Another interesting thing about university assets is the effect that STEM discoveries can have on a university’s coffers. Until I read the article linked below, I had no idea the impact that a single patent could have on an university’s endowment. Lyrica, discovered in a NU chem lab, has added about $1.4 billion to the university’s endowment over the past 25 years or so.
A better measure might be 10- or 20-year average salary, but even then it’s going to be marred by self-selection and regional cost of living. But… at least that would give the Humanities majors some time to catch up.
@MiddleburyDad2 I don’t know much about accounting, as I was a mental health therapist before I became a SAHD. I am getting my info from ■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■ regarding FTE expenditures for instructional and other student-related expenses, and per capita endowments. I don’t care how exact or updated these numbers are, as I’m just trying to get a general idea.
I should have clarified that many ‘less elite’ LACs are the ones more likely to be handing out merit money to nearly everyone who applies. And that if a college charges less, it gives less. That’s why I included the statement that the situation is even worse at non-flagship publics, actually flagships too. Most of the parents I know are sending their kids to public colleges because those schools are cheaper, and probably think we are crazy to plan to send our 2 younger daughters to OOS LACs, at full-pay.That wasn’t clear from this last post, but I agree that LACs are the gold standard. You get what you pay for. In the long run, I expect they will actually be the best bargain.
D17 has 9 colleges on her list, all with less than 3000 students. I’ve noticed a general trend, in that the higher the rating on US News, the more the school spends per student. (Except for Reed, her first choice, which doesn’t cooperate with USN). Her 2 safeties spend considerably less.
D13 is a senior at a large land grant university. Now in her senior year, she has still has classes of over 100 for courses in her major, and 2 online course this semester. Plus she is a TA, as an undergrad. She doesn’t care at all about the bigtime football or the Greek system. We are saving money, but I don’t believe she is getting the optimal college experience.
Check out today’s New York Times’ editorial by Frank Bruni, “Why College Rankings are a Joke”
“… just another way to package and peddle the overall U.S. News rankings, illustrating the extent to which they’re a marketing ploy. No wonder so many college presidents, provosts and deans of admissions express disdain for them. How sad that they participate in them nonetheless.”
“The rankings nourish the myth that the richest, most selective colleges have some corner on superior education; don’t adequately recognize public institutions that prioritize access and affordability; and do insufficient justice to the particular virtues of individual campuses.”
@alf- there already is a thread about frank Bruni’s NYT article yesterday. It’s in the parents forum.
Very good article. I agree that US news should alter its methodology, recognize public schools accurately, and create accurate lists on things like best schools for veterans
Colleges that “prioritize access” often have low retention and graduation rates since many entering students are unprepared for college level work. Public schools failed to prepare them over 12 years and now the colleges are supposed to magically transform them. They either flunk out or get a watered down, non-competitive “everyone deserves a degree” education.
That’s the great thing about choice and the silly things about too broad a ranking.
Some kids love LACs - and the intimate environment, small classes etc. And that is why it is great that USNews at least breaks those out (and a flaw that Forbes and others don’t)
Then there are kids who visit small, intimate LAC campuses and find them confining, precious and stifling (like I did!) or who know from the jump they want to be involved in rigorous grad level research. Which is why it is even more helpful when schools are broken out by setting (Urban, suburban, rural) and even department strengths, etc.
And then there’s most kids, who can’t actually afford to go for 4 years to big privates or small liberal arts or even state schools and have to find their way in some combination of the various CC, state transfers and tech-school offerings. That is probably the biggest flaw in the USNews rankings (and, for that matter, any ranking) They do very little to aid in the decision making for the kids that arguably need it most - kids who graduate HS (or get GED), but can’t afford 4 years of any tuition college, but could maybe manage to hobble together a year or two of CC and then maybe 2 years of state school or well-financed private if they can live at home and keep up a part-time work schedule, but then they’re probably going to need 5 or 6 years total to finish and then they are paying double… etc. etc. I’m not sure what an easy to produce guide to schools looks like for students in those situations. While all these schools battle to get high on the USNews list (for obvious reasons) it probably means they spend more money on USNews-ish things, and less on where they could do the most good - finding ways to get kids some of their “educational pixie dust” without the 100K + price tag, even if only for a year or two.
But obviously, that is not USNews audience and it seems kind of useless railing against USNews too much. It has grabbed most of the ranking oxygen and its publication still precipitates 30-some pages of discussion (the irony/hypocritical nature of my own contribution duly noted.)
