Is it time for separate Public & Private National University Rankings?

College Search & Selection
21

<p>I couldn't agree with you more, bclintonk. I especially agree with idea that not all students graduating in the top ten percent of their class are created equal across geographic regions.</p>

<p>A couple more considerations to add when gaging the quality of a public institution:</p>

<p>1) Education of transfer students and tracking the students who transfer elsewhere. Currently, US News focuses all of its efforts on the six year graduation rate among a cohort of entering freshmen. But public universities also have a mission to educate community college transfers and students from "lesser" state schools. How come there is no tracking done of these educational outcomes, and no consideration given for those universities that do a particularly good job of assuming community college students -- students that comprise more than half the current educational system in this country?</p>

<p>Similarly, schools should not be penalized for students who transfer to top privates. Binghamton sends a lot of sophomores on to Cornell. And up until a few years ago, Cornell was sending 1-2% of its class on to MIT, Stanford, or Harvard.</p>

<p>2) Extension and community involvement. One of the hallmarks of the land grant colleges in the upper Midwest is their resourceful cooperative extension divisions, of which many students take advantage of the service-learning opportunities they provide. These programs benefit not only the students, but also the state and the taxpayers who support the cause of public higher education. </p>

<p>3) Research output. These are the things that make the world a better place.</p>

<p>4) Similar to the Washington Monthly rankings, some consideration should be included for the percent of students who go on for careers in public service, whether it be education, military, foreign service, or civil service positions across local, state, and national government. These occupations offer a lot of positive externalities to their communities.</p>

<p>So all said, I think the Washington Monthly rankings offer a pretty good proxy for the types of considerations we would be looking for:</p>

<p><a href="http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2007/0709.natlrankings.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2007/0709.natlrankings.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>And it should be no surprise that only two true privates make the top twenty -- Stanford and MIT -- make the top twenty. And a third -- Cornell -- is unique for its private/public partnership.</p>

<p>So the people in Massachusetts may claim that private education is a substitute for public higher education, but the evidence points to the contrary.</p>

22

<p>
[quote]
If you want a broad quality academic selection, big-time sports, a hot social life and a great college town there are maybe three or four privates that cover all that. There are 20 or more publics.

[/quote]
20 or more? I don't know about that.

[quote]
Education of transfer students and tracking the students who transfer elsewhere.

[/quote]
I don't think Harvard's taking transfers the next two years because one of their dorms fell into disrepair. That doesn't mean that Harvard isn't one of the most desirable schools in America though. Also, I'm not sure if there's a mathematical way to quantify this category.

[quote]
Extension and community involvement.

[/quote]
There's community service available at every school, so would this really be a meaningful category?<br>

[quote]
Research output.

[/quote]
For undergraduates, the quality of research being done is much more important than the quantity. And once again, is there really a meaningful way to quantify this? The peer assessment score should theoretically cover it.<br>

[quote]
Similar to the Washington Monthly rankings, some consideration should be included for the percent of students who go on for careers in public service, whether it be education, military, foreign service, or civil service positions across local, state, and national government. These occupations offer a lot of positive externalities to their communities.

[/quote]
Are you joking? We're just gonna forget about all the people who are going into business/law/medicine? There's nothing wrong with wanting to be in a lucrative line of work.</p>

23

<p>
[quote]
There's community service available at every school, so would this really be a meaningful category?

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Of course it is meaningful. Because William and Mary and Emory really are doing things like this:</p>

<p>Ohio</a> State University Extension</p>

<p>
[quote]
For undergraduates, the quality of research being done is much more important than the quantity.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Not necessarily. Consider a school with one high quality lab that allows three undergraduate research interns. Or a school with ten medium quality labs that allows thirty research interns total. Where would you rather go as an undergrad?</p>

<p>The undergraduate experience is much more about being exposed to the scientific process and analytical thinking, not Albert Einstein theoretics.</p>

