Part IV: Ignore the Rankings & Focus on the Data (Financial Resources)

College Search & Selection
1

<p>How much money colleges have and how they spend can often make an important difference in one’s college experience. An institution with money and a willingness to spend it can provide more and better resources for its students, including better financial aid and student counseling assistance in a variety of areas.</p>

<p>Financial Resources, as defined by USNWR, are measured by the amount that the institutions spend per student on instruction, research, public service, academic support, student services, institutional support and operations and maintenance. Inclusion of research expenditures in this measure provides institutions with extra incentives to push their faculty to generate more external research funding.</p>

<p>Below are how the USNWR Top 50 National Universities compared on the basis of Financial Resources. As a further clue to the financial power of these institutions, I also include their per capita endowments:</p>

<p>USNWR Financial Resources Rank , Endowment Per Capita , College</p>

<p>1 , $891,684 , Caltech
2 , $2,212,096 , Yale
3 , $147,388 , Johns Hopkins
4 , $973,414 , MIT
4 , $460,114 , Wash U
6 , $218,113 , Wake Forest
7 , $583,046 , U Chicago
8 , $2,070,846 , Harvard
8 , $295,580 , U Penn
10 , $867,677 , Stanford
11 , $642,885 , Dartmouth
12 , $2,331,935 , Princeton
12 , $407,041 , Northwestern
14 , $506,017 , Duke
15 , $294,378 , Vanderbilt
16 , $310,861 , Columbia
17 , $273,976 , Cornell
17 , $518,529 , Emory
19 , $204,467 , U Rochester
20 , $229,924 , Case Western
22 , $110,251 , Carnegie Mellon
24 , $340,159 , Brown
24 , $907,589 , Rice
26 , $77,383 , UCLA
28 , $42,376 , UCSD
29 , $172,746 , U Michigan
29 , $57,907 , U Washington
31 , $85,288 , U North Carolina
31 , $48,311 , UC Davis
35 , $93,392 , Georgetown
35 , $182,145 , Tufts
38 , $544,297 , Notre Dame
38 , $57,737 , NYU
40 , $101,612 , UC Berkeley
40 , $121,101 , USC
40 , $109,377 , Rensselaer
40 , $26,188 , U Florida
46 , $71,430 , Georgia Tech
47 , $158,303 , Lehigh
47 , $130,128 , Brandeis
47 , $42,308 , U Wisconsin
47 , $114,181 , Tulane
53 , $34,668 , UC Irvine
57 , $180,163 , U Virginia
59 , $36,939 , U Illinois
59 , $37,156 , Penn State
69 , $129,184 , Boston Coll
96 , $324,352 , U Texas
96 , $33,678 , UC Santa Barbara
96 , $64,640 , Syracuse
106 , $82,591 , W&M</p>

2

<p>
[quote]
Inclusion of research expenditures in this measure provides institutions with extra incentives to push their faculty to generate more external research funding.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>And that's the most flawed part. Not only does it give an advantage to those with med schools, but look at JHU: #3?</p>

3

<p>JHU spends about 5 trillion dollars each year on research...yeah this USNWR stat is flawed</p>

4

<p>Cornell's endowment per student in Cornell's endowed colleges is about $430,000 per student (excluding the New York State statutory colleges).</p>

<p>following is calculated from IPEDS:
ranking by endowment per student with SAT scores and ACT</p>

<p>school, endowment per student, SAT CR 25th, SAT CR 75th, SAT Math 25th, SAT math 75th, ACT 25th, ACT 75th</p>

<p>Princeton University 1871046.85 690 790 700 790 30 34
Yale University 1572412.44 700 790 690 790 29 34
Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering 1459844.59 690 780 740 800 33 36
Harvard University 1131658.79 700 800 700 790 31 35
Pomona College 943138.98 690 770 690 760 29 34
Grinnell College 889845.22 630 740 620 720 29 32
Swarthmore College 835199.2 680 780 680 760 27 33
Massachusetts Institute of Technology 818793.15 660 760 720 800 31 34
Stanford University 793637.01 660 760 680 790 29 33
Amherst College 791217.47 670 770 660 760 29 34
Rice University 773027.45 640 730 670 780 29 34
California Institute of Technology 761902.91 700 780 770 800 32 35
Williams College 714978.39 660 760 660 760 29 33
Wellesley College 628662.22 660 750 640 730 28 32
Dartmouth College 575012.89 670 770 680 780 28 34
Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art 454803.82 610 700 640 770 29 33
Cornell University Endowed Colleges 430096.13 645 740 690 785
Emory University 399743.73 640 730 660 740 29 33
Bowdoin College 392447.55 650 740 650 730 29 33
Haverford College 387453.67 650 750 640 740 Blank Blank
University of Notre Dame 383019.37 640 750 660 760 31 34
Smith College 377521.92 590 710 560 670 25 30
Washington University in St Louis 349280.32 680 750 690 780 30 33
Agnes Scott College 339378.06 550 680 500 610 22 29
Trinity University 328364.25 600 690 610 690 27 31
Claremont McKenna College 328265.2 650 750 650 750 27 32
Carleton College 327206.38 650 750 660 740 29 33
University of Chicago 322604.93 670 770 650 760 28 33
University of Richmond 320886.33 583 688 610 690 27 31
Bryn Mawr College 317192.85 620 730 580 690 26 30
Middlebury College 316006.06 630 740 640 740 29 32
Harvey Mudd College 312545.69 690 760 740 800 Blank Blank
Macalester College 304221.05 630 730 620 710 28 32
Vassar College 303832.45 660 740 640 710 29 31</p>

