IIRC, Chicago’s faculty is divided between undergraduate and graduate arts & science divisions, one of the few T20 research universities still organized along those lines.
The big way that HYP undergrads will see the effect of the endowment is on housing and dining. It’s expensive and inefficient to put everyone in residential colleges – especially recently built/renovated ones.
Used well, endowment can create opportunities for students in the form of facilities, professors, funds for overseas study, scholarships, etc… But you really need to understand whether the gifts are restricted or not. If there are huge piles of funds earmarked for professorships in areas that aren’t relevant to you, they don’t matter at all. Likewise, if a chunk of the endowment is for upkeep of an art collection, for example, that’s probably not something that’s going to impact your education unless you’re studying art history. Most schools would love to have completely unrestricted funds, but usually when someone makes a large gift, he/she wants to do that with strings attached.
“The Department of Education tracks college expenditures (including expenditures on instruction and research) in great detail. So evidently some people do find this kind of information interesting.”
tk, of course this kind of information is interesting. It is important for planning and budgetary purposes. My point is not that operating budgets are irrelevant, but rather, that they are not telling and should not be used for ulterior motives.
“Whether US News uses it appropriately in its rankings is another matter (but one that I should think is a matter of opinion not something that can be established with great finality as a matter of fact).”
I disagree tk. We are obviously each entitled to our opinion, but some opinions are grounded in fact while others are grounded in prejudice. I would think that an impartial and rational individual would agree that determining a university’s financial resources position by focusing entirely in expenditure while completely ignoring the endowment/revenue end of the equation is seriously flawed. That would be no better than establishing who the wealthiest and most financially savvy people are by looking at their spending aggregate rather than considering their earnings and spending habits.
Also, does it make sense/is it fair to hold public universities to the same standard as private universities when it comes to financial aid since public universities are highly discounted for the majority of the student population? And does completely ignoring economies of scale (consolidation of shared services, synergies created by having a larger student and faculty population etc…) when evaluating a university’s expenses make sense?
You were kind enough to share instructional spending figures above, but one thing to consider is faculty breakdown and salaries. Universities have similar approaches to pay as companies. Some are market laggers, some are market leaders and some are market matchers. Michigan is a market matcher…barely. It pays faculty on average 25% less than most private peers. Obviously, that is not affecting the university’s ability to attract, retain, motivate and please its star-studded faculty. Nobody will question the eminence of Michigan’s faculty, but when it comes to salaries, Michigan is not known for its generosity.
Also, the ratio of the faculty belonging to professional programs vs traditional liberal arts departments will have an influence on faculty salaries. Smaller private universities (like Chicago and Duke) will usually have much higher paid faculties because the vast majority of their professors will be affiliated to graduate programs such as MBA, Law and Medicine. Larger universities, like Cal and Michigan, will have those highly paid professors diluted more evenly among a larger liberal arts faculty required to instruct a larger undergraduate student population.
In short, statistics are great, but ranking universities based in statistics is very flawed, unless the universities have a lot in common. So comparing Michigan to Cal statistically makes sense. So does comparing Chicago to Johns Hopkins. Or Harvard and Columbia. Or Northwestern and Penn. Or Duke and Yale etc…Even then, there are sufficient differences, albeit not that significant, to potential yield inaccurate results. But using the same statistics to compare Michigan to Chicago or UVA to Rice makes no sense, and considering the way the US News tabulates data, large public universities will be seriously devalued.
I’d be inclined to agree that data-driven rankings are best applied to clusters of similar colleges. So perhaps some services like US News should separate public universities from private universities in their rankings (just as they separate LACs, “regional” universities, and "national"universities).
I’m not inclined to agree that ranking universities based on statistics is necessarily very flawed. If a particular statistical analysis is flawed, then the remedy is to provide more or better statistics. Look at a variety of different statistics to see if they lead to the same conclusions. Scaling effects may tend to confound some statistics, but I doubt they are confounding many very different statistics in the same direction.
