<p>Well, living under a rock helps one being sheltered from the dismal reality around us, and perhaps also insulates one from … poor statistics. </p>
<p>When one is presented a table of spending on education that lists plenty of countries such as Somalia, Ethiopia, Mali, or Burundi among the leaders, he or she should spend time understanding what is actually measured. </p>
<p>Using the wealth of a country as a denominator will show how a country allocates its resources. Obviously, a very poor nation (and developing) will have ratio of spending on basic items and probably a high level of foreign aid to support such spending. </p>
<p>When it comes to comparing the spending of nations on education, a better indicator is the spending per capita. Here’s a simple graph that shows a number of OECD nations:</p>
<p>Complete tables are, of course, available, but quoting a 500 pages report is not needed in a forum such as CC. </p>
<p>As far as cutting in the federal budgets, it might not be unwise to ascertain the impact of federal funding on the national education spending. For instance, could one imagine a ZERO budget for the Department of Education by 2020? Surprisingly, that might not create as many waves as one could imagine. Something that never escaped to the President Clinton and his “education” VP as they never increased the budget for the ED during the eight years they sat in their throne.</p>
<p>I believe we’re talking about college-level education here, as this is College Confidential. So I don’t see why you’re quoting stats for K-12. So much for good statistics.</p>
<p>I admit, maybe that 3rd link proves inconclusive. So… that just invalidates everything else I wrote, correct?</p>
<p>I don’t believe $89 billion over 10 years is an insignificant figure. That’s for higher education, btw, not for K-12 which is irrelevant to this topic.</p>
<p>43 states out of 50 have cut their spending on higher education since 2008. That further proves my original point. When times get tough, what do politicians do? Cut funding to education.</p>
<p>Would you rather be in a school that’s constantly held hostage by politicians? In fact, from your previous posts, you seem to agree with my stance that private > public in general. I do not understand why you are so fixed on my statement that Americans have a tendency to cut their education spending. One does not need to go far to find proof of this.</p>
<p>ModernMan, #99, you’re ventured out of your depth again. In what way is USC, outside of Cal Tech, SoCal’s leading university? </p>
<p>As compared to UCLA, USC is extremely poor in STEM. We’re talking undergrad BS to PHD production, not your mega-grad engineering programs that educate only foreigners. UCLA sends far more BA’s and BS’s to medicine, law, MBA’s and grad programs in general, adjusted for undergrad size, ~ 1:1.5.</p>
<p>So as others are debating, it certainly depends on what USC is superior. Not STEM, not pre-professions, not graduates entering the workforce, as manifest by a great deal of your 1,200 BS Business Administration grads not finding work five months out of graduation.</p>
<p>I think youve borrowed the bold from xiggi. The problem with using unsuperscored, best-per=sitting SATs for admission, and later reporting superscores for IPEDS or the CDS would be that this would take an extra calculation, if mulitiple scores were reported, which often they are not. There is no administrative body at any university that would perform this calculation for best-foot-forward purposes. Because cost of doing such would override the benefit in their doing such, especially since their derived benefit of showing higher in this USN’s variable would be negligible as a public-u bureaucrat, uhh, administrator. </p>
<p>The difference between unsuper and superscored SATs is definitely a material amount. Add that UCLA and the UCs, and perphaps UMich, will report multiple scores per student. Because UCLA shows the specific number of students who scored within specific intervals of SAT and ACT scores, instead of just reporting %s, we know that UCLA reports all scores the student has reported for admission purposes. If %s are only used, who knows if the scores reported would be one best-foot-forward score per student, and in fact, I have to believe that private u’s report only one best score per student, whether that be the ACT or SAT.</p>