<p>
[quote]
Are you joking? We're just gonna forget about all the people who are going into business/law/medicine? There's nothing wrong with wanting to be in a lucrative line of work.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>When did I ever say anything otherwise? I am currently in a lucrative line of work, but fully realize that teachers and foreign service officers and the like are providing a benefit to society disproportionate to the salary. On the other hand, I'm not certain I'm creating any sort of net benefit to society these days.</p>

<p>
[quote]
I don't think Harvard's taking transfers the next two years because one of their dorms fell into disrepair.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>We're talking about ranking publics here. And I love how Harvard, sitting on the GDP of a mid-size South American country, can let one of their dorms fall into "disrepair".</p>

24

<p>20+ Good big-time publics</p>

<p>UCLA
UCB
U Washington
U Colorado
Texas
TAMU
Kansas
Mizzu
The Big 10
UVa
UNC
UGA
UF
Umd
VTech
UConn
RU</p>

25

<p>
[quote]
Of course it is meaningful. Because William and Mary and Emory really are doing things like this:

[/quote]
What I meant was, how could community service be measured when every school has it in some form or another?

[quote]
Not necessarily. Consider a school with one high quality lab that allows three undergraduate research interns. Or a school with ten medium quality labs that allows thirty research interns total. Where would you rather go as an undergrad?

[/quote]
I think I misunderstood what you meant by research output then. For example, I thought you were saying the school would be judged by how many new papers the professors put out.

[quote]
When did I ever say anything otherwise? I am currently in a lucrative line of work, but fully realize that teachers and foreign service officers and the like are providing a benefit to society disproportionate to the salary. On the other hand, I'm not certain I'm creating any sort of net benefit to society these days.

[/quote]
So wouldn't you agree that it's equally important to track business/law/medicine placement rates as teacher/foreign service out rates?</p>

<p>Also, before I was doubting whether there's 20 or more publics with "broad quality academic selection." A lot of the publics listed above are sincerely lacking in key academic areas.</p>

26

<p>
[quote]
What I meant was, how could community service be measured when every school has it in some form or another?

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Community outreach and extension dollars spent per student? Per faculty?</p>

<p>
[quote]
For example, I thought you were saying the school would be judged by how many new papers the professors put out.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>No. Probably some combination of a peer assessment score and research dollars per faculty or peer student. I might also want to take into consideration percent of undergrads with a research experience by the time they graduate. The Washington Monthly takes into consideration the number of PhDs that are produced. That works for me.</p>

<p>
[quote]
So wouldn't you agree that it's equally important to track business/law/medicine placement rates as teacher/foreign service out rates?

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Sure. But I think it's harder to track the less prestigious jobs that publics are so good at doing. Like accountants. Every advanced economy needs accountants. And very good accountants are produced by public schools. Sot of like how every advanced economy needs teachers, but the teaching quality in the country is going down the drain.</p>

27

<p>Which public schools are lacking in key academic areas? Every one has some outstanding areas and is solid in many others. Now Va Tech is a fine engineering school but not so great in liberal arts but neither are some top engineering schools elsewhere.</p>

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<p>To Moderator(s),
Above post (# 27) was intended for another thread and has been copied to there. Please delete the post on this thread. Thanks.</p>

29

<p>


</p>

<p>That's a really good question, barrons, and it ought to apply to all major research universities, not just the publics. A school's overall PA score is a very crude barometer of overall program strength. A better metric would be how many top-10 or top-25 departments a school has as measured by faculty strength, and in what areas. You can dig this info out of NRC rankings of grad programs, but it's a tedious process and the data, from 1995, is seriously out of date. But it ought to be possible to construct an online data base that would allow you to make meaningful side-by-side comparisons of schools. This could be extremely helpful to prospective applicants. </p>

<p>My D, for example, is very keen on classics but also interested in other humanities fields like literature, modern Romance languages, philosophy, and some social sciences like history & poli sci. She thinks she wants to major in classics but she could easily change her mind, so we're looking for schools that have strengths in all those areas. We're looking both at some good LACs, where it's generally harder to make program-specific comparisons, and several large research universities where the NRC faculty quality rankings at least tell us something about faculty strengths. Here's how three schools---two leading publics and one leading private-- stack up as measured by the 1995 NRC rankings:</p>