5

<p>The one year USN&WR tried using the actual dollar numbers spent per student for its weighting, as opposed to using the ordinal scale as here (with effectively the number 2 school rated at 99 point something % of the first school, etc.), CalTech and Johns Hopkins were the #1 and #2 National Universities, if memory serves. They got rid of that idea quickly.
The money spent at research universities with a large graduate science component and a relatively small undergraduate student body skews the data for these two schools and others like Chicago.
In practice one of the most flawed indicators.
As for Wake, what's the funny business? WashU is a well known perp.</p>

6

<p>
[quote]
And that's the most flawed part. Not only does it give an advantage to those with med schools, but look at JHU: #3?

[/quote]
</p>

<p>
[quote]
JHU spends about 5 trillion dollars each year on research...yeah this USNWR stat is flawed

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Johns Hopkins spent the most money out of all universities on Research and development for the past 28 years in a row.</p>

<p>That is $1.5 billion dollars a year, double that of University of Wisconsin's 800 million and many times that of the HYPSM spending on research and development. $!.5 billion is equivalent to nearly HALF of Hopkin's 3.2 billion dollar endowment. Every year, they spend equivalent of half their endowment on research and development.</p>

<p>Hopkins get the most funding from NIH and federal grants to supplement research out of ALL universities in the world.</p>

<p>JHU APL gets the most with atleast $630 million alone from NASA. Bloomberg School of Public Health gets 200 million from this federal agency that SOLELY fundings Hopkins School of Public health. The Medical school gets probably 400 million with the Arts and Sciences with a meager 123 million dollars.</p>

7

<p>Yet another reason to be careful in viewing this sort of data. The Hopkins ranking in NIH funding is misleading due to a detail that is insignificant to students, but alters the reported numbers. At some medical centers, like Hopkins, due to their administrative structure, the NIH money is recorded as going to the medical school, and hence to the university. At other places, like the Harvard hospitals, the money is recorded as going to the hospital itself, rather than the medical school. The effect is the same-faculty at the medical school doing research in the medical school and the hospitals. However, since all reportedly goes to the medical school in one case, the dollars add up to a big number. If you add up the funding going to all the Harvard hospitals you get a much bigger number.</p>

<p>The only way to get this stat right (although not sure why one would care) would be to identify the affiliated hospitals for each medical school and add the totals for the medical school and the hospitals.</p>

<p>Look, the raw dollars spent divided by the number of students just does not tell you anything worth knowing about a college. For some places the medical school is far from the rest of the university, and has virtually no effect on the educational experience of undergraduates (Cornell). For others the research operation is central to the student experience (?Caltech). The difference is not in how much money they spend, but how involved the students are. You simply cannot get this from knowing the dollars spent.</p>

8

<p>Ugh... Let me reiterate.</p>

<p>Like I said, JHU Applied Physics Lab gets twice as much money from NASA than the Medical school to fund R&D Contracts, Fellowships, Research Grants, Training grants, and other awards relevant to gather and collect Hubble Space Telescope information, New Horizons Pluto-Kuiper Belt missions, ambitious Solar Probe Mission to the Sun, Aegis Anti-Ballistic Missile Defence systems. etc....</p>

<p>Much much more than the medical school or the hospital (which I believe is affiliated with the university but gets separate funding through another avenue system)</p>

<p>Though your right, I don't really see how this money is being spent per student. So it is kinda misleading. I might be referrencing the wrong data.</p>

<p>
[quote]
Look, the raw dollars spent divided by the number of students just does not tell you anything worth knowing about a college.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>ARe you sure?</p>

<p>Financial resources per student represent only one dimension of college quality. The amount that is spent is directly correlated to how committed the faculty is willing to improve graduate rates since research has shown that college completion rates are positively related to resources per student. Ranking</a> Affects the Financial Resources of Public Colleges</p>

<p>It not possible to get at the micromanagement level to see where every little bitty dollar is being spent and its relative impact on student life and student quality. What is known is that the more money that is spent on 'students' shows that graduation rates improve responsively. The FInancial resources aspect cannot be discounted. Just because you didn't know Hopkins spent that much or was that big of a research major powerhouse that spent that much per student (regardless where every bittty tiny dollar is being allocated), that doesn't neccessarily mean that Hopkins shouldn't be at #3. You learn something new everyday.</p>

