<p>Let me state at the outset that I’m a Michigan alum (undergrad) and I held a visiting faculty appointment at Berkeley for one year, and many friends on the faculty there. I have deep attachments to both schools, but I’ll try to be as objective as I can here.</p>
<p>Berkeley and Michigan are both outstanding schools, but measured in certain ways, Berkeley might be the top university in America, public or private. Period. Evidence? Well, the data is old (1995) and limited in scope (41 “core academic disciplines”), but the most recent available NRC rankings of graduate programs by faculty quality, as rated by peers within the same discipline, gave Berkeley a total of 35 disciplines with faculty rankings in the top 10. Next closest was Stanford with 31, followed by Harvard (25), Princeton (21), and MIT (20). Among publics, the next highest was UCLA (15), followed closely by Michigan and Wisconsin (14 apiece). UVA and UNC-Chapel Hill weren’t even in the running, with 4 and 3, respectively.</p>
<p>You can broaden that a bit. A school can be very strong in a field and yet not make the top 10. Here’s a ranking of publics by programs in the (top 10, top 25):</p>
<ol>
<li>Berkeley (35, 36)</li>
<li>(tie) UCLA (15, 34)</li>
<li>(tie) Michigan (14, 35)</li>
<li>Wisconsin (14, 33)</li>
<li>Illinois (10, 23)</li>
<li>Texas (7, 28)</li>
</ol>
<p>After that there’s a significant drop-off, but it’s worth noting that UVA (4, 15) and UNC (3, 19) aren’t even competitive with Minnesota (5, 22).</p>
<p>As several people have noted, however, a university’s prestige is also partly derived from its distinction in the “learned professions” like law, medicine, or business. Taking those programs into account, I’d rank them like this:</p>
<ol>
<li>Berkeley</li>
<li>Michigan</li>
<li>UCLA</li>
<li>Wisconsin</li>
</ol>
<p>UVA and UNC-Chapel Hill are nice schools and perhaps excellent places to get an undergraduate education, but they are simply not academic powerhouses on a plane with the likes of Berkeley and Michigan. UCLA is also an outstanding school, very competitive with Michigan and just a little behind Berkeley, but Michigan edges it out on the strengths of its professional schools. Wisconsin is, for my money, probably the most underrated university in America, though its professional schools aren’t quite as prestigious and the caliber of its student body not quite as high as the other top publics.</p>
<p>This could all change when the long-awaited new NRC rankings come out (if they ever do), but my guess is it won’t change very much because strength in a particular discipline tends to beget strength; the top academics are naturally drawn to the top schools in their particular discipline, giving those schools a huge built-in advantage in faculty recruitment and retention. Over the longer term, I’d be most worried about the schools in the University of California system, which among the top publics appear to be in the direst financial straits. Michigan has had to make only extremely modest cuts in the current recession owing to the strength of its endowment, the extremely conservative way it calculates endowment payout (based on a 7-year moving average, so it didn’t spend wildly when its endowment was flush), and its diversified revenue base that leaves it far less dependent on legislative appropriations than most other publics—which means when the state cuts its appropriations, it makes only a small blip in the university’s budget. In contrast, the UC system is heavily dependent on state appropriations, and both the state’s and the university’s budgets are in an extreme state of chaos (and the state of California’s structural budget deficits are far worse than the state of Michigan’s, by the way, despite high unemployment in both states). Worse, no one seems to have a plan to right the ship. Perhaps California’s economy will go into another boom phase before things fall apart completely. If not, I’d expect significant and potentially lasting damage to the crown jewels of the UC system.</p>