presidents and other top officials at research universities disagree with Mr. Kelly. The presidents, provosts, and academic deans surveyed about the academic quality of their peer institutions by U.S. News put seven public universities among the top 27 in 2007. According to peer reputation, Berkeley ties with the California Institute of Technology and the University of Chicago as the sixth-best research university.</p>

<p>So it appears that public universities have a hard time competing because of the other categories, based on quantitative data used by U.S. News. A closer look reveals that almost every one of those measures favors private institutions over public ones:</p>

<p>Six-year graduation rates. Most public colleges must, according to their missions, take less-qualified students. Private institutions graduate 64 percent of students, compared with 54 percent for public colleges, according to 2006 federal data.</p>

<p>Alumni-giving rate. Private institutions have typically been raising money for longer periods than have public ones. In 2006, 17.5 percent of graduates of private research universities contributed to their alma mater, compared with 11 percent of graduates of public research institutions, according to the Voluntary Support of Education survey.</p>

<p>Student-faculty ratio. There were 15.4 students per faculty member at public four-year institutions in 2005, compared with 12.5 students per faculty member at private institutions, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.</p>

<p>Acceptance rate. Because of their public mission, many state institutions must accept higher proportions of applicants. Berkeley and the University of California at Los Angeles accepted 27 percent of applicants in 2006, the lowest rates among public institutions, according to U.S. News data. But 14 private institutions had lower rates.</p>

<p>Financial resources. It is not a perfect comparison with the data compiled by U.S. News, but the highest-rated public institution in endowment per student in 2006 was the Virginia Military Institute, with $263,502. That year 49 undergraduate private institutions had larger endowments per student.</p>

<p>The rankings are "not kind to large public universities at all," says C.D. Mote Jr., president of the University of Maryland at College Park. They are "designed to make small, rich private universities look good."</p>

<p>But Mr. Kelly insists "there's no intent to hurt any colleges in the rankings." (The magazine does provide a separate listing of the top-50 public national universities.) Mr. Kelly cites Maryland and the University of Florida as public institutions that are making strides in the rankings because their states "are intensifying the resources going to those schools."</p>

<p>Both institutions, however, have barely moved in the rankings. Florida first cracked the top 50 in 1996, then didn't appear again until 2000, and went missing again until 2004. For 2007, it is tied for 47th. Maryland was first ranked in 2004, tied for 53rd. For 2007, it is tied for 54th. (See table, Page A16, to see how several public institutions have fallen in the rankings.)</p>

<p>Mr. Kelly says he is thinking about changing the rankings because he has been struck by a number of surveys that show how important cost is in decisions about where to go to college. He says he has thought about adding a component to the rankings that would reward colleges that deliver a superior education at a low cost, a category that would help public institutions."</p>

<p>If they were really being surpassed I think that would appear in some of the tangible numbers. As far as I can tell most publics have kept about the numbers and ranking in NAS members and faculty awards. Same for total research funding, library rankings etc. The publics have been very much more active in fundraising, increasing tuition, and eliminating waste to keep quality.</p>

<p>On their site, the Chronicle requests that you ask permission before reposting text; they prefer one posts a link.</p>

<p>The reason this article may not talk as much about validity is that the companion article on rankings covers more of that area.</p>

<p>
[quote]
Your game theory example incorrectly assumes that the student quality at an elite university is uniformly higher than the student coming from a less prestigious school. It is not. Employers only have to hire a student, not a school, and they can find good students at many schools.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Uh, the quality doesn't HAVE to be uniformly higher. In fact, that's precisely the point - that the information is incomplete. If everybody had complete information about everybody, then you wouldn't even need a recruiting/hiring process. Companies would always know * exactly * who they want to hire and would just give a job offer to that person. Furthermore, they would always know * exactly * how much to pay them to entice them to come onboard. Furthermore, each student would also know * exactly * where they can get a job, and how much to expect to get paid. That would be the world of perfect information.</p>

<p>But the truth is, to borrow a line from Stiglitz, the world * never * has perfect information, and this is particularly so when you're talking about labor markets. That's why the recruiting process exists. {After all, why bother to recruit if you already know exactly who you want to hire, and people already know exactly who they want to work for?}. And that's why the salary negotiation process exists. Again, why bother to try to negotiate salaries, if everybody knows exactly how much they're worth? </p>