<p>Of course, these financial resources rank does not assert anything. It doesn't assert that student educational experience of undergraduates is related to amount of spending per student. All we know for sure is that greater money spent per student, higher graduate rates. Thats simple. Financial resources is one of a myriad of different factors to consider when it comes to educational experience and quality. One of many.</p>

9

<p>I'll explain why I think it's ridiculous that JHU is #3:</p>

<p>Those numbers are deceptive. JHU has a huge med school that takes up quite a bit of its research $$. In addition, I believe JHU includes in its figures the research funds for some lab that is technically government-owned.</p>

<p>Now consider this: Berkeley, a school without a med school, spends roughly $500 million a year on research. It has Lawrence Berkeley National Labs, too, which is another $400-500 million a year. UCSF has always played the role of Berkeley's med school (in fact, at one point, it officially was; but due to the impracticalities that wars presented and the possibility of getting its own governmental funds, the two separated in name; hoewver, today they share faculty, students, funds, programs, etc.), and if you add the money that Berkeley spends on research + LBNL research + UCSF research, it comes out to $1.8 billion a year, beating out JHU by a few hundred million dollars.</p>

<p>So as you can see, there are certain aspects that can give a deceptive advantage to some universities, and these universities can also practice shady methods in reporting their research expenditures (like including governmental lab research funds). JHU happens to do this well.</p>

<p>Not that any of this matters. It's the quality, not the quantity, of research that matters; that's why, in measures of the scholarly and practical impact of the research output of universities, JHU falls far behind universities like Stanford, Harvard, Berkeley, MIT, etc. despite it "spending" substantially more research $. Spending doesn't necessarily mean spending well. Sorry, but while JHU is a research powerhouse, it's left in the dust of the universities listed above.</p>

10

<p>
[quote]
can also practice shady methods in reporting their research expenditures

[/quote]
</p>

<p>It is not shady, just different financial organization, hence different reporting.</p>

<p>As far as I can tell, Bound and Turner did not adjust their results for BA attainment vs state financial resources to education for measures of college preparedness such as SAT scores, or for family income (which is highly associated with graduation rates).</p>

<p>I don't have an opinion on whether JHU is "one of the top three research universities". In fact, the very claim is meaningless. What on earth does the quality of the research done by grad students at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory have to do with the education of someone who is interested in an undergraduate major in medieval history? My point is that this should have no effect on a student's decision of where to go to college. What matters is how the totality of the college experience, including but not limited to the academic opportunities in the fields that interest them, fits with each student. </p>

<p>These research expenditure figures are dominated by funding for scientific research, which is far more expensive than social sciences work, and on a different scale altogether from the humanities. Most students do NOT major in science. So people interested in things in which most students major would be completely mislead by chasing the place with the highest level of science funding.</p>

<p>Add to that the difficulty of interpreting the expenditure-per-student data, even among universities with similar student compositions and mix of research missions, and these figures become meaningless for college selection.</p>

11

<p>
[quote]
It is not shady, just different financial organization, hence different reporting.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>It is--and it happens all the time. Colleges will want to seem to be the best they can, so they fudge on the numbers, or include (or don't include) things they should. So Columbia, for example, supposedly does not include engineering admit statistics in its acceptance rate. That's shady. You can say it's just a "different financial organization," but JHU's reported research expenditures are misleading, especially when they're used to rank universities. (I daresay JHU would be knocked out of the top 15 if it didn't report this way.)</p>

12

<p>It isn't JHU that is acting in a "shady" manner. It is the USNWR that makes absolutely no effort to properly intepret the data. The USNWR does the same in almost every single criterion. SAT scores aren't properly balanced, aluumni donation rates are treated all equally, financial and faculty resources don't take university makeup into consideration. Just another way the USNWR knowingly manipulates data.</p>

13

<p>Yes, good point. However, JHU does also report that (in its publications to students, etc.), which too is misleading.</p>

14

<p>UW-Madison, unlike JHU, wouldn't take money for secret research.</p>

15

<p>You are assuming that the controlling factor in how to report financial results is that it permits comparison to other universities for the purpose of generating rankings. Since this is almost never the actual controlling factor, few universities arrange their finances to make themselves look better. If for no other reason, because the people who run the universities know how meaningless these comparisons will be. Of course, there are lots of other reasons.</p>

<p>Lots of universities have rules prohibiting secret research. The ones where their faculties actually have the option to get significant funding for such work tend to set up separate institutes where this work can go on outside of the university. The scientists continue to contribute to the intellectual life of the campus, but the students rarely participate in the secret research. Again, this is not bad or good, just different. It also is misleading only to those who do not understand it, and try to over simplify the figures to come up with one size fits all rankings.</p>