University of Chicago Booth School of Business earned the #1 ranking in this year’s latest report. U Chicago Law School placed 3rd trailing Yale and Stanford.
https://www.usnews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-business-schools/mba-rankings
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Its been number 1 for 3 years isnt it?
An interesting perspective from a REDDIT post.
University Rankings in the 1960s
Below is a list of major university rankings that were being circulated at the time (1962):
American Council on Education:
- Harvard
- Chicago
- Columbia
- UC Berkeley
- Wisconsin
- Yale
- Cornell
- Michigan
- Princeton
- Johns Hopkins
American Men of Science:
- Harvard
- Chicago
- Columbia
- UC Berkeley
- Yale
- Princeton
- Johns Hopkins
- Michigan
- Minnesota
- Cornell
American Association of Junior Colleges:
- Harvard
- Chicago
- Columbia
- Yale
- UC Berkeley
- Johns Hopkins
- Cornell
- Princeton
- Michigan
- Wisconsin
Julius Rosenwald Fund:
- Harvard
- Chicago
- Columbia
- UC Berkeley
- Yale
- Michigan
- Cornell
- Princeton
- Johns Hopkins
- Wisconsin
I bet you were surprised by a number of things.
First is how schools like UC Berkeley and Chicago were ranked higher compared to today. Does this mean that these four schools deteriorated over the last 6 decades? Not a single bit. School rankings at the time were largely based on research productivity and achievements of professors like winning Nobel Prizes, so the universities were assessed on their contributions toward academic advancement.
Second is how similar these rankings look from each other. In today’s school ranking market, every ranking is completely different from other companies’ and they significantly fluctuate every year. However, rankings at the time were less concerned about making money by selling them but more about the accuracy and validity of the rankings. If US News looked the same every year, then people would stop buying the ranking every year. Moreover, if Forbes’ ranking looked basically identical from Niche’s ranking, then people won’t buy them.
Another crucial difference between this and today’s school ranking is that these rankings assessed the universities as a whole. Note that the title of this post is “university rankings in the 1960s” and not “college rankings in the 1960s.” If you didn’t know already, the difference between a university and a college, it is that “college” is a term that typically applies to an undergraduate school, whereas a “university” is the school as a whole, including graduate schools. This is why UC Berkeley, Columbia, and Chicago were always in the top 5 along with Harvard, because while their undergraduate schools weren’t as prestigious as Yale or Princeton, they were academic behemoths that housed the leading academics who were responsible for the most influential and radical intellectual ideas at the time.
Considerations:
I think that looking at these past rankings tell us a lot about the current higher education industry and how it has radically changed from the past.
We can see how prestige doesn’t have much to do with the actual achievements of the universities. While the explosive expansion of American high education in the early-mid 20th century put Harvard, Columbia, Chicago, and UC Berkeley as the Big Four of academic production (not coincidentally, these 4 are all top 5 US schools for the number of Nobel Prize won), people at the time did not consider them to be prestigious with the exception of Harvard and maybe Columbia.
Social Conditions of the 1960s:
With the WASP establishment holding a firm grip of social, political, and economic power at the time (JFK was still fighting against anti-catholic bias as society discriminated even between white people at the time…), which meant that the definition of “prestige” was whatever the establishment did, the most prestigious colleges were the Big Three. These three were not only in the Ivy League but had formed an football alliance in the late 19th century, as they were the three strongest college football teams at the time. Due to the location (East Coast) and strong ties with rich WASPs (as they systemically kept out the racial and religious minorities) to create an “appropriate” student body, they were the most desirable schools for this group of people, even if Yale and Princeton were not necessarily the best academically. In other words, the social conditions at the time made it so that the Big Three of Football was more prestigious than the Big Four of Academics.
The Cold War:
Yet, the US higher education system was not really worried about any of this social prestige. There was a serious threat that the Soviet Union’s superior scientific knowledge and technology could one day strike upon America. The government pumped money into STEM education and research to catch up, and especially towards public universities such as Berkeley, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Private universities like Harvard and Columbia received massive amounts of research and development funding too, as they had the necessary infrastructure to make it happen (these two schools were the most comprehensive and developed universities).
Naturally, the school rankings at the time would only consider factors like research production. Rankings at the time were not really for the ambitious high school applicant, but for academic circles within these institutions. Thus they did not take into account things like student social life, and other factors that we would typically see in today’s rankings. Academia and the government had much more important agendas than to care about how WASPy a school is or how strong their football team is.
The Arrival of the US News Ranking:
However progressive we may have been, social prestige within the higher education system hasn’t changed much; it is still centered around the WASP prestige of the last century. When the Cold War calmed down and Americans had much more leisure to worry about things like prestige, the US News rankings came forth. Unlike the rankings that were prevalent in the earlier decades (that were targeted towards academics, not students or their parents), US News was much more catered towards the general public.
