Which school is better Dartmouth or Syracuse? USNWR certainly thinks it’s Dartmouth.
What about for your kid? Would there be instances where he/she would have Syracuse on top?
Well, considering that I have a child who’s very interested in industrial/product design, not only would Syracuse be better for her than Dartmouth, it’d be better than any of the Ivies, so there’s one datapoint bit of anecdotal evidence for everyone.
^^^ Television production also, or Sportscasting, via Newhouse.
/Happy Syracuse Grad
//would still have a hard time with that choice! lol
“Aren’t there reasonable explanations for these trends that don’t involve “gaming”?”
Sure. Universities that have been around for over 100 years, employ 3,000-7,000 faculty and run hundreds of departments can improve in leaps and bounds in the course of 4-5 years, right? 
But gaming cannot be discounted. The data shows as much.
“1. After big investments in public universities during the height of the cold war, hasn’t that investment gradually flattened/declined? States have reduced their own investments in public flagships. Federal defense RDT&E investments have flattened out. Correct? (I haven’t looked up the numbers recently.)”
True enough, but as state funding has declined, endowments have grown. From 1990-2016, Michigan’s endowment endowment has grown more than any other university endowment in the nation. Michigan’s endowment now stands at $10 billion, and does not include the $300 million it receives from the state, which is the equivalent of an additional $6 billion of endowment. That’s comparable, on a per/student basis, to many private elites, including Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Johns Hopkins and Penn.
“2. After the first rankings, which were based entirely on opinion polls, USNWR added measurements that did not corroborate all those opinions. The PA scores perhaps reflected opinions formed years prior to the assessments (or heavily influenced by continued high levels of graduate research production). In some cases, opinions lagged a changing reality.”
I doubt it. Nobody knows more about universities than university presidents. They are experts in their industries.
“One private university in the current top 20 that has leaped ~10 spots is the University of Chicago.
In the first USNWR ranking (1983) it ranked 6th, only a few positions worse than it is now. At one point it did rank as low as 15th. Since then it massively increased its direct mail marketing efforts, resulting in big increases in the number of applications and a large drop in admission rates.”
Chicago’s current ranking is fair. It is one of the best universities on the planet, and has been for over a century. When Chicago was ranked out of the top 10, the USNWR was failing in its ranking. Any ranking that does not have Chicago ranked in the top 10 is not to be trusted. By that reckoning, any ranking that does not have Cal in the top 10 and Michigan in the top 20 is also unreliable.
But Chicago is one of those universities that engages in gaming. I remember how in a single year, Chicago’s student to faculty ratio dropped from 13:1 to 7:1 (1995 I believe). It is not Chicago’s fault. It had to do it because all of its private peers were doing it. Gaming faculty and financial resources is an art form that private universities have mastered.
“At about the same time, it invested heavily in new dorms as well as other facilities (such as the library system). One driving factor was a desire to increase the ratio of undergraduate to graduate students, primarily for financial reasons. It became a more attractive college.”
Have you seen how much Michigan has spent on academic facilities in the last 15 years? The last time I checked, it was close to $5 billion. I am not sure about Cal, but I know that UVa and UNC have also spent a lot of money on improving and refurbishing facilities.
“Is it not the case that today, at the undergraduate level, Chicago, Columbia and WashU are all stronger institutions than the 4 state universities that USNWR ranked in the top 20 in 1983 (Berkeley, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin)?”
Not really tk. With the exception of only a handful of universities, there is no such thing as institutions that are stronger than Cal and Michigan. Chicago, Columbia and WUSTL are peer institutions, they are not superior. The problem I see all too often is that people assume that the quality of a university can be measured statistically. It cannot. There is no way to capture even a microcosm of a university’s overall essence statistically.
The real problem with these rankings is that they create the idea that almost no universities can be PEERS; instead, they compete individually for top spots. People believe that schools like Cal and Michigan are worse than WashU and Columbia due to US News rankings but they are in fact peers, despite the gap in their ranking.
At the undergraduate level, the top ~20 colleges employ more like hundreds (not thousands) of faculty for dozens (not hundreds) of departments. Notwithstanding the one-up integer rankings, it may be the case that some of the top 50 are so similar in aggregate scores that even small performance changes can cause a shift of as many as 10 positions in a few years (with or without gaming.) Then, too, the criteria/weights sometimes do change, which affects some schools more than others.
