@Silivon a university can certainly spend more than $40K per student, and they do. My point was simply that it is higly unlikely that they spend nearly as much as cited on things that actually benefit undergraduates. Indeed, I imagine there are LACs with small classes, good labs and facilities, and competent teachers that like to teach that are actually spending more in a meaningful sense than universities that are cited as have multiple times more resources.
@tk21769 : My understanding is that Niche and Princeton Review (https://www.princetonreview.com/college-rankings/student-survey) are using self-selected samples. They are not random true survey conducted by a market research company. Even Indiana University has to stand up saying they are not associated with them. Given a few years, when more data are collected, their survey results will be more accurate.
IU had to stand up and say they aren’t associated with WSJ’s ranking, actually.
@nrtlax33
I want to understand the crux of your argument without getting too caught up in the details of survey methodologies and such.
An underlying issue that might be concerning you is that most rankings reward extremes, such as:
- the highest test scores
- the lowest admission rates
- the most faculty awards and publications
- etc.
A case can be made (and maybe you’re trying to make it) that excellence is not necessarily in the extremes, instead it’s found in the mean (as in The Golden Mean). So, colleges that go overboard with hyper selective admissions and extreme course rigor may not be the best choices for all excellent students. If that’s what you’re arguing, I don’t necessarily disagree … although I also think that some excellent students really do thrive on competition and rigor. For those who thrive on balance, maybe something like the WSJ engagement survey is on the right track.
@tk21769 : You explain much more eloquently than I can. As long as students and parents do their due diligence, they are likely to be fine. Don’t chase prestige. Always think about consequences. In the latest issue of Brown alumni magazine, there is an article (http://brownalumnimagazine.com/articles/2018-09-11/on-the-neural-frontier) talking about Brown neuroscience…
I don’t know how many people know about this. I don’t want to pretend I know other departments at Brown. But we did a lot of research on Brown neuroscience and know this before going there. My understanding is that most students there are quite outgoing like my kid. Combining intended concentration strength and other personal “fit” factors sealed the deal. The fist few months are the most important time for both parents and kids. If students can be successful in the first semester/term, barring any unforeseen circumstances, it is likely to be smooth sailing to the end.
@IzzoOne Yes. In an university, there are postdocs and university pays them. So for undergraduate, it’s better to weight less for research. LAC is a good option.
@tk21769 : I think a bit of statistics is helpful for parents/students/schools which are obsessed with rankings to understand there might be consequences. According to https://studenthealth.uiowa.edu/assets/Uploads/2018-NCHA-Report2.pdf
Number one “top stressors”? Academics.
A couple weeks ago a NY Times article titled “Feeling Suicidal, Students Turned to Their College. They Were Told to Go Home.” features Stanford University. Since those students who went home are not active students, I highly doubt they are counted in any of those college rankings statistics. So retention rate is not likely to be an accurate measurement of how many students have gone home.
I came to the conclusion that obsession of rankings and ignorance of mental health problems is the leading cause of this epidemic. Considering this case at UPenn (must read: https://www.phillymag.com/articles/2014/05/23/penn-suicides-madison-holleran/), it is very clear that she has chosen the wrong school. She knew she chose the wrong school. But she chose to jump from the top of the parking garage instead of transferring out. She should have gone to Lehigh University but Ivy League name was too attractive to give up. Also, according to the same article:
A simple calculation told me that there are at least hundreds of patients. How can it be so difficult to get an appointment if there are 38 full-time staff in the office?
This recent NY Times article (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/12/us/college-student-suicide-hamilton.html) details another case at UPenn two years later.
Regarding “food of happiness”, my kid sent me a photo of “taiyaki ice scream” sold at Brown dinning hall last night (first time available). (What?? Taiyaki Ice Scream ?? https://www.google.com/search?q=Taiyaki+Ice+Cream&client=firefox-b-1&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwicrbGikcrdAhWvmOAKHTZqBPMQsAR6BAgDEAE&biw=1352&bih=636)
I am definitely not worried this issue myself but please consider this issue when you/your kid chooses a school.
So @tk21769 and UChicago lovers, given the information above, I hope you understand that why I think it is especially important for UChicago to choose the right students. Someone links a video above saying that UChicago is #1 for academics.
All colleges should choose the right type of students and all students should try to find the best fit for them. No college environment is immune to these problems
The outline format I put it in didn’t show up correctly. I need to learn how CC handles text better.
Graduation rates are mostly a proxy for admission selectivity (stronger incoming students are more likely to graduate), though it is also affected in smaller ways by other factors. Since USNWR appears to be trying to match “conventional wisdom” of college rankings (where there is a strong bias toward more selective colleges), it is not surprising that a measure closely related to admission selectivity is one of the more strongly weighted ones (and other measures of admission selectivity like SAT/ACT scores are also separately included).