It’s certainly worth examining the idea that variations in the graduate-to-undergraduate ratios might be confounding the spending-per-student analysis (or the implications we draw from the numbers).
I’ve shown comparisons on both the revenue side (#14) and the spending side (#19).
The average “instructional” spending per student at the 4 private universities I listed is about 2.8 times the average “instructional” spending per student at the 3 public universities I listed.
The average revenue per student at the 4 private universities I listed is about 2.4 times the average revenue per student at the 3 public universities I listed.
So either way, the difference is big, but he difference is about 18% bigger on the spending side. Perhaps some of this difference is indeed explained by proportionately higher spending on professional school faculty at the smaller universities.I doubt that would account for nearly all the difference. Instructional spending per student at the 2 private LACs I listed still is much higher than at the 3 public universities (even thought the LACs have no professional schools at all.) Or consider Princeton University, which has no medical or law school. According to IPEDS data, in 2014 Princeton spent ~$0.4B for “instructional” spending on 8,018 FTE students. That works out to $52,993 per student … which is still over 2.5X the average “instructional” spending per student at Michigan-UVa-Berkeley.
“I’m not inclined to agree that ranking universities based on statistics is necessarily very flawed. If a particular statistical analysis is flawed, then the remedy is to provide more or better statistics. Look at a variety of different statistics to see if they lead to the same conclusions. Scaling effects may tend to confound some statistics, but I doubt they are confounding many very different statistics in the same direction.”
tk, a publicly funded university with 43,000 students will not have similar financials as a privately funded university with 8,000 students. As such, attempting to This sentiment is shared by many who work in academe. I think it is fair to say that as far as the experts are concerned, a one-size fits all approach does not work in academe.
“According to IPEDS data, in 2014 Princeton spent ~$0.4B for “instructional” spending on 8,018 FTE students. That works out to $52,993 per student … which is still over 2.5X the average “instructional” spending per student at Michigan-UVa-Berkeley.”
First of all, let us take Michigan on its own as I am more familiar with that institution. We are not lumping all private universities together, and we should not lump all public universities together either.
Your Princeton illustration seems to confirm one of my points; there are economies of scale at play. Even without professional programs, Princeton has a higher instructional spending than Harvard on a per student basis. The larger the university, the more it benefits from economies of scale and efficiencies associated with its size, the less it needs to spend on a per student basis. Chicago and Duke are mid sized, Harvard is large and Michigan is very large. Honestly, comparing schools like Duke and Chicago and Rice, which enroll 15,000, 13,000 and 6,000 students respectively, to Michigan makes no sense. Harvard, with 25,000 students, is large enough, so it is worth exploring to some extent, but with a tiny grain of salt! 
Harvard indeed spends roughly twice as much as Michigan on instruction on a per student basis, but they again, its faculty earns, on average 25% more than Michigan’s (no surprising considering the size of its professional programs). It should be noted that paying its faculty less does not seem to affect Michigan’s appeal or ability to retain one of the top faculties in the country. So, when you adjust for differences in salary, Harvard does not spend that much more than Michigan (roughly 1.5 times more) in absolute terms, but if you factor in economies of scale, I would say the difference is marginal. From what I have seen, most private research universities with 20,000-30,000 students (including Columbia, Cornell, Harvard, Penn etc…) spend roughly $50,000/student on instruction. Michigan, as you pointed out above, spends $25,000/student. The gap almost disappears when you adjust for differences in salaries (which are, on average, 25% higher at private universities) and factor in economies of scale.
I am not trying to pass Michigan off as a typical public university. It is probably the most financially robust public university in the country. My point is that statistics should not be used the way they are to determine a university’s financial resources, or how well its students are served by those resources. I will return to the US News ranking of Michigan’s financial resources. It is clearly one of the top 20 universities in the nation in this regard, and yet the US News method would have you believe it does not belong among the top 40.
No doubt Michigan employs many excellent professors. For purposes of this discussion, I think the issue is how their services are apportioned to undergraduates. How do “economies of scale” actually work in practice, when it comes to the costs of instruction? Does a very large school get a discount for hiring twice as many excellent professors as a small school does?
