<p>of course hawkette is defending the practice at WashU. Next!</p>
<p>middsmith,
Wash U uses merit aid to attract high quality students. So what! Can you please explain to me and others why this is bad and who is getting hurt by this?</p>
<p>you conveniently left out the shaddy bits. Nothing's wrong with using merit aid to attract high quality students.</p>
<p>not that it's bad for WUSTL, or the students, but WUSTL's practices have been geared toward progression in the USNews rankings, WUSTL's yield, despite the scholarships, still sits at the bottom of top universities. Looks like people aren't really buying into USNews.</p>
<p>Plus, WUSTL waitlists twice the amount of people they accept to lower their acceptance rates for USNews rankings. The President has lauded their spot in commencement speeches over the years too. I find any high administrative figure to refer anythng to USNews to be just awful and insane, especially the President mind you.</p>
<p>"[WashU] leaped from 30th to ninth in the category of faculty resources in one year, between 1996 and 1997. It so happens that 1997 was the year that U.S. News adjusted its calculation of faculty salaries to reflect the cost of living. It's a measure that allows affordable St. Louis to outshine its peers on the coasts."</p>
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[quote]
Look, there are some significant operating differences in what different colleges can and do provide and these differences are often magnified in the comparisons between private and public universities. Money can drive a lot of this and public university defenders dont like being priced out of the market. Understandable, but I dont think you can solve the problem by tearing down the private universities that have done a lot over the last 5-15 years to build their reputations and attract a stronger student body, more highly regarded faculty, and provide more students services. We in America are blessed to have a large and increasing number of top colleges and I want to continue to see that number grow.
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<p>Do you really think top private universities provide all that much value added? I'm a product of one, and I think they are really just exquisite playing grounds for the rich and upper-middle class, sprinkled with flecks of "diversity" here and there to make everybody feel better about themselves. Don't get me wrong, I'm still in love with my undergraduate experience at Cornell, but I don't think it is a function of anything Cornell (or any school) has done over the last 5-15 years to do everything you suggest.</p>
<p>If every private university was to cut their student services spending by 50 percent, nothing would change in America's undergraduate education system. Students would still learn by reading books and going to lecture. Students would still sleep through lecture. Students will still party, drink, experiment in drugs, and try to figure out who they are and what the world is all about. Students would study abroad and volunteer in their local homeless shelters. Nothing would change except the level of hand-holding and needless university bureaucracy. </p>
<p>Great counterexamples are the UK and Canada. Both have pretty fantastic systems of higher education. With U of T, Waterloo, and McGill in Canada, and Oxbridge in the UK, both compare fairly well with America's top privates. But they both spend a lot less on undergraduate student education than the top American privates, with little detrimental affect. The experience at Oxbridge it out of this world, and U of T feels a lot like Columbia. At the same time, both systems produce student leaders who go on to be captains of industry, academia, and politics in their respective countries.</p>
<p>Note I am not talking about graduate study. All universities, public and private, need to keep on increasing graduate funding to help secure the research developments that the world vitally needs to survive the 21st century. But at the undergraduate level, it is largely money thrown down the drain.</p>
<p>It's an unfortunate arms race that is resulting in some really egregious misallocation of resources.</p>
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1. SAT scores. Any school can “buy” SAT scores. Nobody is stopping them. What’s wrong with it? Who loses by this happening? The student? No, he/she gets increased or full scholarship. Other students? No, they benefit from the arrival of another good student who likely brings other attractive qualities along with him/her. The faculty? Nope, they likely get a brighter average student to teach. The institution? No way; they are hoping that this student will excel on their campus and go on to great things and repay the kindness that was shown to him or her. The only one that loses is the other institution(s) that were also competing for this top student.
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<p>Actually a lot of students lose by the "buying" of SAT scores. These are typically students from the neediest families who would benefit the most from their education at a top private. The financial aid bucket is a zero sum game, and the more students who get aid for top SAT scores (e.g. from high income families) the less aid for students who may best make use of their education. </p>
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2. SAT optional. So what. Let an institution go ahead and choose this path, but I’d say it’s pretty clear that colleges are doing this for reasons other than USNWR rankings (Reed, Wake Forest) and says more about the nature of the student that are trying to attract.
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<p>So what? Take a statistics course and learn about the difficulty in comparing results from unlike or biased samples. You can't have comparisons between apples and oranges. Such comparisons are unfounded.</p>
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3. Faculty pay raises. Follow the money is true in many avenues of life, including academia. Rarely is it as simple as that, but money is often an important motivator in where faculty will offer their services. I don’t think that there are many professors changing colleges for less money (unless there is a problem). Ironically, I think that this can sometimes be contrary indicator as colleges that pay fat salaries usually aren’t doing it to provide better teaching to students like your daughter. It’s usually to boost the reputation among other academics and get research grants, neither of which necessarily does much for the quality of undergraduate education.
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<p>Perhaps a better indicator might be tenured faculty retention. Tenured faculty who stay at an institution might demonstrate that an institution is strong, stable, and that faculty are better there.</p>
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4. Shrink the entering class. If this is an institutional decision, then what’s wrong with that? It might lead to more selectivity and a higher touch academic environment for the undergraduates. However, I see more colleges talking about expanding their class size, not shrinking them.
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<p>I attended a school with 14,000 undergraduates. I frequently visited schools with less than a quarter of that population and experienced virtually no difference in the academic environment or campus experience. If anything, maybe schools with larger populations should be rewarded for using their resources to educate more of the next generation.</p>
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- Expand applications. All colleges do this. Applications and students are necessary to keep the doors open. This is business 101, even for a non-profit.
