T20 schools,
Brown, Columbia (ironic), Duke, Cornell moved up
Darthmouth fell
Wash U, Univ Chicago, and Vanderbilt fell a lot (relatively)
USNWR made these rankings a little more useful and slightly less toxic with their adjustments this year.
Private schools with $1,000,000-per student endowments and public flagships that enroll only 10 or 12% Pell-eligible students deserve to take a big hit in the rankings, and hopefully these drops will inspire them to do the right thing.
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Tulane definitely took a big hit. Some other well known schools that moved down quite a bit were Tufts (#40 after being ranked consistently in the 20s), Northeastern (fell out of the T50) and Villanova (also fell out of T50). Of course the schools at the top remain unchanged and that will never change as long as “reputation” is the #1 ranking criteria.
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You are correct. They were awarded the Carnegie Classification of R2 Doctoral University at the beginning of 2022. That’s what brought them from regional to national.
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All either literally at the bottom of Pell-recipient students percentage or very close to it.
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I think part of the issue is it was considered gameable. It also was basically an inverse size measure, which is something to consider but for many a tradeoff issue.
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Perhaps a cautionary tale on investing so much focus/resources on chasing a ranking by specifically targeting its methodology, only to be vulnerable when that methodology changes.
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I note WUSTL has been trying to change its economic diversity, but it faces a lot of well-funded competition, and it is apparently slow going.
Not that I have a problem with the methodology change, but there is a lot of self-selection involved, and changing branding isn’t necessarily easy.
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While that is true, the lack of Pell-recipients didn’t seem to hurt Duke (257), Notre Dame (257) , BC (257) or Georgia Tech (257) when it came time to rank. Not to mention, Brown is down there as well (230) and, more importantly, had a decline in the number of Pell students in that survey - didn’t keep them from rising to #9.
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Not much change in the top 25 for Maine SLACs, although Bates and Colby switched positions (24 and 25). See https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges
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WUSTL’s endowment per student is over double schools like Columbia, Cornell, Johns Hopkins, etc.
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Yes, but it is also competing with other privates for high number/low SES kids. It is really all them collectively it is competing with for a limited pool, indeed a shrinking pool.
Again, not that I think WUSTL is wrong to be doing things like going no-loan with need (their latest effort), nor wrong for people to be tracking such things. I just think it is understandable why this is more of a tanker ship than a dinghy when it comes to changing relative position.
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The obvious conclusion to these new rankings is that any school outside the T40 should cease operations and no longer exist.
Rutgers survived the college Squid Games (barely).
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Here’s a release from WFU regarding the new rankings:
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Several schools impacted by ranking rchanges reacted with quotes in the NYT article this morning (I used a gift link so anyone can read it).
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If you look at the metrics if you bought a subscription, pell grant factors are less than graduation rate specifically predicted graduation rate which is now 10% of the ranking. Those schools have exceptionally high graduation rates. They also added an ROI metric at 5%, saying how many grads make more than high-school graduate.
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Don’t have time to wade into the CDS’s (CDSs? CDSes?), but it could be that Duke, Brown, Caltech, etc have better outcomes for their Pell students.
Okay, I’ll wade into one CDS—Tulane has a 10-pt 5-year Pell graduation rate gap, e.g.
Can a school be a good school without a good Pell grant score?
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Yes, it can be perfect for some students. Personally, I care about class size and undergrad teaching. Elon took first place in undergrad teaching but dropped like a rock in overall rank to 133 due to having few Pell kids.
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My two cents is good for an individual is a hugely variable concept.
Whereas from a policy perspective, a good public school should be serving the public well.
Some people also believe good private schools should be doing that. I think it is nice if they do, but I am less adamant about the degree to which they do.
So if some people opt out of public schools for private schools that do less of that, I am generally OK with that.
I better be, since we have done that K-12 too.
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