As far as I can tell, in terms of classroom instruction “economies of scale” are delivered primarily in the form of big classes. A large lecture class arguably is a cost-effective way for an excellent professor to instruct many students simultaneously, while conserving more of the professor’s time to do research. Ultimately, the research results may benefit many more people than even a lecture to 500 students. So big classes aren’t necessarily all bad, especially from a public policy perspective. For myself, or for one of my kids, as a rule I’d prefer smaller classes (which of course cost more per student to deliver).
If the Princeton-Harvard comparison is representative, then yes, “economies of scale” may account for some of the differences in instructional costs per student. How much do scaling effects (v. class size or other factors) account for the differences in per student costs? I don’t think we really know the answer to that.
We could try comparing only very large universities among the USNWR top N.
USC for example is a very large private university (which US News ranks #23, a little higher than Michigan).
It claims average class sizes that are somewhat lower than Michigan’s (but not as low as Harvard’s). It does operate graduate and professional programs (med school, law, etc.). According to IPEDS data for 2014, USC spent $1.6B on “instruction” for 38,752 FTE students. That works out to $42,211 per FTE student, which is a bit lower than Harvard’s $49,197, but still a lot higher than Michigan’s $24,093.
NYU is another very large private university. It claims average class sizes that are somewhat lower than USC’s, but also has somewhat larger enrollments. According to IPEDS data for 2014, NYU spent $1.5B on “instruction” for 43,494 FTE students. That works out to $33,582 per FTE student, which is considerably lower than USC’s number (even though NYU claims somewhat smaller average class sizes than USC). I suppose it is possible that the difference between Michigan’s and NYU’s instructional spending per student is at least partly attributable to NYC’s more competitive salary market.
One topic at a time tk. This thread is about endowment and financial resources. I think it i fair to say that it is impossible to compare different types of institutions using a single equation. It is also pretty clear that the US News has the financial resources rank all wrong. Michigan, which I have repeatedly proven to be well among the top 20, if not among the top 10, financially speaking, is ranked out of the top 40 according to the US News.
“No doubt Michigan employs many excellent professors. For purposes of this discussion, I think the issue is how their services are apportioned to undergraduates. How do “economies of scale” actually work in practice, when it comes to the costs of instruction? Does a very large school get a discount for hiring twice as many excellent professors as a small school does?”
You are ignoring a principal variable in instructional spending; faculty salaries. It is important to factor that in. Not all universities pay the same. Harvard and NYU, which you mentioned above, pay faculty 20% more than Michigan. Adjust for that, and Michigan matches NYU and trails Harvard by a significantly smaller margin. I am not sure about USC and how it pays faculty, but considering that UCLA pays faculty almost 15% more than Michigan, I will assume that USC also pays faculty significantly more than Michigan. In other words, and this is something I have been saying for quite some time, it is important to adjust data accordingly before passing judgement. A blanket, uniform statistical sheet does a lot more harm than good.
Also, I find your insinuation that faculty at some mega-research universities are more committed to undergraduate instruction naive. You don’t seriously believe that faculties at some mega-research universities are more devoted to undergraduate students than faculties at other mega-research universities do you?
"As far as I can tell, in terms of classroom instruction “economies of scale” are delivered primarily in the form of big classes. A large lecture class arguably is a cost-effective way for an excellent professor to instruct many students simultaneously, while conserving more of the professor’s time to do research. Ultimately, the research results may benefit many more people than even a lecture to 500 students. So big classes aren’t necessarily all bad, especially from a public policy perspective.
tk, I have many issues with class size comparisons. First of all, I am very skeptical of the data released by private universities. Their obsession, and reliance, on rankings compels them to exaggerate unscrupulously. If private universities exaggerate something as easily tabulated and verifiable as student to faculty ratios, how they manipulate class size data, which is much harder, and almost impossible, to verify, is frightening. Evidence of manipulation is clear, as private universities were known to magically leap in individual sections of the rankings (especially faculty and financial resources) by 20-30 spots in a single year back in the 1990s. Second, class size statistics mean little without context. Have you actually sat in on many similar classes on several campuses in order to draw a comparison that Michigan to know that classes with 500 students are the norm? How many intermediate level or advanced level classes at Michigan have 500 students? Are 500 classes even common at the intro level or are they only restricted to very popular majors like Economics and Psychology? Are non-intro level Philosophy, Mathematics, Physics, Anthropology, History, Classics, Language, Sociology, Chemistry classes larger at Michigan than they are at Penn or Northwestern or Cornell? Do professors at Michigan spend less time helping students understand the material in those subjects than professors at their private peer?
