Correlation of #1 (vs #3) on USNWR relative to Raising Several More Billion?

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Chicago ✅
1

It is my opinion that a #1 vs. #3 ranking on USNWR would significantly impact Chicago on the fund-raising side. On the other hand, rising to #2 would not have nearly the same impact. This may explain some of Chicago’s intense focus on admit rate & SAT scores as they are important USNWR ranking inputs.

While the differences in the USNWR top 10 are truly miniscule, and any student admitted to the top 10 (quite frankly the top 25) is incredibly blessed, it is my opinion that Chicago fund raising would get a huge if Chicago becomes #1.

A 2017 USNWR without HYPS as #1 would make global news. Every nightly news and cable news station would report the story, and no doubt Forbes, WSJ, NYT, Bloomberg and others would run the story intensely. As important, every news show in China, Russia, and India (key markets these days for the top schools) would run the same story. I believe USNWR is the most famous ranking, and while I do not believe fame equals quality or respect, for the purposes of this post, and for the global news impact, I focus on USNWR as consumers (parents, students & guidance counselors) fixate on it.

Conversely, if Chicago were to rise to #2, barely a ripple would be reported, as that news story of being #2 instead of #3 only interests those of us who are “inside baseball” followers of these matters—posters and readers of this blog–in short, a tiny audience.

When looking at the HYPS endowments relative to Chicago, one clearly see capital differences. Chicago can honestly say, either from a rankings or endowment size point of view, that Columbia, Penn, Brown, Wash U, Duke, and Dartmouth are now in their rear-view mirror from one, or both, of these measurements. Chicago, however, is now playing with the big boys—HYPS. To play that game Chicago must raise billions more dollars as from a rankings or endowment point of view Chicago is in HYPS’s rear view mirrors.

Chicago’s place today from a capital point of view is similar to Apple vs. Microsoft (HYPS) back many years ago.

I believe Chicago’s efforts to become #1 is highly related to their fund-raising goals. Capital is the long-term key to financial aid, new plant, and attracting the best faculty. I am interested to learn what others feel about the correlation question I raise between #1 and fundraising at Chicago?

2

They are most certainly related, but I’m not sure how high the correlation actually is.

3

The #1 ranking may help with contributions from current alums, specially if Chicago gives more consideration to legacy kids in admission who will be applying in larger numbers as the schools ranking improves. Having said that, the future strength of fundraising also depends on bringing in kids from more affluent backgrounds because money attracts more money

4

In my opinion, it will be a lot harder for UoC to rise much further in the US News rankings because it can’t get much more selective, and the other ranking criteria (listed here: https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/how-us-news-calculated-the-rankings) generally only change slowly over time or require a lot more money. For now, at least, at $7b the endowment remains a fraction of the size of those of HYPS.

I think the big bucks come from having a wealthy alumni base and a truly tippy-top brand, which attracts unrelated donors. I don’t think UoC, great a university as it is, matches HYPS in either category. I also doubt that rising in the US News rankings to #1 (if that ever happened) would make much of a difference. As you’ll see in this list, which is compiled every year by the Council for Aid to Education, giving to universities correlates only loosely with US News rankings: http://cae.org/images/uploads/pdf/VSE-2016-Press-Release.pdf. Princeton, the perennial USNW #1, didn’t even crack the top 20 (although I imagine the relative timing of capital campaigns has a big effect on this list year to year - the fact that UoC and, e.g., Harvard, have ones underway may be improving their showings here relative to Princeton, which does not).

As an aside, it’s been a UoC priority for a number of years to increase its selectivity, and it’s made huge strides there (see here: http://www.personalcollegeadmissions.com/getting-in/the-great-success-of-the-university-of-chicago). UoC will appear to have become even more selective this year, given the introduction of ED I/II which is likely to have resulted in a substantial majority of the class of 2021 being accepted ED. This, however, as discussed on other threads, may ultimately backfire and reduce the number of total applications if students conclude that it’s a waste of time and money to apply any other way than ED.

5

The schools that will be rising in ranking in the next decade will be schools that are technology driven. UoC is not it.

6

Also remember that USNews could change the metrics used to calculate the rankings. There is a lot of pressure on them to use some kind of employment output based metric. They have resisted so far, but if they do that to just compete with Forbes, WSJ etc, Chicago will actually fall in the rankings, because the two sources of salary based data, payscale and the DOE don’t give good numbers for Chicago.

Unless USNews forces colleges to report placement data for each class, salary data from the other two sources that is heavily weighted on alum performance from a time that Chicago was very different will hurt Chicago

7

As someone suggested on another thread, though, admitting a larger and larger portion of classes from the ED pools can also enable UoC to tilt more toward full payers and reduce the amount of merit money given out. Over time, that may result in more wealthy alumni as well. Obviously, there are pros and cons to all of the above…

8

“WSJ etc, Chicago will actually fall in the rankings, because the two sources of salary based data, payscale and the DOE don’t give good numbers for Chicago.”

It depends on whether the data is first adjusted to account for cost of living in the area. Cost of living in Chicago, and the entire midwest, is very reasonable when compared to California or New York/Boston areas. As a result, Chicago area salaries are lower but get you much more than SanFrancisco or Manhattan. Chicago will come in third in salaries to those locales unless the data is adjusted for cost of living. Many (not all) graduate stay in the same region as their alma mater.

