As faculty at a public university that just recently—though pre-pandemic—went through having lots of its back office functions (forcibly mandated to) merge with those of the other public universities in the state, yeah, it doesn’t necessarily produce the expected/promised efficiency gains, and in many ways losing the ability to just walk down the hall and get X taken care of reduces efficiency and can even increase costs.
And that’s public universities, where there are gobs and tons of existing models that work, and we have the added simplicity that we’re all ultimately paid by the same entity.
There are some private colleges that have teamed up in this way and it seems to work really, really well (e.g., the College of Saint Benedict & Saint John’s University), but it isn’t the panacea that a lot of people seem to expect it to be.
Have to ask whether numbers like $140,000 (versus $31,000 or whatever) per student make a noticeable difference to students, versus being accounting quirks (like medical school expenditures bleeding into the category of undergraduate instruction spending).
Also, this seems to me a metric that punishes colleges with a decidedly humanistic bent while rewarding those that have more offerings with higher educational costs (e.g., science labs, fine arts facilities) baked in.
Yes, the last couple of years have been hard. But the article mentioned how some universities had really benefited through PPP loans that were given (and then forgiven), so the results weren’t as dire as expected. Of course, there are those that are thinking that some of the schools that were on shaky financial footing will start having more issues in a few years once all the one-time federal moneys are gone.
Using some LACs (to avoid medical school etc. costs bleeding in) in http://■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■/search1ba.aspx?institutionid=112260,115409,121257,121345,123165 , clicking on the “Funding and Faculty” tab gives spending levels per student (unfortunately, the latest is 2017 there, but maybe digging directly in NCES could give more recent numbers). Science/engineering-heaviness (with its costs of labs and such) may have some relation to spending, but does not appear to be the only factor.
Right, and getting $350 haircuts could mean economic ruin for some people while for others it would make no difference whatsoever. If you were to do something like this with individuals you would end up with some run of the mill decently salaried people getting an A+ and exponentially richer billionaires well below that even though they live in completely different financial universes. Bottomline, a financial health ranking based on a one size fits all formula makes very little sense.
I just visited UCB’s link at College Results Online, and I’d have to agree with that assessment. At first I was looking at some liberal arts colleges. I then looked at our state’s (public) tech school, as well as a couple of directionals and our state flagship. The instructional spending per student at the flagship was similar to that of the liberal arts colleges (and I wasn’t pulling T50 schools, either). The other state universities, including the tech one, had nearly half the instructional funding as the liberal arts colleges. Obviously, this might be regionally dependent…
Some “run of the mill decently salaried people” are on the path to financial success (think “FIRE” or “millionaire next door”), while some very wealthy people do manage to spend themselves broke (for example: Why Athletes Go Broke ).
Agreed, and one more reason why this makes little sense to me. Like you well explained a formula such as this one could give an A+ to a wealthy person on their way to going broke (by getting $350 haircuts along with other things…) while penalizing salaried people on their path to financial success (by not getting unnecesary $350 haircuts but being generous with FA along with other things…). Ultra wealthy people are less susceptible to such problems but this formula not only weighs their wealth (endowment) at 15% but also gives a maximum score whether it is 1.7 million/FTE or $335,000/FTE. $1.7M-$335K= $1.365M per student that goes uncounted in this formula. Just based on that they should get an A+ on financial health just like Bill Gates is still extremely wealthy even after a costly divorce and giving lots of his fortune away. At the other end of the spectrum the formula penalizes schools that doesn’t have huge endowments for being careful not to throw money away.
While it should be expected that apparent anomalies will be seen in individual schools in the Forbes site, do the categories hold up? That is, are the A+ colleges generally financially stronger than the A colleges, and are the A colleges generally financially stronger than the A- colleges, etc.?
Can only be verified in hindsight. For example, what is the rate of failure of colleges in each grade category in the ratings of a given past year? Do colleges with D grades fail more often than colleges with C grades, for example?
Also, would the ratings be more or less predictive if some of the factors ’ weights were changed, or the factors ’ scoring methodology were changed?
Forbes has been doing these ratings for a good while now, so there’s data to crunch. So there’s a masters thesis project for a stats or education student, right there for the taking.
Just look at the A+ schools. Although the score is capped at 4.5 they are ranked according to score and #1 is Claremont Mckenna. Their endowment per student is around 900k which is huge but only a small fraction of #10 Princeton which is close to $5 million per student. Princeton’s tuition accounts for less than 11th percent of revenue, CM much more. Just based on those numbers Princeton is the Jeff Bezos (or whoever is the wealthiest person alive right now…) among all colleges. Claremont Mckenna ranks higher because they cap endowment and tuition as percent revenue but penalize Princeton for being much more aggressive at bringing in low SES students which ironically brings in even more money from ultra wealthy donors (think Soros and Bard … or better yet Jeff Bezo’s ex giving away $500 + million to HBUC’s). Same with Claremont Mckeena’s parent school next door, it is much wealthier but much more diverse also so they dropped it down to an A-. There are countless examples like this one if you look around.
Not a college closing, but a move that doesn’t bode well, since the college has been experiencing significant enrollment declines the past few years and the announcement makes mention of attempts to actively promote the now-closing majors: Anna Maria College in Massachusetts is closing its music majors.
It mentions 21 current music majors, 15 of whom are juniors or seniors who presumably can graduate with music degrees before the major is closed. But that leaves 6 sophomores who must either find another major there or transfer to another college for the music major. There could also be some frosh who may have chosen to attend with intent to major in music but are now in a similar situation.
And generally colleges are (absent financial exigency) required by accrediting bodies to offer teach-outs for all declared majors. I’m actually kind of curious how they got around that for those six students. (No such protections for students who intend to pursue a particular major but haven’t officially declared it, though.)