<p>It is of course true that employers hire a particular student, not the school itself. The problem is that you then have to * find * those particular students. Hence, you have to incur search/sorting costs. Those search costs are high if the school's average student quality is not high. Sure, even at a mediocre school, there will be some top-quality students. But how do you know who they are? How can you sort them from the rest of the students who aren't that good? After all, all of the students will * claim * to be good. You can try to use things like GPA, but that invites the problem of some students deliberately taking the easiest possible classes in order to get a top GPA. </p>

<p>If you want to continue the economics analogy, basically, the problem comes down to a case of breaking down information asymmetries. You can accomplish this either through signalling (where the prestige of the school becomes a 'signal' of high quality), or through screening (where the employer itself attempts to sort through all the chaff to find the high-quality wheat). So either the student or the employer has to break the asymmetry. But the point is, * somebody * has to break it. </p>

<p>It is simply more cost-effective for employers to follow the strong signal (i.e. the more prestigious school) than to screen. After all, why bear extra costs when you don't have to? </p>

<p>
[quote]
A second problem with your response is that it makes no allowance for the huge impact that geography has on recruiting. If Goldman Sachs were located in Los Angeles rather than NYC, they would be hiring huge numbers from USC, UCLA, Pomona, Harvey Mudd, Claremont McKenna, etc. rather than Brown, Dartmouth, Columbia. IMO, only a very few schools have true national recruiting appeal (HYPSM) and even that will vary depending on the industry.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Uh, first of all GS IS located in Los Angeles - one of their larger branch offices is there. </p>

<p>But more importantly, nobody is denying that geography plays a role. But that seems irrelevant to me. After all, EVERY school obviously has some geographic advantage wherever they are located. UCLA has an advantage in SoCal, just like Harvard has an advantage in Boston. Hence, you can simply modify the question to ask yourself - which school gives you a strong regional advantage in whatever region it is in AND possibly a strong national advantage? Of course that also depends on where you want to work for your career (but then again, very few young people actually know where they want to work for their career). </p>

<p>
[quote]
Third, your definition of the most elite employers is biased. These are the most elite to you and perhaps to students of those schools you mention. If you asked students in a variety of other cities or regions of the country, the responses would differ. Very few students at U Texas want to go to Wall Street, but there are a lot of very smart and talented students there. Employers in the South and Southwest know that and recruit there heavily.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>First off, many of the major Wall Street banks have large branch offices in the South and Southwest. Goldman Sachs has branch offices in Atlanta, Dallas, and Houston. I'm quite sure that quite a few Southerners work in those offices. McKinsey similarly also has offices in Atlanta, Dallas, and Houston. One of the world's elite private equity firms, Texas Pacific Group, is located, unsurprisingly, in Texas (main HQ is in Fort Worth). I'm quite certain that a lot of the smartest Texans wouldn't mind working there. </p>

<p>The point is this. EVERY region has its own version of elite employers. Those employers often times fill their ranks with locals who went to the top national schools and then wanted to come back home. Take the venture capital industry Silicon Valley as an example. A large chunk of Silicon Valley venture capitalists are Californians who graduated from Harvard Business School (the VC industry was founded and is still largely dominated by HBS, with Stanford GSB a close second). I strongly suspect that if I look many of the principals who work in the Fort Worth office of TPG, I will find many Texans who went to HBS or Wharton. Similarly, who works in the GS Dallas office? Probably a lot of Texans who went to HBS or Wharton. </p>

<p>
[quote]
Fourth, the elite companies you reference recruit at those schools because of the pre-selection done by the college, the geographic location of those schools and the prevalence of their alumni at those companies. Students from outside of that group of colleges, eg a top student from a public school outside of the Northeast, with varying degrees of difficulty, can also gain positions at those companies.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Look, nobody is saying that you can't have a strong career if you don't go to a top school. Of course the dichotomy is not that strict. Clearly some people from even a no-name school will achieve great success. But you want to do what you can to increase your odds. Just like wearing a seatbelt doesn't guarantee that I will survive a car accident. But it does increase my odds. Hence, ceteris paribus, why not make the choice that gives you better odds? </p>

<p>
[quote]
Fifth, the relationship with employers is commonly not as adverse as you paint. Employers understand that their hiring decisions are not a single point, but rather part of a multi-year, perhaps multi-departmental connection. They have an interest in perpetuating a positive relationship while also having the unique position of being able to judge the quality of graduates from a variety of schools.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>I am not saying that the situation always boils down to an adversial test of strength. </p>