My experience, which is extensive beyond reasonable measure I am embarrassed to admit, in matters of class size and faculty dedication to undergraduate students is as follows:
- Differences in class size are, for the most part, an illusion, designed to appease shy and intimidated children and overprotective parents.
- Intro-level classes, particularly in popular majors, will obviously get larger as the size of the university increases. So universities with 20,000 undergrads are obviously going to have much larger intro classes than universities with fewer than 10,000 undergraduate students. That being said, does it really matter whether an intro class enrolls 150 students or 500 students? And do those intro-level classes really require the full attention of a professor in the first place?
- Intermediate to advanced classes in the physics sciences (Astronomy, Chemistry, Geology, Mathematics, Physics) and humanities (Classics, English, Foreign Languages, History, International Studies, Philosophy) will not vary in size, regardless of the size of the university. Those classes at Michigan will not be larger than their equivalent classes at say Northwestern or Brown etc...
- Intermediate to advanced classes in the life sciences and in the social sciences will be larger at Michigan than at smaller private research universities, but not by much, primarily because as a university gets larger, the student population is spread more evenly across a larger number of disciplines. For example, even if Michigan is 5 times larger than a private peer, it will not have 5 times more Econ or Life Sciences majors. The two exceptions are Political Science and Psychology, which tend to grow geometrically with the size of the university, but then again, so does the size of the faculty in those two fields.
Finally, and I have touched on this before, just because classes are smaller, it does not follow that students will learn more or better…or that they will receive more attention from their professors. Faculty at major research universities spend most of their times raising money, conducting research, writing publications, managing and advising graduate students etc…undergraduate instruction and students are really not a priority.
I like to look at many different statistics (including admission rates, average test scores, faculty salaries, average class sizes, revenues, spending on instruction and research, alumni earnings, PhD production, 4 year graduation rates, financial aid, student indebtedness, etc.) However, I think you are right to encourage caution in comparing very different kinds of schools.
I don’t think that’s so clear. They do only look at the spending side, not at revenues. However, whether we look at total revenue per FTE student or spending on instruction per FTE student, Michigan’s numbers are lower than the private schools I’ve listed. I’d be surprised to find it’s out of the top 40 … but I’d also be surprised if, by using revenues rather than spending, its overall ranking would improve very much over its current position.
Salaries are reflected in the spending. I don’t believe that having lower average salaries is a good thing worthy of extra points in a ranking. Top universities compete against each other in a national market. Colleges that can afford to pay higher salaries are thereby better able to compete (although local costs of living must come into play.)
“More committed to undergraduate instruction” are your words, not mine. I simply cited some class size numbers.
I wonder why we should believe public universities are, as a rule, any more (or less) scrupulous than private universities. The USNWR rankings of top universities usually have been quite stable for the years I’ve been tracking them.
I hope I did not write somewhere that classes with 500 students are “the norm” at Michigan. Usually when I discuss these things I like to cite specific numbers and sources. But for the record, I don’t believe classes with 500 students are the norm at Michigan.
I don’t see it that way. In my opinion, small discussion classes (if they are well managed) tend to be more challenging than large lecture classes. It can be rather intimidating to have to explain a difficult concept or justify one’s opinion in front of a mature professor and 15 or 20 of one’s peers, especially if one makes the mistake of arriving for class unprepared.