<p>Classics: Berkeley #2, Michigan #3, Brown #6
English: Berkeley #2, Michigan #16, Brown #14
Comp Lit: Berkeley #10, Michigan #15, Brown #20
French: Berkeley #7, Michigan #3, Brown #21
Philosophy: Berkeley #14, Michigan #8, Brown #14
History: Berkeley #2, Michigan #3, Brown #14
Poli Sci: Berkeley #2, Michigan #2, Brown not ranked</p>

<p>USNews ranks fewer programs:
English: Berkeley #2, Michigan #12, Brown #15
History: Berkeley #2, Michigan #7, Brown #15
Poli Sci: Berkeley #5, Michigan #3, Brown #46</p>

<p>Basically what I glean from this is that Berkeley, Michigan and Brown are all strong in just about all the areas D is interested in, though there's a pretty clear pecking order: Berkeley is distinctly ahead of Michigan in several areas, and Brown lags either of the publics in several areas. Of the three, Michigan's clearly the easiest to get into, though by no means a sure thing (we're OOS for both Berkeley and Michigan). On the other hand, Brown has the advantage of an LAC-like setting with a strong orientation toward undergrad education. The size of Berkeley or Michigan would not be a problem in classics and philosophy which are small departments at the undergrad level, but could be more of an issue in history or poli sci. So there are trade-offs.</p>

<p>Of course, all this could change when the new NRC rankings come out in the Fall, or as D's interests evolve between now and college decision time, still nearly two years away.</p>

30

<p>This is definitely one of the best threads on college search, very constructive, informative and relevant to the issues discussed. While I may not contribute anything more than what's been given so far, the least I could and want to do is to give a very big thank you to all who have contributed.</p>

31

<p>bclintock. I fail to see how, "Berkeley is distinctly ahead of Michigan in several areas" from your statistics without commenting that Michigan is also distinctly ahead of Berkeley in several areas? Out of the seven disciplines you stated, Michigan is right after Berkeley in three of them (2-3), rated ahead of Berkeley in two of them, and rated behind Berkeley in two others. I would say for the most part that Berkeley and Michigan are "even" in overall comparisons of these area.</p>

32

<p>Cal has the edge over Michigan in the Hard Sciences and Engineering. Michigan and Cal are even in the Humanities, Social Sciences, Law and Business. </p>

<p>Overall, I give the edge to Cal, but it is only by a small margin. At the graduate level, Cal is among the top 2 or 3 and Michigan is among the top 7 or 8 and at the undergraduate level, Cal is among the top 10 and Michigan among the top 15. Among public universities, Cal and Michigan are 1 and 2 (respectively) at the graduate level and both are among the top 3 at the undergraduate level.</p>

33

<p>
[quote]
Overall, I give the edge to Cal, but it is only by a small margin.

[/quote]

It's a bigger margin than you think...;)</p>

<p>Current Faculty Honors:</p>

<p>National Academy of Engineering:
Berkeley: 85
Michigan: 22</p>

<p>National Academy of Science:
Berkeley: 132
Michigan: 19</p>

<p>Nobel Prize:
Berkeley: 7
Michigan: 1</p>

<p>Wolf Prize:
Berkeley: 4
Michigan: 0</p>

<p>Fields Medal:
Berkeley: 3
Michigan: 0</p>

34

<p>UCB, almost all of those are in the Sciences and Engineering, which I admit fully are superior at Cal than at Michigan.</p>

35

<p>^ Cal has a Poet Laureate too...;)</p>

36

<p>UCB, get back in line! hehe!</p>

37

<p>^ Yes, sir...:D</p>

38

<p>"CayugaRed: Don't kid yourself. You and everyone you know consulted those rankings when they were applying to schools."</p>