<p>But what I am saying is that the general backdrop of any negotiation, under any setting, is intimately related to the options available to the 2 parties in the negotiation. If you have a good alternative option outside of the negotiation, then you have strong negotiation power, because that means that you can just walk out of the negotiation, and the other party knows that. Heck, like I said before, you don't even need to have a good alternative - you just have to have the other party * think * that you have a good alternative. In fact, ideally, you want to have all lots of good alternatives, and the other party to have no good alternatives. That's the point at which you can bargain the hardest. That's strategic negotiating power. </p>

<p>So incorporating what you said into econspeak, the employer wants to extract all of the 'surplus rent' that he possibly can while still leaving you with some in order to create that positive long-term relationship that you spoke of. True. But that still means that at the end of the day, you are still subject to the whims of how much surplus the employer wants to leave you. However, if you have a stronger negotiation position, then you can negotiate to get more of that surplus rent. Obviously there is some point at which you would be asking for more than your productivity is worth, and hence, the employer would not want to make a deal. But there is still a large range of surplus that can be negotiated over. Going to a stronger school gives you better negotiating power with which you can grab more of that surplus. </p>

<p>And that's what I've been saying all along. Employers should NOT be happy with any particular school, because if they're happy, then that means that they're getting a great financial deal (hence, deriving a lot of surplus rent). You don't want them to be getting that surplus rent, you want the STUDENTS to get it. Employers SHOULD walk away unhappy (as long as they keep coming back). Like I said, recruiters at Harvard Business School are notoriously unhappy because they constantly complain that the students ask for "too much". What that really means is that the students there bargain very hard to get the best possible salaries and positions they can get, because they know they have the negotiating power to do it. The employers obviously don't like this, but who cares? * They keep coming back anyway *. If they really didn't like it, they wouldn't come back. </p>

<p>The bottom line is this. Employer satisfation is a terrible way to measure a school. Terrible. Employers are looking for bargains. Schools should not be providing bargains to these employers.</p>

<p>
[quote]
I don't dispute these stories, but I don't see how they really fit with your argument of "what employers want in a school." Are you saying that these companies specifically recruited at Berkeley for these positions, and did so because Berkeley gave them 'what they wanted' in terms of the kinds of graduates produced? I don't yet see how these examples fit in with the point you were making earlier.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>What employers want from a school are BARGAINS. They want to get the most productive people they can get, while paying them as little as possible. Hence, if Starbucks can get a Berkeley graduate to work as a barista behind the counter making coffee and ringing people up, Starbucks loves it. </p>

<p>It doesn't matter if Starbucks specifically came to Berkeley to recruit for baristas or not. I'm sure they didn't - and that makes my point even stronger. After all, campus recruiting takes money and time. If Starbucks can get Berkeley grads to work as baristas without even having to come to campus to recruit them, then Starbucks loves it even more. They can get productive workers for low wages, and not even have to pay for a recruiting gig. That's a FANTASTIC deal for Starbucks.</p>

<p>But it's not a fantastic deal for those students. That's the point I'm making. Employers do not have the best interests of the students at heart. We have to remember that employers have their own agenda. </p>

<p>Again, I'm not trying to single out Berkeley. I'm sure that if I investigated any other UC, I would find some graduates who also ended up in low-end jobs. Fantastic deal for the employers. For those students, not so much.</p>

<p>
[quote]
No. I'm not. Take the paper to a professor in logic.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>I said it before, I'll say it again. Revealed preferences are a widely accepted technique within social sciences. If professors of logic have a problem with it, then they have a problem with many social science papers. </p>

<p>
[quote]
As for the Williams, NYU and UCLA comparisons. You don't need studies to know this. The information is everywhere. </p>

<p>Just look at the amount of applications these schools get. </p>

<p>There is this idea that lacs like Williams, well, there are tons of students that want to go to schools like this. No there isn't. There is a subset of students that want to go to schools like this.
Then people take this subset, like people involved with rp, and expand it and say it is not just the subset of students that prefer these schools, most students prefer these schools.
No they don't. More students and more top students prefer NYU and UCLA over Williams, for example

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Huh? So the number of applications is now the key benchmark? How is that? The number of applications is much more of a function of the SIZE of a school as well as its perceived ease of admission, than its desirability. </p>

