This month, Joe Glover, the UF Provost gave a presentation to the UF Faculty Senate on rankings. In particular, how UF broke into the US News top 10 Public Universities, and what we would have to do to be a top 5 public university.
It’s an interesting breakdown into the numbers, and how some of UF priorities should impact these results (like the initiative to higher 500 additional faculty and bring the student to faculty ratio down to 16 to 1).
The presentation starts around 6:30.
It all depends on which rankings you’re trying to game.
If you want to improve in ARWU and the Times rankings, you want to improve research output, faculty awards, etc. There, UF trails a bunch of US publics like Berkeley, Michigan, UCLA, UW-Madison, UNC, UW-Seattle, UCSD, UIUC, Georgia Tech, UVA, and the U of Texas.
To move up the USNews ranking, you just have to figure out which factor(s) to target: retention and grad rate? alumni giving/satisfaction? selectivity? Academic rep? That last one seems like it would take the longest time. UF does not have the academic rep of some of the schools near it in the ranking, like UW-Madison, Illinois, Washington and Texas, but they’ve found other ways to improve their placement.
To be honest, most folks really don’t care about the ARWU or Times rankings (in the US). As for research, UF is measured by the state (via the performance based model) on research output, faculty awards, etc. These are also used by other rankings systems. UF does well in R&D spending (slightly higher than Georgia Tech and Berkeley), but is trailing in faculty awards, etc. Only way to fix that is by hiring “critical” faculty, which UF has been doing for the last few years.
US News Peer ranking is a hard needle to move. It’s a survey completed by college presidents and provost. How much do these Presidents and Provost really know about the 200 some odd schools they’ve been asked to rank? How much does that have to do with undergraduate rankings?
One critical factor that allowed UF to break into the top 10, was an increase in the peer score, from 3.6 to 3.7 (the first time the UF peer score has increased in 20 years).
UF has past UW-Madison, Illinois, Washington and Texas, in the rankings, even with a lower Peer score. UF does better in the less subjective measures, such as graduation rates, freshman retention rates, test scores, % in 10 Top of HS class, class size, % faculty who are full time, financial ranking, etc.
Academic rep is something that will have to take care of itself. Improve what matters, like graduation and retention rates, student to faculty ratio, and faculty quality (which will translate into awards, R&D, etc.).
At the end of the day, why does UF even care about these rankings? UF cares, because the Governor, state legislature and Alumni care very much about that fact. Setting the goal to be a top 5 public university, is how UF gets these stake holders to financial support UF"s “preeminence” plan with funding and donations. Of course, these stake holders will hold UF to its plan and expect results (hence the states performance based funding program).
@Gator88NE you make an excellent case for the attention given to the rankings! The people of Florida should care about the rankings because the graduates of Florida’s colleges fill a high percentage of the jobs in the state. The better the rankings, the higher the caliber of students that will go there, which then feeds better workers out to our businesses. California, a state with twice the population of Florida, has 5 or 6 public colleges (depending on which ranking) that surpass UF, not to mention the private colleges. It was a conscious decision by the state to make the UC system the best in the country. Florida needs to grow UF into a school that competes with Berkeley and UCLA so that we can keep and attract the very best students. Our economy depends on it.
Pretty sure that UF is already in the Top 5 with respect to this very important ranking : Lowest in-state tuition for a National University = $ 6,381 for 2017-2018.