@TomSrOfBoston, as a faculty member at a school that “prioritize[ s ] access”, I’ll simply note that if it is true that
then those low retention and graduation rates mean that the possibility that those students may
doesn’t follow—we act as gatekeepers, thus the low retention and graduation rates are a safeguard against the possibility of watered-down degrees.
Now, one can argue over whether we should be prioritizing access quite so much as we do (I, for one, have my own very, very strong doubts), but you can’t really connect the dots from that in quite the direction you do.
“Colleges that ‘prioritize access’ often have low retention and graduation rates since many entering students are unprepared for college level work. Public schools failed to prepare them over 12 years and now the colleges are supposed to magically transform them. They either flunk out or get a watered down, non-competitive ‘everyone deserves a degree’ education.”
Either that, or not-well-prepared students get a second chance to excel, perhaps by first taking some remedial coursework, and then moving on to a rigorous college curriculum. Let’s not write off students who don’t qualify to enter the elitist institutions that rank near the top of USN&WR. And, let’s not throw all not-well-prepared students into the same pejorative category.
@dfbdfb I realize that I am making generalizations but they are based on my experience as an adjunct accounting instructor at two MA community colleges from time to time over the years. I stopped doing that when I discovered that the grades I submitted were sometimes changed to a higher grade as my class GPA was too low “based on their standards”. I also heard back fro some of the better students in the classes who had transferred to four year schools (Northeastern, BU, Bentley among others) that they were having a hard time adjusting to those schools because the workload was so much heavier than in community college.
While I’m sure your experience with your two Mass cc’s is indicative of the world at large, I thought it might be interesting to look at actual statistics.
I just found this chart and what is interesting about California CC to state college transfer graduation rates, is they seem higher at the higher ranked USNews schools. Despite USNews rankings seeming to work a bit against these kinds of schools, looking at the CC grad rate at the Cal States, you do see that some higher ranked schools have among the best transfer rates.
http://asd.calstate.edu/csrde/ccct.htm
Cal Sate Poly SLO (# 9 “Regional Universities West”) had the second highest grad rate (over 80%) for CC transfers for the class of 2008.
Cal State Pomona (# 31 in same rank) was also in the upper half with 77% grad rate for CC transfers.
San Jose State (#33) had 75% grad rate
Long Beach (#35) had over 80%…
Maybe the Cal CC’s do a better job of preparing or the Cal States do a better job of screening than in Mass?
Some of the lower grad rates are at unrated (for some reason) state schools like Dominguez Hills and East Bay. Interestingly (to me at least since I just found these numbers) the Maritime Academy is the only Cal State with a less than 60% grad rate for CC transfers. But I thought this was somewhat encouraging.
@CaliDad2020 From what I have read the CA community colleges are a different world from those in MA.
I don’t know enough to comment on MA CC’s, but CA CC are for sure diverse in many ways. They can be a huge pain in the butt to get the credits you need, but they are a great route for transfer not just into Top 30 regional schools like Cal Poly and Ponmona, but also to top ranked UCs. The D of a woman we work with just got accepted as a transfer from LACC to UCDavis. Unfortunately for her, despite pretty decent need aid, she is essentially on her own financially and can’t swing living away from home and going to school so she’ll do Cal State LA instead (which is not a bad little school either.)
The CC’s try hard.
The US News rankings has an incredible East coast bias. In last years rankings,all the schools were east of the Mississippi River except Rice, the California schools, and one college that was west of the Mississippi by about 10 miles.
@gusmahler What is the percentage of the population living east of the Mississippi? That may have something to do with this “bias”.
Not @gusmahler but got curious. Only 58-ish percent lived east of Mississippi as of 2011, according to Wikipedia, which s/b accurate enough for this purpose. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_United_States
I am just speculating, but can we look at the rankings by age of the institution? Is it reasonable to expect older and more established colleges will fare better in the ranking system?
Is it logical that since the east was settled sooner that there would be a higher concentration of older colleges there?
Most importantly, is there any evidence that any of the categories which have subjective ratings have been prejudiced against western colleges?
You are discounting schools in California and Texas, but I’d point out that only a fifth of the population lives in that big region of the United States that is west of the Mississippi but not in California or Texas.
There are also fewer colleges in the West. Think, for example, of California: the largest 4-year system, the CSU’s, are classified as regional. If you compare the number of UC’s + national universities/LACs in California to the myriad universities and colleges in the Boston to DC area, you can clearly see the numbers don’t match.