<p>As a case in point, far more people apply to Berkeley (freshman + transfer applications ~ 50k) than to Harvard (~20k). So does it then follow that Berkeley is "more desirable" than Harvard? Heck, about 60k people (freshman + transfer) applied to UCLA. Does that mean that UCLA is more desirable than Berkeley? Heck, 40k applied to NYU. I guess that means that NYU is much more desirable than any of HYPSM, as none of them comes even close to having that many applications. Heck, MIT had only a lowly 10-11k applications. I guess that means that MIT is one of the least desirable schools in the country.</p>

<p>
[quote]
You are arguing in favor of this study because there is nothing better out there? What's that? That's the criteria people should use? We should accept the least flawed studies no matter how inaccurate they are?

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Uh, what's wrong with that? That's how ALL research is. Like I said, we accept all of our various scientific models not because they are entirely accurate, but because we don't have anything else at the time. Read Thomas Kuhn. Scientific models are used not because they are entirely accurate (they never are) but because they allow us to predict events to the best of our ability and knowledge. Newtonian physics is not perfectly accurate, but is still widely used because it is tractable and was the best model of motion available at the time (and still largely is). I'm sure that in the future, we will find another scientific model that will replace Newtonian physics. In a certain sense, that's already happened - quantum mechanics and relativity have proven to be better than Newtonian physics for certain applications. </p>

<p>Look. No model is ever perfect. To ask for perfection is to be unrealistic. Science is always about improving our understanding of the world. If the RP study is better than whatever else is availabe out there, then that's useful. Newtonian physics replaced prior models (i.e. Aristotlean models of motion) not because it was perfect but because it was BETTER. </p>

<p>
[quote]
This study is so flawed I would have been embarrassed, as a student, to turn it in to a professor.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Be embarrassed as much as you want to be. Frankly, this paper is FAR FAR BETTER than most other papers written by most students. After all, do most students even know how to create a model at all? Or do a proper literature review? You might say that the model is flawed (and of course it is, all models are flawed), but at least it is a working model. The vast majority of students don't even have that.</p>

<p>Besides, think of it this way. You say you're "embarrassed" about this paper. Well, what if somebody tried to hand in the USNews ranking? How embarrassed would you be for that student? Yet the USNews ranking has generated millions of dollars for that publication, so clearly it has been succesful commercially.</p>

<p>
[quote]
Besides the fact that I don't know why we're arguing about the RP survery, the truth is, the RP is quite a meaningless survery. Its a poll of a bunch of 17 year olds who know nothing about colleges.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>The real question is - what's better? Do you really think that the other rankings out there are really any better? What exactly does USNews measure that is so much better? What about Gourman? Or Newsweek? Or Jiao Tong? Or THES?</p>

<p>I think the RP study measures EXACTLY what it sets out to measure - that is, the preferences of the set of students that it surveyed. I agree that it doesn't measure WHY those students prefer what they prefer. But that's not what the paper was looking at.</p>

<p>sakky,
Your answers are always so loooooong. Well conceived, but long. Greater pithiness would be appreciated by this reader and likely others as well.</p>

<p>Re your answers, I have several comments:</p>

<ol>
<li><p>The students we are talking about are undergraduates. Much of your answer related to graduate students who are a very different topic as they have work experience and a track record that actually means something to employers.</p></li>
<li><p>I remain committed to the idea that the job drives the compensation and not the employee, particularly for the undergraduate candidate. In reality, his/her negotiating power is relatively meager, nearly irrespective of the college that he/she attended. The job will drive the wage, not the student and there is very little surplus rent to extract. In the financial services industry, the starting salaries are pretty standard within a fairly tight range (but do differ from department to department) with the great variable being the end of the year bonus which is tied to firm and department success and personal contribution. </p></li>
<li><p>The Goldman Sachs offices in LA and Texas are tiny compared to New York and this is true for virtually all of the financial services companies. Likewise, large employers in southern California (eg, entertainment industry) and Texas (energy industry) have much smaller presences in NY. Regionalism is a big, big factor in undergraduate recruiting and the schools in each region will have a clear advantage. Only a few undergraduate schools truly have national recruiting appeal (I would count your Harvard as one of them). </p></li>
<li><p>Employers see first-hand the differences in student talent from school to school and can see the discrepancy between school reputation and student intelligence and productivity. Your objections sound like someone worried that the emperor (the Ivies and other prestigious schools in the status quo) might be exposed for not wearing any clothes. Are you scared to compete on a level playing field with everybody else?</p></li>
</ol>

