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<p>This sounds like that east cost “private is better” talk. I would like to note that Cambridge and Oxford, which also have huge endowments, are also public universities; as are ICL, and LSE.</p>
<p>Yes, there’s more top privates than top publics in the United States. But the top publics are also significantly cheaper most of the privates in the US, and have better reputations and faculty.</p>
<p>Higher education in most non-US countries is virtually all public, if I’m not mistaken. Private universities are an American phenomenon. The US is unique because for some reason, we just love to cut public education spending. We’re talking about the US here, though, and not the UK.</p>
<p>Also, as far as I’m aware, most international public universities are national and don’t have quotas for enrolling students from the region the school is situated in. Nor do they charge different rates based on where students live, as long as they’re citizens of the country.</p>
<p>I already said that there are perfectly good reasons to attend an American public school. If you can save tens of thousands by staying in-state, then do that. But affordability is not what USNWR is ranking, nor is affordability what USNWR should be ranking. The fact is that a wealthy private university has the resources to give its students the best education it can, without being influenced by external factors like politics or government budget crises. Are you saying that things like quality of faculty, class sizes, facilities, etc. don’t have any effect on academics? Because those are the areas private universities excel at.</p>
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<p>If by ‘academics’ you mean student learning, there’s at least no direct relation between pedagogy and high quality faculty members. (at least no study that i know of.) </p>
<p><em>anecdote</em> One of the people in my department who was considered a genius gave some what were the worst lectures i had in my undergrad. The guy was smart, but just couldn’t teach.</p>
<p>I’m also skeptical of the whole ‘class size’ argument. Here’s two articles casting doubt on the whole ‘class-size’ argument:</p>
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<p><a href=“http://faculty.apec.umn.edu/pglewwe/documents/MNclasz3.pdf[/url]”>http://faculty.apec.umn.edu/pglewwe/documents/MNclasz3.pdf</a></p>
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<p>[Harvard</a> Kennedy School - Florida?s Class-Size Reduction Mandate Did Not Improve Student Achievement, According to Harvard University Study](<a href=“http://www.hks.harvard.edu/news-events/news/press-releases/pr-pepg-research-may10]Harvard”>Page not found | Harvard Kennedy School)</p>
<p>and here’s one that supports it (particularly with higher education)</p>
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<p><a href=“http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/cheri/upload/cheri_wp136.pdf[/url]”>http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/cheri/upload/cheri_wp136.pdf</a></p>
<p>it seems to me there’s far from any consensus on the matter.</p>
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Top publics match or exceed top privates in faculty quality.</p>
<p>“Also, I have to laugh at you calling my generalization “silly” right after you generalize public schools as being as well funded as private ones based on ONE public school’s placing in the top 10 of largest endowments (I’m not counting “systemwide” figures).”</p>
<p>I never made a claim that all public schools are as well funded as private ones. YOU were the one who made the superlative claim that:</p>
<p>“Private schools have more resources to hire better (and more) faculty, provide more variety and availability of classes, etc.”</p>
<p>I just used Michigan as an example that makes the above statement false and silly.</p>
<p>I think both Fickle and rjkofnovi have a good point, but they are missing one important detail in particular. Of course the public university’s goal is to educate a lot of students. But the very important thing here is that the larger population of students at a school does not correlate to less attention/educational opportunity/quality. In fact, I can argue that it would be outright wrong to even think that there is any kind of correlation between simple size and quality. </p>