“I like to look at many different statistics (including admission rates, average test scores, faculty salaries, average class sizes, revenues, spending on instruction and research, alumni earnings, PhD production, 4 year graduation rates, financial aid, student indebtedness, etc.) However, I think you are right to encourage caution in comparing very different kinds of schools.”
Most of those criteria are interesting…and important, but they do not capture the essence of a university’s intellectual spirit and strength of its curriculum and academic programs. No statistic on earth can hope to do that. Regardless, there will be variances from university to university when looking at statistics, and just because some do better than others statistically does not make them better academic institutions. Is a university with a 10% acceptance rate better than a university with a 30% acceptance rate? Is a university that enrolls a freshman class with mean ACT/SAT scores of 31/1450 better than a university that enrolls a freshman class with mean ACT/SAT scores of 30/1400? Is a university with a 4 year graduate rate of 88% better than one with a 4 year graduate rate of 77%? And isn’t a university’s average CoA more telling than how much FA it gives out? Should a university that charges, on average, $25,000/year in tuition give out as much FA as a university that changes, on average, $45,000/yea in tuition. Some of those criteria are really difficult to measure and not very telling, such as alumni earnings and impact of operation spending.
“I don’t think that’s so clear. They do only look at the spending side, not at revenues. However, whether we look at total revenue per FTE student or spending on instruction per FTE student, Michigan’s numbers are lower than the private schools I’ve listed. I’d be surprised to find it’s out of the top 40 … but I’d also be surprised if, by using revenues rather than spending, its overall ranking would improve very much over its current position.”
We will have to disagree on this one tk, mainly because public universities earn and spend money differently. Financially, when you factor in all the variables required to come to an accurate conclusion, you will find it very difficult to argue that Michigan is not among the top 20.
“Salaries are reflected in the spending. I don’t believe that having lower average salaries is a good thing worthy of extra points in a ranking. Top universities compete against each other in a national market. Colleges that can afford to pay higher salaries are thereby better able to compete (although local costs of living must come into play.)”
Paying lower salaries yet attracting a world class faculty says a lot about a university’s appeal. Would you say that Michigan is not able to compete in attracting and retaining top faculty? If that is the case, how come Michigan’s faculty is rated among the best? But I never said that a university should be granted extra points in the rankings for paying lower salaries. What I am saying is that looking at an institution faculty salary aggregate without factoring average faculty pay is flowed.
“I wonder why we should believe public universities are, as a rule, any more (or less) scrupulous than private universities.”
Because they do not publish misleading information, like omitting thousands of graduate students from the student to faculty ratios. You frequently downplay this, but but it is cheating, plain and simple. But private universities are not inherently less honest, they merely have the opportunity and the motive to publish misleading information. Practically, because any data published by public universities are audited by the state, which makes it impossible for public universities to inflate data. Conceptually because public universities do not depend on rankings nearly as much as private universities.
“The USNWR rankings of top universities usually have been quite stable for the years I’ve been tracking them.”
Perhaps, but they were not stable between 1983 and 1998. It was during those years that many suspicious changes in reporting took place.
“I don’t see it that way. In my opinion, small discussion classes (if they are well managed) tend to be more challenging than large lecture classes. It can be rather intimidating to have to explain a difficult concept or justify one’s opinion in front of a mature professor and 15 or 20 of one’s peers, especially if one makes the mistake of arriving for class unprepared.”
I do not disagree with any of this. But virtually all lecture-style classes at Michigan are broken down into discussion groups that meet weekly. Those discussion groups contain, on average, fewer than 20 students, and are led either by faculty (in the case of advanced classes) or by TAs (usually 4th or 5th year PhD students) in the case of the larger, intro level classes. That being said, I stand by my earlier comment, class sizes do not vary much between Michigan (and other elite public universities) and their private peers. Intro classes will be much larger, although they will still be very large at private universities. But at the intermediate and advanced levels, class sizes will not vary much, if at all, depending on the department. Class discussion will be equally rich, regardless of the institution since intro-level lectures are too large for discussion, even at private universities, and all those lectures will be broken down into small discussion groups (almost always with fewer than 20 students) that meet weekly.