<p>
[quote]
Six-year graduation rates. Most public colleges must, according to their missions, take less-qualified students. Private institutions graduate 64 percent of students, compared with 54 percent for public colleges, according to 2006 federal data.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Well, on this particular score, I actually have to agree with the ranking. After all, if public schools are mandated to take less qualified students who don't graduate, then, frankly, they SHOULD be punished for it. After all, why admit students who aren't going to graduate anyway? What purpose does that serve? </p>

<p>
[quote]
Acceptance rate. Because of their public mission, many state institutions must accept higher proportions of applicants. Berkeley and the University of California at Los Angeles accepted 27 percent of applicants in 2006, the lowest rates among public institutions, according to U.S. News data. But 14 private institutions had lower rates

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Same reasoning as above. While admissions rates are obviously an imperfect metric, the bottom line is that if you are admitting less qualified students, you should be punished for it. </p>

<p>
[quote]
Student-faculty ratio. There were 15.4 students per faculty member at public four-year institutions in 2005, compared with 12.5 students per faculty member at private institutions, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>
[quote]
Financial resources. It is not a perfect comparison with the data compiled by U.S. News, but the highest-rated public institution in endowment per student in 2006 was the Virginia Military Institute, with $263,502. That year 49 undergraduate private institutions had larger endowments per student.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Frankly, that sounds logical to me also. If a school provides a lower student-faculty ratio and more financial resources per student, then those factors are to the benefit of that school. AFter all, ceteris paribus, why wouldn't you want to go to a school that has a lower student-faculty ratio? Why wouldn't you want to attend a school that has more financial resources per capita?</p>

<p>sakky,
On the comment above (#156), I am in complete agreement. Why wouldn't you want to go to a school with better students, lower student/faculty ratios and greater resources to support the students and the faculty? I understand why the public schools would complain, but whose interests are we trying to serve-the public school administrators or the students?</p>

<p>Sakky, I think even if someone agrees with the methodology, you have to keep in mind that the authors themselves said they set it up as an EXAMPLE of how one could do a revealed-preference ranking. It's a methodology paper, where they make clear that their study merely demonstrates how such a ranking could be done. They don't represent their results as producing a reliable ranking; rather, they show how a study like theirs could produce a ranking, if done more completely.</p>

<p>
[quote]
I am in complete agreement. Why wouldn't you want to go to a school with better students, lower student/faculty ratios and greater resources to support the students and the faculty? I understand why the public schools would complain, but whose interests are we trying to serve-the public school administrators or the students?

[/quote]
</p>

<p>If it were as simple as this, I think this thread would have ended on page one. I thought the point of this thread was that different institutional types have particular features that may make certain institutional measures less straightforward, and that context matters. Furthermore, this context may help some institutions and hurt others.</p>

<p>On certain elements, LACs will tend to look different than research institutions; publics will tend to look different than privates, and so on.</p>

<p>It seems like we're moving backwards to say that despite all that, one should ignore that context. Elsewhere it's been said that different students may weigh institutional characteristics differently, and this is appropriate given their individual values and goals. If I remember correctly, you were in favor of a tool that would allow students to assign their own weights and/or be able to manipulate college rankings according to what they most valued. Why, now, normatively declare that students should prefer schools that measure higher on a few of the metrics developed by US News?</p>

<p>hoedown,
I like very much the idea of having variables that students/users can manipulate and weight according to their own needs and I continue to support that wholeheartedly. </p>

<p>My point above is that there are some absolutes that clearly impact the quality of the education and the student's undergraduate experience. These are absolutes regardless of institutional type, eg, a stronger student body is better than a weaker one. A lower student/faculty ratio is better than a high one. Having more money to support students and faculty is better than having less money. Would you support the other side of any of those choices and consider that a virtue in a college?</p>

<p>S/F ratio can be almost meaningless. Many schools recruit facutly away from schools like Wisconsin by promising them much lighter teaching loads. If a guy used to teach 3 classes at UW and now only does 1 at Princeton is the S/F ratio really reflecting how much interaction there might be? This is not a hypothetical case either. Happens all the time.</p>