Yes, but that doesn’t mean they are all infallible in their opinions about peer performance. If they’re right, SOME statistical measurements should corroborate their opinions. For the most part, the USNWR PA scores and the “objective” measures do agree fairly well. It’s in the top public universities that we see some of the biggest differences. Several alternate explanations could be considered. One is a “gaming” explanation. For this to account for the PA discrepancy, I think one has to believe that 10-15 private universities are doing it year after year at the expense of top state schools, without being challenged effectively by their own stakeholders, their competition, or the ranking services.
Other possible explanations involve ranking bias. If the US News PA rankings are correct and the chosen “objective” criteria are biased against public universities, I would expect some other criteria to bring the overall rankings more in line with the PA scores. Some measurements do this, in particular the bibliometric data (on publications and citations) that some of the world university rankings use. Other measurements seem to corroborate the overall US News rankings. More or less.
I would agree that universities are such big, complex institutions that it does not necessarily make sense to characterize them with a single integer rank. However, I still think that statistical performance measurements are a good thing. Most of the US News measurements strike me as appropriate. I think it is in the colleges’ own best interest to try to report them accurately, but one does need to allow for some slop. A difference of 10 - 15 positions (maybe more) doesn’t strike me as very significant compared to considerations of cost and personal fit.
re #643:
“Michigan’s endowment now stands at $10 billion, and does not include the $300 million it receives from the state, which is the equivalent of an additional $6 billion of endowment. That’s comparable, on a per/student basis, to many private elites, including Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Johns Hopkins and Penn.”
…But this excludes the endowment equivalent of the millions that Cornell receives from the state…
That is correct monydad. Cornell’s four statutory colleges (ALS, HE, ILR and VM) receive roughly $140 million from the state of NY (compared to the $280 million that the University of Michigan receives from the state of Michigan). Actually, Cornell approximately half of Michigan in most respects: 22,000 students vs 44,000 students, $6 billion endowment vs $10 billion endowment, $140 million state appropriations vs $280 million state appropriations. Which is why I listed Cornell as one of the universities that is comparable to Michigan on a per student basis.
Speaking of Michigan (and schools similar), why is it not ranked higher? Why are public schools so undervalued in US News rankings?
That’s what we’re trying to get at.
Assuming we accept the concept of one-up integer rankings for entire universities, I’m inclined to believe some of these schools are fairly valued in the #20-30 positions. Others disagree.
If we want to compare financial resources, certainly it makes sense to consider state appropriations as well as endowments. While we’re at it, we should consider other major revenue sources, then adjust by the number of full time equivalent students. IPEDS has revenue data going back to 2004. It tracks the following revenue sources:
Revenues from tuition and fees per FTE
Revenues from state appropriations per FTE
Revenues from local appropriations per FTE
Revenues from government grants and contracts per FTE
Revenues from private gifts grants and contracts per FTE
Revenues from investment return per FTE
Other core revenues per FTE
I’ve added the IPEDS revenue figures for 12 USNWR-ranked universities, including some T10 universities as well as some ~20-something universities. Here’s what I get, sorted by total revenues per FTE student:
$39,557 … College of William and Mary
$65,141 … University of California-Berkeley
$82,313 … Tufts University
$83,364 … New York University
$83,678 … Georgetown University
$87,187 … University of Southern California
$100,954 … University of Michigan-Ann Arbor
…
$176,926 … University of Pennsylvania
$180,745 … Columbia University in the City of New York
$198,593 … University of Chicago
$213,551 … Duke University
$446,196 … Yale University
Universities above the long dotted line are ranked by USNWR in the 20s, except W&M which is currently #32 and NYU which is #36. Universities below the long dotted line are ranked by USNWR in the top 10.
So with respect to financial resources per FTE student, it does appear to me that Michigan and Berkeley are more similar to other 20-something universities than to T10 schools. I’ve also looked at instructional spending per FTE student. By that measure, Berkeley and Michigan again appear to lag some of the T10 private schools. The difference appears to be as great as 6 to 1 (Yale to Berkeley) … although, perhaps the GASB school (Berkeley) v. FASB school (Yale) accounting differences exaggerate the gap.
If you’re cynical about all these statistics, have a look at subjective/anecdotal student reviews. You can find lots of them if you know where to look (although I can’t link due to terms of service). For Berkeley and Michigan, I see lots of complaints about big undergraduate classes or over-use of TAs with poor English skills. That would seem to be consistent with lower levels of spending on undergraduate instruction compared to higher-ranked private schools (or with the USNWR numbers for class size distributions.) On the other hand, TAs and big classes may be allowing for more lectures by world class professors than you’d otherwise get for the costs. Maybe the higher Peer Assessment scores reflect that.
By appearances, a school ranked, say, 27th among universities, benefits from a favorable spot by U.S. News methodology, in that by a mathematically meaningful relationship (overall score), a school in this position falls halfway between 1st and 99th.
