Been lurking on CC for a long time, but first post here. I see that US News is pretty much taken as “the ranking” to follow here, and there have been a number of articles in the press about the inaccuracies there, and the basic flaw in what US News has set out to do (i.e., literally numerically ranking institutions which are very different from each other.) But that doesn’t seem to have changed the thinking process in CC.
Among the rankings (US News, Forbes, Princeton Review, etc.) US News is the most deceptive, in that it appears to follow a scientific method, while to others can easily be criticized. US News has also separated out the Liberal Arts Colleges from the Universities to defend itself from the “apples to oranges comparison” criticism.
But they still lump Public Universities and Privates in one category, and their measurement criteria all pretty much negatively impact the rankings of Public Universities. Take UC Berkeley, a top public university by general consensus. Unlike top Privates, Berkeley asks applicants to specify the major at application time, and unlike even other UCs, there is no second choice. Berkeley admits by major, and if you aren’t admitted to your #1 major, you don’t get in to Berkeley. Admission rates vary by major – for example EECS this year had an admit rate of 6% - lower than many Ivies - and Engineering at Berkeley had an admit rate of around 8% – again lower than many top 15 US-News colleges. Not to mention differences in reckoning endowments, motivation etc.between Public and Private universities.
Further, US News has created an exaggerated view of the dichotomy between undergrad ranking and grad ranking, I feel. It’s true that the first couple of years of undergrad is different from grad school, but the remaining two years of undergrad experience is closer to, and benefits from, the grad facilities that exist in colleges. Wanted to know if others here might share the same feelings about these rankings.
If UC-Berkeley is “a top public university by . . . consensus” and USNWR ranks it accordingly as the top public university in its National Universities category, then your argument is somewhat undermined by your primary example.
For a dramatically instructive example with which to support your thesis (which is broader than the thread title alone would indicate), you would have been better off with Reed College, which shares an inferred SAT average with Berkeley, yet is ranked a barely visible 77th in its own category.
“If UC-Berkeley is “a top public university by . . . consensus” and USNWR ranks it accordingly as the top public university in its National Universities category, then your argument is somewhat undermined by your primary example.”
I was referring to the combined rankings of Private and Public universities, where Publics are pushed way down – not just Berkeley, but UCLA, UCSD, Michgan, UVA, UT-Austin, UNC etc. Aside from the numerical ranking, which is fundamentally flawed, my view is that US News also has a systemic bias against Public universities… I also have a lot of anecdotal evidence (sorry nothing more scientific) where it seems like a lot of people use the US News rankings and end up spending more money on privates when they had perfectly good public alternatives.
Additionally, given the opaque nature of holistic admissions at Private universities, and given that a significant number of the slots are filled by legacies, affirmative action, sports quotas, ED etc. in these places, one really wonders whether the US-news-induced bloated image that these Privates have is justified.
Certainly, many of the private usual suspects do well. So do some publics. It does depend on whether any of them are in-state (or cheap enough) for you, though.
Are you sure they aren’t spending LESS on private schools? One of the most appealing features of the top 20 or more private schools in both the RU and LAC rankings is their excellent need-based aid. If your family earns up to ~2X the national median income (maybe more at some schools), then chances are, your net cost to attend one of those schools will be very competitive with state school costs.
They can offer better financial aid because they are such rich, well-endowed colleges. That institutional wealth shows up in other benefits: small classes, good facilities, high undergraduate faculty salaries, etc. These qualities help drive up application numbers and drive down admission rates. If admission rates were only a measure of popularity, then we should be seeing low admission rates at a few big party schools with winning sports teams, resort-like settings, and so-so academics. In fact, very few colleges (if any) have admit rates under 20% without very solid academic reputations.
What measurable quality, related to undergraduate academic quality, is US News missing that would improve the rankings of state universities? Note that Forbes, using fairly different criteria, also ranks Berkeley at #20 among research universities.