<p>Take for example Williams College, almost indisputably the best liberal arts college in the country. The definition of elite, private, small private undergraduate education and excellence. Williams offers 30 majors in 24 departments. Only so many students can fill up 24 majors without each department becoming crowded and oversized. Next take for example UCLA, the epitome of large, huge population, public school (the largest university in California). UCLA offers 125 majors and 84 minors in god knows how many departments. Obviously, it takes much, much more students to fill up UCLA’s majors and departments in comparison to Williams while still keeping the integrity of each department at UCLA. It’s because of these situations that student to faculty ratio and percentage of classes under x size become so incredibly important indicators of quality and excellence and the actual size of the school literally has nothing to do with it. Think about it like this, it would be insane to say that a larger country by default has a lower standard of living than a smaller country. There simply is zero correlation - not even a general or reliable correlation, zero correlation. </p>
<p>If we use % of classes smaller than x and student to faculty ratio you will see how untrue a lot of popular opinions are. Let’s take UCLA and Williams as examples. </p>
<p>Williams student to faculty ratio 7:1, % of classes smaller than 20 (not including discussion sections): 71%
UCLA student to faculty ratio 16:1, % of classes smaller than 20 (not including discussion sections): 52%</p>
<p>We can immediately see that even though UCLA has almost 18 times the number of total students as Williams does, it has less than 1 out of every 5 of its classes under 20 than Williams (19% difference) does. Now granted, the student to faculty ratio is higher and that is one of the reasons Williams is regarded as a more “full and excellent” education than UCLA (I’m not debating that, Williams is king of undergraduate education). I’m just trying to debunk an all too common fallacy that I am getting pretty tired of seeing tossed around. </p>
<p>Note: Of course beyphy’s class size argument casts doubt that class size even matters for undergrad quality (but assuming that it does affect quality, I just wanted to show the difference of class size isn’t incredibly huge at all. Maybe for UCLA vs. Williams it is, but for privates that are pier to UCLA, it is almost identical). </p>
<p>Sources:
US News Rankings
UCLA.edu
Williams.edu</p>
<p>Fickle, currently, two of the 10 wealthiest universities in the US are public (Michigan-Ann Arbor and Texas-Austin). UVa is also very wealthy. You point out, and rightly, that public universities tend to be larger than private universities, but you fail to mention two very important points that come along with your statement:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Public universities receive hundreds of millions of dollars in state funding annually. Michigan, for example, receives ~$300 million. To put this number into perspective, remember that universities can only use ~5% of their endowment on an annual basis. Receving $300 million from the state on an annual basis is akin to having an additional $6 billion of endowment. Michigan’s endowment, as of July 1, 2011, stood at $7.8 billion (6th largest among US universities). Even on a per/student basis, Michigan’s endowment is among the 25 wealthiest research universities in the nation. But if factor in state funding, Michigan’s financial position among research universities, even on a per student basis, would make it one of the nation’s wealthiest universities. I would estimate that only 6 or 7 research universities would have significantly larger endowments on a per/student basis. UVa and Texas-Austin are also very wealthy.</p></li>
<li><p>Along with added student population comes benefits of economics of scale. A university with 30,000 students and an endowment of $5 billion is probably able to provide more to its students than a university with 6,000 students and an endowment of $1 billion. Both schools have equally large endowments on a per/student basis, but economies of scale will significantly favor the larger school. </p></li>
</ol>
<p>At any rate, I think the point the previous poster made about the USNWR is not that it blatantly favors private universities, but rather, that the USNWR methodology is designed for private universities. As such, public universities are not going to do as well as their private peers.</p>
<p>This is all rubbish. Public universities like Michigan and Berkeley don’t count the transfer admissions statistics in their profile.</p>
<p>Do private universities include transfer admissions statistics in their profiles? At least public universities do not resort to cheap tricks such as “super scoring”, excluding graduate students from their student:faculty ratios or pressuring alums into donating money.</p>
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Alexandre, there is nothing “cheap” about superscoring. People’s scores on the SAT don’t really vary much between testings besides going up uniformly anyway. No one gets a 800 on the Math section and a 700 on the Verbal section in one setting and then 800 in V another time and 700 on M. It makes sense for universities to give the students the benefit of the doubt if a score in the section myseriously drops.</p>
<p>Also, there’s no proof that Michigan doesn’t present superscored SATs to USNWR and IEPDS but sticks to the highest single setting score for admissions purposes. It would be in Michigan’s best interest to show itself in the best light as possible.</p>