I’d suggest to anyone happy with both the academic offerings and general atmospheres of the public universities they attend, that they lessen their interest in U.S. News. The publication may simply not capture what might be amply obvious to you as a student.
“At the undergraduate level, the top ~20 colleges employ more like hundreds (not thousands) of faculty for dozens (not hundreds) of departments. Notwithstanding the one-up integer rankings, it may be the case that some of the top 50 are so similar in aggregate scores that even small performance changes can cause a shift of as many as 10 positions in a few years (with or without gaming.) Then, too, the criteria/weights sometimes do change, which affects some schools more than others.”
But tk, universities operate as a single entity, not separate entities (undergrads vs graduate). And while some universities may improve more than others in certain pockets of time, over the long run, most top universities improve at a roughly similar rate.
“Yes, but that doesn’t mean they are all infallible in their opinions about peer performance. If they’re right, SOME statistical measurements should corroborate their opinions.”
Not if those measurements have been drastically manipulated, as is the case with private universities. If you do not think that cutting student to faculty ratios in half is drastic, then you and I have very different standards when it comes to integrity and honesty. And if universities shamelessly lie about something that is so easily verified, I cannot fathom what unverifiable lies they would be willing to conjure up.
“For the most part, the USNWR PA scores and the “objective” measures do agree fairly well. It’s in the top public universities that we see some of the biggest differences. Several alternate explanations could be considered. One is a “gaming” explanation.”
Gaming is the main explanation. There are others, naturally, but they are not nearly as significant.
“For this to account for the PA discrepancy, I think one has to believe that 10-15 private universities are doing it year after year at the expense of top state schools, without being challenged effectively by their own stakeholders, their competition, or the ranking services.”
Sadly, public universities do not really care about rankings, so they will not challenge the publications. Thankfully, the USNWR is losing much of its appeal as a result of its inconsistencies. In the 1990s, it was by far the most important tool used by high school kids. Today, it is regarded with the skepticism that it deserves.
“However, I still think that statistical performance measurements are a good thing.”
Like I said, universities cannot be rated statistically. It is impossible to do so. So any ranking based on statistics does not work.
"Most of the US News measurements strike me as appropriate. "
On the surface, some of the metrics are appropriate, but the way the data is collected is extremely inconsistent, and the assumptions made are pathetic.
FWIW, one thing I’ve long felt was missing from the US News approach is there is no evaluation of the depth and breadth of offerings available at an institution- simply put, what, and how much, you can learn there.
I think this is very relevant to many people approaching an undergraduate education, since often their goals, objectives and interests change over the course of their undergraduate years. My own D1 got interested in a particular sub-area of her major field, only to find that her LAC offered no advanced courses in that sub-area.
This is an aspect where many larger institutions are advantaged, but goes completely unevaluated.
^^ That. I repeat the example I said above: Syracuse at #60 is way better for my D19 than any of the Ivies not because of any of the stuff USNWR tries to measure, but because it offers majors in the sort of stuff she’s interested in and the Ivies don’t.
Arguably, the US News national rankings are biased toward a fairly traditional liberal education. Admission selectivity and a high level of student-faculty engagement may have a bigger impact on that kind of education than the number of majors. Any good liberal arts college can offer enough breadth and depth to support its traditional educational mission. Whether that program is right for you is another question.
Michigan definitely has a lot of money to spend on it’s students, and is one of the few public schools (if not the only IIRC) who have an endowment-per-student in the 6 figures ($229k +), but it’s still quite lower than (about $364k), Columbia (about $345k), Cornell ($275k +), AND ESPECIALLY UPenn ($430k +). It is quite higher than JHU’s though (about $164k).
Endowment isn’t important, but rather endowment-per-student.
I didn’t edit my prvious post, which has Brown at about $364k per student.
I stand corrected. UC Berkeley also has an endowment-per-student of $105,879, UNC-Chapel Hill has $102,771, & UVA surprisingly has even higher at $342,506 (which would put it over UMich, Cornell and JHU).
IsaacTheFuture, if you factor in state funding, Michigan’s endowment is more like $360,000/student. And Cornell’s is more like $410,000/student. Both are comparable to Columbia and Penn. Cal’s would be slightly lower, at $275,000/student, but still formidable. UVa would hit the $500,000 mark, which is exceptional.
That being said, I agree that endowment and endowment per student are far and away the most objective way to determine a university’s financial resources.
And Rice has an endowment of $920,000 per student.
That’s correct ClarinetDad, Princeton, Yale, Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Caltech and Rice are truly off the charts. Notre Dame and Dartmouth are up there too.