<p>Someone sent me the url of the following high-school student’s youtube, which at [4:17](<a href=“http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URIwlt7kz0E&t=0h4m17s”>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URIwlt7kz0E&t=0h4m17s</a>) shows the difference in scores in admittance to UCLA and UC v. NYU. This student, and I hope she doesnt mind me linking her tube video, scored 2050 for UCLA and 2130 for NYU. The average difference between admitted students to a u may not have this large a difference, but a lot of this will depend on wealth: the more wealthy students can afford to retake and reprep; whereas those of poorer background cannot do either because of limited funds. Public us will for economic diversity sake want to take those who show forth potential if not in mature SAT or ACT scores.</p>
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<p>Re, point one, if you are referring to spring admits of frosh at Cal and I am normally not a huge defender of Cal because that would be both UCBs and RMLs jobs the U does this for logistical reasons of taking students in and housing them. There is a difference in stats between regular fall and spring admits, but it doesnt do this to bypass reporting standards.</p>
<p>Re point two, there are many us that overreport the top-decile statistic, besides many hss that dont report this statistic. For UC standards, a general class-rank is obtained by pooling all CA hs grads and figuring class rank for them based off of this. So someone from Gunn HS in Palo Alto could have a 3.87/4.60 gpa and have a class rank within taht school of 80th %-ile, but for statewide purposes, have a definite top-decile rank. The infusion of local context, or top-% students at specific hss has complicated the matter of admittance at UC.</p>
<p>And wrt transfer students bypassing statistical measures, you have to remember, too, that CA wants all of its us within its boundary to incorporate transfer students within their admissions, as part of the three-tier college system with the state. Again, not to bypass reporting, but to be within state mandates: ccs feeding both UC and CSU systems. Not only do students have second chances, but it balances out classes between lower and upperclassmen. It really is a great public-college system.</p>
<p>Why they report erroneous numbers is not relevant; the fact that they DO is! The school could adjust the statistics for the USNews surveys. What is also relevant is that Morse accepts the numbers, fully knowing they are inflated and do misrepresent the selectivity of the school. </p>
<p>Goryman - any reason you see UChicago and UPenn falling a bunch of spots, and NU rising?</p>
<p>The numbers seem to indicate that UChicago has been improving steadily in admit stats and alumni giving, and Penn has been holding steady for quite a few years. Any reason these two schools drop? </p>
<p>Also, NU has been improving in its stats, but not really outstripping its peers to any great degree here.</p>
<p>And that’s about as far as I can go ranking them with relative accuracy… lots of tiers lol. This is all based on my opinion of what the rankings might look like. :P</p>
<p>But, for the classes that do have 20 students, I can almost guarantee UCLA has more students per class. Pretty sure Williams has 0 classes with hundreds of people in it.</p>
<p>In other news: Claremont McKenna I predict will drop in the LAC rankings.</p>
<p>I don’t see Penn dropping out of the top 5 (i think it’s held that spot pretty consistently for at least a few years.) and certainly not Caltech either. In my experience, USNEWS has the tendency to rank Caltech and MIT together.</p>
<p>USC’s rise in rank doesn’t seem unreasonable. But i don’t see it eclipsing Berkeley. At best, it would tie it.</p>
<p>I also don’t see Michigan suddenly jumping into the 24th spot (from 28 where its at now) nor UVA and Wake Forest being kicked out of the top 25. At the same time, however, it’s easily possible that it doesn’t. Competition in the top 25 is much more fierce than competition in the top 50.</p>
<p>UCLA might drop down to the 26th spot, but that’s okay because it tends to jump between the 25th and 26th spots historically in the ranking. (at least in recent years.)</p>
<p>Why would Duke ever drop out of top 10 and Dartmouth of all schools surpass it? They class of 2016 is the strongest class to date and the class of 2015 is even stronger than the previous year.</p>
If you think you’re going to get a noticeable difference of attention in a class of 100+ vs. 200+ vs. 300+ you’re kidding yourself. Likewise, a class of ~10 isn’t life changingly different than a class of 20. Sure, Williams might have 75 classes at 60 students while UCLA would have 75 classes at 150 students, but in all honesty, that is the two extreme examples (hugest school possible vs. smallest school possible). I was making a general blanket statement about comparing similar colleges and how their statistics aren’t too far off in reality.</p>