Its criteria? In the first issue of the ranking, US News used dubious surveys about the general prestige of these universities, without any factors that were objective and scientific. Of course, as the surveys reflected the opinions of the general public, HYPS came out on the top. For a decade or so, the ranking stayed more or less the same as it was survey-based. However, in 2000, when the ranking was criticized for not using objective data as its criteria and responded accordingly, resulted in a radical change where Caltech came out to be no. 1. Obviously, the public started questioning the credibility of US News and the ranking was in danger. The next year, US News adjusted its more objective criteria in a way that made the ranking to be very similar to their previous survey-based one. Thus, the seemingly objective factors of the US News rankings were made so that HYPS would be on the top, like it was before. In other words it’s a facade for a ranking that mostly reflects laymen prestige other than anything.
The Disappointing Reality of the US News Ranking:
I have a problem with how US News contributes towards the disconnection between the social prestige of a school and its actual contributions in academia.
Look at the current methodology of US News: while acceptance rate was finally taken off two years ago, there are still some questionable factors, such as peer assessment and financial resources per student.
Acceptance rates are very easy to manipulate. Today, US has one of the most complex college application method: there is EA, REA, ED, ED2, RD, deferrals, sophomore guaranteed-transfers, etc… This is all because of the US News ranking. Schools (until 2 years ago), had to maximize their yield through REA and ED programs, as well as making acceptance rates lower. Sophomore guaranteed-transfer is one example of a clever yet desperate move that some colleges are now doing, as this would mean that they could take more students without raising the acceptance rate. Schools must also send extensive marketing and even to those who has no chance of getting in, just to raise their “selectivity.” In other words, colleges started to treat applicants in perhaps unethical ways in order to play the US News game.
Peer assessment is also another questionable criteria. The assessment is usually done by office staff in these schools, as deans have no interest in completing them, making some of the input dubious. Universities aside, peer assessment also includes high school counselors’ input. But does your GC know anything more about these schools than you do? I bet you know more than them. They’re just going to answer based on lay prestige, so indirectly, the remains of the WASP social influence is included in the ranking methodology.
Financial resources per student: this should be objective right? Unfortunately, US News does a pretty lousy job at this. Instead of measuring the actual financial resources that goes towards the undergraduate colleges of these universities, they just divide the total endowment by the number of students.
The endowment isn’t a good indication of financial resources. Most of the money is restricted funds, which means that the school can only use it on specified purposes (usually the alumni donator’s request). So a Harvard alumni could very well donate $100 million, but direct all that money to Harvard Business School; undergraduate students would not benefit from this. The allocation of released funds is also not recorded. Stanford could be directing a bigger portion of their annual endowment release to undegrad-related programs than say Yale, but that would not be reflected in the ranking. US News is too lazy to look at all of this, so they just divide total endowment by student count. Quite a lousy job for the most prominent university ranking.
My thoughts:
Changing the US News Criteria:
As my research suggested, the methodology of the US News ranking is highly questionable and thus it shouldn’t be treated as the Bible of college rankings, and is not even good enough to be a general benchmark.
Just as removing the acceptance rate criteria is gradually going to reduce the annoying and unethical marketing tactics of these universities, the US News should remove other factors that are not reflective of the school’s actual quality.
Endowments should not be factored in, in my opinion. These universities are at most spending 5% of their endowment each year. Why 5%? Because that is the bare minimum to maintain the tax-exempt nonprofit designation from the government.
Last year, when students were faced with economic crises, what did these multi-billion universities do to help them? They didn’t do much, offered a free course or two at most. If these schools wanted to, they could make tuition free for every student, and would still have plenty of money in their endowment. Instead, these schools are investing like they are hedge funds, and occasionally towards some questionable projects like fossil fuels and private prisons. Yuck.
I don’t even condemn these institutions for not being more responsible for their endowments. It is the US News ranking that is forcing these schools to do this, and universities would probably act otherwise if US News didn’t exist.
I read in a post last week about Georgetown’s relatively low ranking. Georgetown didn’t even have a true endowment until about 20 years ago, because their Catholic tradition was to give all their excess funds away for more humanitarian goals. Of course, it they kept doing that, their rankings would drop, so Georgetown had no choice but to create an endowment. It’s not a coincidence that it was about 20 years ago that this happened. 2000 was around the time that the endowment was factored in to the US News ranking. Did Georgetown’s institutional quality change at all with an endowment? Not really, their SFS was always top-notch and if Bill Clinton was a student there, you know it was always a good school.
College Prestige =/= University Quality
When people on this subreddit are asked about the best universities, they would say HYPSM without a doubt. But is HYPSM really the five best universities?