In a better world, more state flagships SHOULD be ranked among the very best American colleges. They’d get there not by re-jiggering the rankings, but by public insistence that the states and federal government invest more in higher education.
@tk21769, roughly half the students at elite privates are full-pay, so among the population that can get in to an elite, I daresay that in-state options would be cheaper for the majority of them.
That said, not everyone lives in CA/VA/MI (or NC/TX or a few other states with public schools/programs that are within shouting distance of private elites).
BTW, @tk21769 when you state that states should fund publics more (which I agree with, BTW), that brings up a flaw in the USN rankings, which is that they measure endowments, but they don’t take in to account state contributions to publics. Somewhat perversely, that means that if a private individual donates $500M (generating less than $100M annual income), that would boost a school up in the rankings more than if a state adds on $100M in annual funding to a school.
Well, state funding is contingent upon the state legislature not being taken over by a group of clowns (see University of Wisconsin, for instance), while endowments are more stable over time so I’m not sure USNWR methods are really flawed in that respect.
Doesn’t seem to have been mentioned in this thread, but USNWR does publish a list that is only Public Universities, for those that think the main list is too much of an apples to oranges comparison.
@NickFlynn, except that USN doesn’t give credit for any funding by state legislatures. Even if a bunch of clowns take over, the possibility of them slashing the state contribution to a flagship down to 0 isn’t even a remote possibility.
^^^ My guess is that they assume (possibly a reasonable assumption?) that state funding is essentially tuition support, and hence roughly equivalent to tuition fees collected at private schools.
I know in my god-forsaken corner of the world, every time the legislature cuts public higher ed funding, there is a commensurate increase in tuition that attempts to make up for the shortfall.
@tk2179, an instructive example is UMich vs. USC. Look at the USN ranking and USC is slightly higher than UMich. Yet in what ways are they better? Is it because of more personalized attention at USC? Well, USC is a big school as well, and UMich actually has a lower student-faculty ratio than USC regardless of whether you use just undergrads or total student population as the denominator. Is it because USC is richer? Well, UMich actually has a bigger endowment on both a total and per capita basis, and they get state funding as well. Maybe the academics at USC are better regarded? Peers rate UMich much higher and for that matter, HS counselors rank UMich higher as well.
What about the student body? In the most recent class, the middle 50% ACT was 34-30, which is as high or higher than USC’s. USC does have a lower fall freshman admit rate, but wait! USC takes a ton of transfers. 3K freshmen but 1.5K transfers (vs. 6K freshmen and 1K transfers each year for UMich), and it’s much easier to transfer in to USC than to enter as a freshman, so is the student body really better?
That said, USC definitely has its strong points and UMich isn’t for everyone, but blindly going by USN rankings can be very misleading. In some areas, UMich is better.
USC incoming test scores are measurably higher than Michigan…the midpoint percentile is about 1.7% higher. Doesn’t sound like much, but it means that the median student at USC is drawn from a pool about 20% more selective than the pool at Michigan.
That seems like at least a justification for ranking USC higher than UM, and of course the difference in the rankings is 25th versus 29th, which isn’t very significant at all anyway.
(This is based on test score data from 2013 IPEDS, so it might be out of date.)
@NickFlynn, note, however, the gaming done by USC.
1/3rd of each class are transfers (who likely don’t have the stats of their fall freshman admits). When you take that in to consideration, it seems quite likely that the USC student body isn’t much different from the UMich student body stats-wise.
There is a “financial resources” factor, which counts for 10% in the overall ranking. Apparently, it is measured by expenditures per student, not by endowments.
I prefer revealed preference rankings. However, US News is a lot better than it gets credit for - people take it seriously because it reflects reality. When a ranking doesn’t have Harvard, MIT, or Stanford in top 5 it’s hard to take it seriously.
@DrGoogle, yes, but they’re not as big a percentage of a class compared to USC. 6K fall freshmen admits vs. 1K transfers at UMich. 3K fall freshmen admits vs. 1.5K transfers at USC.