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<p>Don't you think it is a little bit unethical for a school to entice students to apply who have absolutely no chance of getting accepted?</p>
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6. Raise tuition and increase financial aid. I agree that the costs of attending college are too high for all students. Are you as a faculty member prepared to give back some of your salary to help this problem?
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<p>Actually, increase taxes and raise federal dollars for research funding. That way the major research universities will have to rely less on tuition increases to fund major research initiatives. </p>
<p>And financial aid is hard to increase when certain schools are spending a lot of money attempting to "buy" wealthy, bright kids.</p>
<p>cayuga,
Nearly all of your replies argue for a more socialistic approach. I would agree with none. Schools (public and private) can make the choices that you suggest, but I doubt many would. </p>
<p>Competition for top students and top faculty is what I see happening and, rightly or wrongly, money drives a lot of that. Presently, the privates have the money and the publics don't and the current trends are not favorable for the publics.</p>
<p>Some may call it socialism.</p>
<p>I call it curbing the excesses and negative externalities of an otherwise fantastic free market. It's not like government policy doesn't already have a hand in every aspect of our system of higher education. None would make the decisions I suggest on their own because it would be suicide. But if placed in an environment where such outcomes were made more attractive, a lot of schools would orient themselves in my way.</p>
<p>Explain to me again how spending twice as much on student support with no significant difference in student experience or output vis-a-vis some other Western countries is beneficial?</p>
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[quote]
Plus, WUSTL waitlists twice the amount of people they accept to lower their acceptance rates for USNews rankings.
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Waitlisting an excessive amount of students does not lower acceptance rate.</p>
<p>Yes. It does. Think about the math.</p>
<p>^^ it actually can because they could use the waitlist as a security blanket. they can admit fewer students, report a lower acceptance rate, and then accept a mass amount of students from the waitlist to fill the class. it is possible that they (or other colleges for that matter) may not modify their acceptance rate after accepting students from the waitlist.</p>
<p>Here's an example. A school has 5,000 applicants for 1000 spots, and an expected yield of 50 percent.</p>
<p>The school can either:</p>
<p>1) Accept 2000 students and have 1000 enroll, with an acceptance rate of 40 percent.</p>
<p>2) Accept 1500 students and have 750 enroll. It can then take the final 250 off the waitlist, for a final acceptance rate of 35 percent.</p>
<p>Waitlist usage, combined with a high dependence on early decision and aggressive merit-based aid, can really alter the way a college looks. (<em>cough WashU cough</em>)</p>
<p>"Presently, the privates have the money and the publics don't and the current trends are not favorable for the publics."</p>
<p>Hawkette, Michigan's wealthier than all but 5 universities (HYPSM) and, given the recent trend (1985-present), should continue solidifying its status as one of the wealthiest universities in the US. In 1985, Michigan wasn't even among the 30 wealthiest universities. UVa is also doing a great job.</p>
<p>Here's the thing though. Almost every major university uses a waitlist. Someone said that the problem with Wash U is that they put so many people on the waitlist. But it doesn't matter how many a school puts on because schools (including Wash U) take very few from the waitlist, never so much that the size of the waitlist actually matters. </p>
<p>You're also assuming that wait list offers get 100% yield, which is incorrect.</p>
<p>Of course, Michigan and UVa are slowly turning into quasi-privates.</p>
<p>The decline of public funding for higher education over the last thirty years is an absolute tragedy. Instead we fund awesome things like Medicare Part D.</p>
<p>It matters. And certain colleges are known to engage in its use for less than honorable purposes. </p>
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You're also assuming that wait list offers get 100% yield, which is incorrect.
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<p>No. It's correct. On the common data set, only students who are admitted and matriculated off the waitlist count as an acceptance.</p>
<p>Lots of schools wait list. So what? Personally, I'd prefer to admit students that I know have a higher likelihood of matriculation (and who also met the standards of the school). I mean, it isn't like Wash U is enrolling a weak student body.</p>
<p>alex,
I know U Michigan has a large endowment when measured in absolute dollars, but it falls significantly vis-a-vis many privates when measured in per capita terms. And would likely fall even further if the true cost of running graduate programs per capita were part of the calculation. </p>
<p>Also, if U Michigan is so wealthy, then how in the heck is U Michigan not meeting 100% of financial need of its students? I was pretty surprised to learn that and see it in the Common Data Set. I know that this is broadly the case with public universities (U Virginia being the exception), but it is a pretty strong piece of evidence about how an institution chooses to expend its resources.</p>
<p>Hawkette,</p>
<p>There you go again with the 'so what'?</p>
<p>Lots of schools indeed waitlist. But some schools have more honorable reasons to waitlist (e.g. they don't know what their yield will be) than others (e.g. trying viciously to increase their viability in the public eye).</p>
<p>For me, it's a matter of principle. The college admissions process is a confusing and stressful time for many high school seniors. Most just want to get it over with as soon as possible. For a school to not make an honest effort to enroll its entering class by a common date suggests to me that they might not have the student's best interests at heart.</p>
<p>It's not a big issue, and it doesn't affect the numbers that much. But it really highlights the type of problems that a rankings mentality produces.</p>
<p>Graduate programs are largely self-funding because research money pays for many of the students ar research asst's and the research overhead charge takes care of the rest. Without grad students you don't have a big research machine. At UM that's an $850 Million machine of which around $300 Million is overhead chargebacks. Most grad students only take a few real classes with the rest of the time spent in labs or other research activities.</p>
<p>Unlike Wash U, UM does not need to pay kids to attend.</p>