<p>I didn't look at the undergraduate rankings, just the graduate rankings. If you know that you want to go into %subject%, then why would you care about much more than how good each school is at %subject%? Isn't that many orders of magnitude more important than the probability of being in a class with more than 50 people (without taking into account whether those large intro courses are in areas you're interested in, or if you can place out with AP credit, or if there's a smaller Honors version you can take), or how much money the school as a whole hypothetically has to spend (especially for people in areas that don't require much funding), or any of the other things that factor into the undergrad rankings which I have found to be wholly irrelevant to my college experience?</p>

39

<p>rjkofnovi:
I guess I was looking at Michigan's #15 in comp lit and #16 in English when I said Berkeley had the edge over Michigan given my daughter's interests. The only field in which Berkeley wasn't in the top 10 was philosophy, at #14. But I agree, in the humanities and social sciences generally they're very closely matched, and a ranking in the mid-teens among strongest programs in the nation is hardly a badge of shame. Most schools, even very good private schools, would consider it a great honor. Heck, Brown had only one top 10 program in this group, and most people consider Brown a pretty terrific school.</p>

40

<p>When I first came to CC over two years ago, and for much of my time here, I thought that the publics should be ranked with the publics. My fear was that if they were ranked separately, some might (erroneously) interpret as meaning that the publics can’t compete with the top privates which is a view that I don’t subscribe to. </p>

<p>But after months of discussion and posting and debating, it has become increasingly clear to me that public university proponents and defenders of the private elites often use and prioritize different metrics. For the publics, it’s almost always about a subjective evaluation of faculty quality as measured by other academics and a much lower interest in comparing on other metrics. For the privates, the arguments usually stress objective data indicating stronger student profiles, smaller class environments, greater institutional resources, etc. </p>

<p>Between the commonly large differences in enrollments and the very important difference in institutional mandate and the sometimes different emphases on faculty responsibilities and quality (research vs teaching), I have come to the view that the publics and the privates should be ranked separately. </p>

<p>So, while USNWR is unlikely to give us the ability to customize our rankings by adjusting the weightings, let me offer my own suggestions and invite others to post their thoughts.</p>

<p>PUBLIC UNIVERSITY METHODOLOGY</p>

<p>40% Peer Assessment score
10% Graduation Rate (6-year only)
5% Freshmen Retention
15% Faculty Resources
15% Selectivity (with 10% to top 10% and 5% to SAT scores and 0% to acceptance rate)
10% Financial Resources
5% Pell grantees
0% Alumni Giving</p>

<p>PRIVATE UNIVERSITY METHODOLOGY</p>

<p>10% Peer Assessment Score provided by academics
10% Faculty Assessment score provided by non-academics
10% Graduation Rate (4% to 4-Year and 6% to 6-Year)
0% Freshmen Retention
25% Faculty Resources
25% Selectivity (with 15% to test scores and 5% to top 10% and 5% to acceptance rate)
15% Financial Resources
5% Alumni Giving</p>

<p>My sense is that these weightings reflect the interests and priorities of partisans in the public and private camps although others will undoubtedly have somewhat different weightings. But I think it is clear that the institutional comparisons break down when a single methodology is applied. For the record, here is the current USNWR methodology:</p>

<p>25% Peer Assessment (measures the schools reputation according to other academics)</p>

<p>20% Retention (two factors comprise this ranking)
6-year gradutation rate (80%)
Freshman retention rate (20%)</p>

<p>20% Faculty Resources (six factors comprise this score)
% of classes with fewer than 20 students (30%)
% of classes with more than 50 students (10%)
Faculty Salary (35%)
% of profs with highest degree in their fields (15%)
Student-faculty ratio (5%)
% of faculty that are full-time (5%)</p>

<p>15% Student Selectivity (three factors comprise this score)
SAT/ACT Test Scores of Enrolled Students (50%)
% of enrolled students who graduated HS in top 10% and top 25% (40%)
Total Admittance rate (10%)</p>

<p>10% Financial Resources (measures average spending per student at the school)</p>

<p>5% Graduation Rate Performance (measures diff in 6-yr graduation rate and the predicted rate)</p>

<p>5% Alumni Giving Rate</p>