If anything, HYPSM is the most prestigious and rich grouping of universities. Undergraduate selectivity and yield rates indicate that these five are the most desired (and thus most prestigious), and again, this is a continuation of the cultural remains of the 20th century social condition. It took so many years for Stanford and MIT to join the HYP acronym. Across online forums, there have been countless arguments made for these two schools to join the HYP acronym from the early 2000s, and yet they were mostly unsuccessful, with posters claiming that they weren’t prestigious enough. It was only around 2010 when HYPSM became widely accepted. Basically, the WASP culture is deeply ingrained in our conception of prestige.
Are the richest universities the ones the contribute the most to academic advancement? UC Berkeley’s $4.8 billion endowment is tiny compared to Princeton’s $26 billion, but does that mean that Princeton is a better university? Anyone who says Princeton is better must be joking.
UC Berkeley is consistently a globally top 5 university, whereas Princeton falls short. Looking at departmental rankings across humanities and especially STEM, Berkeley wins hands down. Berkeley has the third most affiliated Nobel laureates, whereas Princeton is a distant 10th.
UC Berkeley may have shabby dorms, classrooms, and dining halls, but they are using their tiny endowment for the things that really matter, i.e. academic research. Princeton, while they are insanely rich, are spending some of their money on things like renovating their posh elitist eating clubs… Imagine if UC Berkeley had the money that Princeton did: UC Berkeley might just surpass Harvard.
I think that was enough to indicate that the richest universities are not necessarily the best ones. I also hope that it was made apparent that college prestige has nothing to do with the actual quality of these universities.
When looking at which universities are comprehensively the best, I would highly suggest looking at global rankings, and especially Center for World University Rankings (CWUR) and Academic Rankings of World Universities (ARWU). These two rankings place the most emphasis on research productivity of the schools, and while it is true that research isn’t everything, it is the most objective criteria by far. While the other global rankings aren’t necessarily bad, they are heavier towards “peer assessment.” I think US News demonstrated enough on how questionable that criteria is.
In my opinion, I think that UC Berkeley, Columbia, and UChicago needs to get more credit on how comprehensively great they are, and especially UC Berkeley. While Stanford and MIT surpassed their research output in the 6 decades after the 1962 rankings were published, these three schools need to get more credit, because their college prestige doesn’t live up to their actual quality.
So, HYPSM may be the most prestigious universities, but it’s hard to convince that they are the best. In terms of the comprehensively best universities, I would argue that Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Berkeley, Columbia, and UChicago are the 6 major schools.
A word of advice for dealing with school prestige in the future:
We have gone through years of prestige talk on these forums, but once you’re outside of undergrad, it’s time to forget about everything you heard from HYPSM to T10 to T20, because they are terms limited to undergrad and social prestige.
Again, don’t assume that college prestige =/= university ranking, nor an individual program’s prestige!
Carnegie Mellon CS is better than Harvard CS, Northwestern Business is better than Yale’s, and Chicago Law is better than Princeton Law, etc.
Trick question, Princeton Law doesn’t even exist, but you get the idea.
If you bring that US News mentality to certain industries, people will think that you’re not knowledgable in the field, or worse, too obsessed with prestige. If you tell a UC Berkeley EECS Ph.D. grad about how the schools isn’t a “T20,” they won’t even be mad at you, but just disappointed at the shallowness of such a comment.
Conclusion:
- Don’t treat the US News Ranking as an authoritative list for the best universities. At best, use it for meaningless but sometimes fun bantering.
- School prestige is more related with past social conditions than the quality of the schools, so while prestige may be important, it shouldn’t be the end all be all.
- HYPSM may be the most prestigious and richest universities, but they are not necessarily the best. Even at the undergraduate level, there are LACs like Amherst and Williams that would likely provide a better learning experience.
- Give my homie UC Berkeley some credit. Sure, there may be too many undergrads and you won’t get the same kind of student life like at some of the ivies, but when considering the university as a whole, it’s undoubtedly elite.
If you were able to read this post all the way until the very end, I just wanted to say thanks for spending the time to read my nerdy research! 
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As a University of Wisconsin grad, I enjoyed your take.
But what the heck was wrong with the American Men of Science, leaving us out of their top ten? hehe
Yes, there is often a disconnect between the academic achievements/quality (and reputation) of a school – especially the top public flagships – and the USNews undergrad ranking. Now my alma mater is ranked well below the level of its academic and research output.
I agree in the main, and I know this is a thread about the B School, but, when it comes to undergraduate education there are definitely issues facing many of the top publics including/especially the top UCs that the privates do not, or at least have more success at managing. Namely, impacted (capped) majors. In the most restrictive cases, e.g. CS at most of these schools, you have to apply into/get accepted into the major, and cannot under any circumstances transfer into the major. The classes can be prohibitively difficult to enroll in, even for majors who are given priority in the enrollment system. That’s a degree of resource constraint that you not find at most of the privates.