<p>Why would a university that does not superscore report superscores in their class profile? And you have not answered my question reguarding your claim. Do private universities include transfer admissions statistics in their profiles?</p>
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<p>Knowledge is different from speculation. You believe that USNews favors private schools. The reality is that the metrics chosen by USNews happen to reflect greater resources and greater selectivity. Awarding more points to a school that spends more money on the teaching of undergraduates is NOT an expression of favoritism. Neither is rewarding schools that do not rely on huge classrooms to sardine their hordes of students. It does reward a “better” experience, which translates in a better school.</p>
<p>When it comes to favoritism, Morse and his goons are pretty clear that they introduced additional metrics that are highly subjective and were absolutely meant to LEVEL the playing field by capturing “intangibles.” And metrics that non verifiable, not measurable, and … as we know subject to the most abject type of ignorance, lack of interest, and gamesmanship.</p>
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<p>Why would a school obfuscate a substantial portion of their admitted FRESHMEN students? Not transfer students! </p>
<p>Why would a school guesstimates <em>read grossly overestimate</em> the percentage of students who rank in the top ten percent? </p>
<p>And the why should be asked to the officials at Cal, because that is exactly what they do, and with the duplicitous assistance of Morse, who has refuse to acknowledge the strategies. </p>
<p>And, by the way, the why reporting superscores when they do not use it for admissions? Would a “because” they can just what they want and get away with it" be a reasonable answer? In the meantime, a comparative analysis of the non superscored ACT versus the superscored SAT shows that the argument is quite the canard. An entirely quacking canard!</p>
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<p>Oh, faculty. That ever so-loosely defined term that encompasses so many different vocations. The dedicated and the sinecure addict. The present and the voyager. The teacher and the researcher. The one who loves teaching and the one who considers the UG a nuisance. </p>
<p>Top public do indeed have their share of well-populated ivory towers. And well-populated auditoriums for those massive lectures that look so good on … paper!</p>
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<p>Which obviously explains why we leave all countries (safe and except Luxemburg and perhaps Switzerland) in the dust when it comes to spending and rate of growth of the spending. </p>
<p>If we really love to cut public education, we really are incredibly poor lovers. Our education system has been a bottomless pit, and in the K-12 an amazing failure, considering the resources spent.</p>
<p>Xiggi, USNWR rankings do not attempt to carve out spending and resources exclusively for undergrads…they have a term called “financial resources” which includes research…including medical research.</p>
<p>If you say so, UCB! Do you happen to think that Morse designed that part of the methodology, so he could favor the schools with large medical schools. </p>
<p>If that were not the case, how large of a change would that mean in the rankings of Cal, just to name one?</p>
<p>Tis true, xig. UCLA’s financial resources ranking is higher than Cal’s…only big reason I can think why that is is medical research spending. Don’t know how big of a bump schools like Cal, MIT, Princeton and Caltech would get if Morse carved out med research funding.</p>
<p>I believe you.</p>
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Ha! You really think the US focuses more on education than most other developed countries? That’s the first time I’ve heard that, honestly.</p>
<p>[Higher</a> Education Funding Cut by $89 Billion Over 10 Years in Obama Budget - Bloomberg](<a href=“Bloomberg - Are you a robot?”>Bloomberg - Are you a robot?)
<a href=“http://www.ijbssnet.com/journals/Vol_3_No_8_Special_Issue_April_2012/21.pdf[/url]”>http://www.ijbssnet.com/journals/Vol_3_No_8_Special_Issue_April_2012/21.pdf</a>
[Public</a> spending on education, total (% of government expenditure) | Data | Table](<a href=“Government expenditure on education, total (% of government expenditure) | Data”>Government expenditure on education, total (% of government expenditure) | Data)</p>
<p>And I shouldn’t really even have to find articles to prove my point. Where have you been living these past few years? </p>
<p>I’m also going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you realize the American population is much larger than that of all European countries, and thus we will obviously spend “more.”</p>