I don’t know why Lehigh’s USN ranking dropped, but it’s not because of the active and prominent Greek life culture at Lehigh. If Greek life was a negative ranking metric, Vanderbilt, UVa, Michigan, Northwestern, Wake Forest, (all of which have a prominent Greek Life presence) would also be dropping in the rankings.
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Lehigh completed an analysis at the end of last year regarding their fall in the rankings…they are clearly paying attention. Google “lehigh college rankings update to faculty senate dec 7 2018” for a ppt report. There are a number of interesting slides showing the reasons for the ranking drop, which the admin is trying to address…including low % of pell students, graduate outcomes (lower than peer schools) and relatively low ratings by counselors and peer administrators.
Lehigh also announced further Greek Life restrictions (10 point plan) in the last few days.
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I think that Lehigh is straying from what made it have an excellent STEM reputation to a more business (and now Health) focus, with too much emphasis on division 1 sports. They are moving in the strategic direction that they want however are now competing against a different class of National university. There is no way they should fall below Villanova and be tied with Syracuse.
Well if you look at the major movers a lot of them are large research universities… spending per student is a criteria… some schools considered National are really small Lehigh being one with a low acceptance rate because of a small class…
If you compare the major state schools on research (Penn State at around 800 million a year) helps these schools in the ranking
Maybe they need to rank these smaller school in the regional (although I expect them to not approve)
Just a note I think Villanova just joined the national ranking from being 1st regional
That presentation and the comments spurred by it are interesting! I follow my alma mater pretty closely
and missed that.
Some previous poster(s) a while ago said Lehigh doesn’t care about rankings but obviously they do. As flawed as they may be, they seem to be pretty effective at promoting changes. Face it, every corporation evaluates itself with the same goals and boxchecking exercises. Sure, it can be gamed as Yocco1 said, but if it results in positive changes it’s a good, though occasionally painful, thing. Hope it bears fruit and the rankings improve. Villanova is an outstanding school btw. In some ways, it’s approaching things from the opposite direction that Lehigh is…a religious liberal arts school with rapidly improving engineering and business schools.
Overall, I believe Lehigh is repositioning itself as a better rounded institution. It has to. The industrializing nation of the late 19th and 20th centuries that Lehigh was founded to supply engineers for no longer exists. You could see the beginnings of it when I went: the decision to admit women as undergraduates, the rise of the business school…and a slow but inexorable crackdown on the excesses of the Greek system (I don’t believe for a minute that they want to get rid of it, though…just control safety issues and liabilities and focus on the positive aspects).
We’ll see how it goes. Lehigh has a lot to recommend it. Strong academics and social life. Beautiful campus and architecture. College of Health looks promising if a little vague. The College of Education is still a hidden gem. Bethlehem is turning (more rapidly now) from an industrial wastescape to a trendy, artsy little city. Like I said before; with some effort, although the competition is strong, it should definitely be able to back in the top 50 if not a little higher.
Here, here! Another happy alumna. And I am shocked the taps are gone!
Wow, SonofAsa - quite the user name! Great comments too.
Thanks “Mom”!
I appreciate the lessons I learned there, many of them not in books. There’s a lot of places that give the same lessons but I happened to go there.
This is an era of incredible change for traditional 4 year colleges and universities: the rise of community colleges and state schools offering high quality education, the ease of on-line education and, above all, the premium placed on value are giving them lots of challenges. It really is an amazing time for those who think outside the educational box and choose to take advantage of it.
The new College of Health could also bring up the rankings, right?
The College of Health sounds interesting, but seems not fully fleshed out yet. Regardless, it would have to have a direct impact on one (or more) of the factors that the various ranking companies measure—not sure which factor(s) that would be.
Interesting link provided by Mwfan1921 to the power point analysis of the slight decrease in Lehighs ranked position. My takeaway is that more than a few private expensive northeastern colleges slipped a few notchess due to a change in US News ranking methodology this past year. Some public colleges out west moved up a few notches. There is a more emphasis on social mobility for disadvantaged populations under the new methodology, for example it appears graduation performance is no longer just evaluated for the whole college class, but is now relatively evaluated as to how well students on pell grants fare compared to the overall class cohort as a whole. Also colleges that enroll a higher percent of pell grant students get an adjustment upward to their scores. Many public universities seem to benefit under this new methodology.
Interesting thread. I was a fraternity member in the 90s at a school with a prominent Greek system. I made wonderful lifelong friends, but, with the benefit age, I can’t honestly say the Greek system made the university a better place. Sure, we participated in philanthropy and had a close-knit brotherhood, but at what cost? Excessive binge drinking, objectification of the opposite sex, cruel exclusion of a few kids just trying to find a place for themselves on campus? I’m not proud of a lot of my Greek experience. It’s shocking that some parents would be upset that a school administration is concerned enough about the “dark side” to address it, though I do agree that college kids will drink so best to have it on campus, in the open. As long as Greek alums, who can’t see past their chapters as the focal point of their university identity, remain the most loyal donors at great schools with large endowments, there’s no way universities like Lehigh, Northwestern and Penn would take a bold enough stand to abolish or seriously reign in the system. If my alma-mater did away with Greek life, I’d actually be inclined to give more.
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