9

I really, really, really, really hope US News doesn’t decide to use outcomes data.

I’m no fan of the idolization of the rankings - but it is definitely not the end of the world right now. Schools are strongly encouraged to make a lot of 19 person classes, raise a lot of money, and manipulate high school students to lower their acceptance rate and raise their yield rate. It’s definitely not ideal, most noticeably to high school students (but it usually works out fine, except for a few bruised egos).

Now imagine if the ranking everyone took seriously (sorry Forbes) were based on outcomes. There would be institutional pressure against the humanities, against going to grad school, and towards pressuring as many people as possible into business and tech. It would be intellectual devastation.

The last thing higher education needs is to become a commodity.

10

"Chicago can honestly say, either from a rankings or endowment size point of view, that Columbia, Penn, Brown, Wash U, Duke, and Dartmouth are now in their rear-view mirror from one, or both, of these measurements. "

??? Penn and Columbia still have larger endowments and WashU’s and Duke’s endowment are still very close to the size of UChicago’s.

11

UChicago is closing in on a 5 billion collectiIon drive. And most significantly, it beats all these schools in the key rankings both undergraduate and graduate as well as professional schools except medicine. Moreover, only Columbia has an international reputation in that group that comes close to Chicago.

12

Chicago’s main fundraising challenges are:

Its undergraduate alumni cohort is much smaller and much less wealthy than that of its peers. Twenty years ago, Chicago’s college was about half the size of Harvard’s or Brown’s, and its graduates skewed heavily into academia and government vs. business. That has already changed, but it will take another generation to flush the past completely.

People who graduated from the college in the 60s-80s, and even into the 90s, tend to feel very ambivalent about it. It has been a long, slow process to make Chicago a place with a vibrant student culture, where fun doesn’t necessarily die. It’s hard to get contributions from people who are telling their children not to apply to their alma mater. Again, that’s happening a lot less now, but the effects linger. And it means that Chicago has fewer multi-generation alumni than its peers.

Both of the above relate to college alumni . . . but undergraduate alumni are the core of every university’s fundraising efforts.

Chicago also competes for local, non-alumni civic giving. But it also has an unusually strong competitor in the same civic pool, Northwestern. And because of its size, general happiness, location, and more regional focus historically, Northwestern has a lot more grass-roots civic clout in Chicagoland than the University of Chicago has.

13

@JHS agreed on the challenges and yet UChicago is doing very well in this round including with some major gifts from top donors for the graduate schools.

14

Oh yes, absolutely. I was only cautioning against too much optimism in the endowment department. Chicago has had great investment results, and I think its gamble to borrow first to build projects during the recession and raise funds to pay the debt back later is paying off. But it will be another generation or two before Chicago can raise funds from alumni on a par with the Harvards and Princetons. Which may hold it back from becoming Grand Ruling University of the World for a few decades yet.

15

Harvard and Stanford will remain top dogs in endowment and fund raising. But UChicago has done remarkably well already and will get to Penn and Columbia endowment levels. Moreover, it is proving that even with less money it can beat much richer schools in many key rankings.

16

@JHS on your last point, Harvard has MIT, Northeastern, and the most densely packed number of colleges in any city to compete with for local dollars.

17

Interesting comments.

18

I’m a Uchicago fan but all it can hope for is to “join” HYPS and not displace one of them. For the latter to happen, one of the HYPS have to blunder big time, and that is not realistically going to happen.

19

None of the other Boston universities or colleges comes close to Harvard in prestige, except perhaps MIT, and I don’t think MIT plays much in that particular pool at all (in part because of the competition from Harvard). If you are a Boston business, and you want to associate yourself with the highest-quality brand, there’s a pretty clear choice. (Of course, there are other strategies than associating yourself with the highest-quality brand. I am sure you can get a lot more bang for your buck at Northeastern, Emerson, Wellesley, even Tufts than you can at Harvard. A gift that would name a building after you at Northeastern might get you invited to a pre-Yale Game cocktail party at Harvard.)

I am familiar with this dynamic, since I live in another city that also has a lot of universities vying for support. But here, Penn owns the prestige quality. Others have other qualities that they exploit with varying degrees of success.

In Chicago, there are two reasonably equal choices in the prestige market. They both do fine, but one of them has a much larger, more powerful local network, and I think it get more than an equal share of the unaffiliated local business support.

20

I think there is an easy way for Chicago to displace at least one in the HYPS group. Princeton.

Guarantee admission to Chicago professional schools to UChicago alums who meet certain criteria. Princeton will not have that advantage and while it has a great name and many Princeton alums go to great professional schools, knowing that you can definitely get into Booth or UChicago Law from UChicago undergrad will tempt many students. Yale is a little tougher, but still doable, since its business school is still catching up. That advantage may not last very long though. They are making some great progress.

Chicago needs to start giving strong preference to Uchicago undergrad alums in its grad school programs. After all these are great students. Why not admit them as a large proportion of the class provided they meet basic criteria?

UChicago undergrad and UChicago Professional schools should start working closely together to boost the image and brand of the University. This is just one program that they can start. I am sure there are others.