Of course, a strong student who is not in financial distress is unlikely to have difficulty graduating for the usual financial or academic reasons, even if s/he attends a college with a low graduation rate.
I'm not saying that's not important, but I was surprised that that's the #1 most important factor. Here's the breakdown by category:
I. Outcomes - 35%
A. Graduation and retention - 22%
i. Graduation rate within 6 years - 17.6%
ii. Average first-year retention rate - 4.4%
B. Graduation rate performance - 8%
C. Actual six-year graduation rate relative to predicted entering class 8%
D. Social Mobility - 5%
i. Pell Grant graduation rates - 2.5%
ii. Pell Grant graduation rates compared with all other students - 2.5%
II. Faculty Resources - 20%:
A. Class size - 8%
B. Faculty salary - 7%
C. Proportion of full-time faculty with the highest degree - 3%
D. Student-faculty ratio - 1%
E. Proportion of faculty who are full time - 1%
III. Expert Opinion - 20%
A. Peer assessment - 15%
B. High school counselor assessment - 5%
IV. Financial Resources - 10%
A. Average spending per student - 10%
V. Student Excellence - 10%
A. Standardized test scores - 7.75%
B. % of incoming students from top 10% HS class - 2.25%
VI. Alumni Giving - 5%
A. % of alumni who donate - 5%
Ugh! This is probably worse!
You are very right to be surprised. Many look to USNews to help them determine which schools have the best professors/instruction in the classroom, as well as the stronger students, because that’s what they think they want to pay top dollar for.
The metrics keep getting altered in order to get their desired outcomes, which is certain schools on top, and certain schools below a certain rung.
You’re right. It’s really a way to slap the public univs that are located in states that don’t provide much/any state aid. It’s not a univ’s fault if their state doesn’t do this. Publics like the CSUs and UCs will always get a boost since the Stae of Calif provides extra generous aid (Cal Grants) to modest income students.
There are multiple lists out there on the interwebs about best teaching and best professors.
You may also want to consider LACs rather than a big uni if you’re interested in high-level teaching. Whereas it’s possible to get decent teaching at a big uni, small LACs tend to concentrate on teaching as a first priority and big unis (to generalize greatly) tend to focus more on research first then teaching. Also your child will need to compete with grad students at unis for research and other positions. No one category is right. It depends on what your family is seeking. Also you may want to google the percent of adjuncts and TAs colleges have. That can indicate who is actually teaching your child.
For our family we chose schools that offered small class sizes even for intro classes; professors teaching rather than TAs and no party-school atmosphere. (which you can research on the website called Niche and elsewhere).
And then we also looked at the departments that the child was interested in. And of course cost. and geography – where its’ located.
That narrowed things significantly for each child.
Some possible surprises: small LACs can be big PHD and other grad-school feeders, even ones that you wouldn’t immediately suspect, like Kalamazoo and Wooster and Earlham. And these great schools are fairly easy to get into besides.
More, if you have a child that’s high stats and he/she applies to a school where he/she is in the top 25% of the applicant pool, he/she will probably be offered a lot of merit aid. So there’s that too.
You can also do searches for rankings specific to intended major which will look much different than the general USNWR rankings.
I think you’re looking at this from the lens of very selective colleges and high achieving students where graduation is taken for granted. But at many many colleges it’s not. For example, across the 16 public universities in NC the average six year graduation rate is about 72% and for some of the most open access institutions it’s less than 50%. With this in mind, a fundamental criterion of importance for any college is the likelihood of a student to actually finish their degree and hence it makes sense as a core indicator. I’d want to know if 1 out of 4 or even 1 out of 2 students isn’t completing at my kid’s intended college.
However, being a Libra who can argue all sides of an issue, I’ll also point out that one can easily argue that graduation rates have a lot to do with the quality of the inputs (students) as much if not more than the quality of the college. The better prepared and better financed a student is, the more likely they are to graduate.
With this in mind, I think US News should calculate and only count graduation by household income status and other subgroups. So is the college outperforming its peers in graduating students who fall within different income levels and other at-risk categories? I think perhaps this is what they do with the “graduation rate relative to predicted entering class” but I’ve not looked under the methodology hood to know.
In my world, it’s the relative graduation performance for different types of students that would indicate quality because that captures the ‘value add’ of the college itself – not who it teaches.
I’ve been learning more and more about the whole college admissions process over the last year as my daughter is now a senior. One of the factors that I looked at to determine what the “best” colleges are is the USNWR ranking. I assumed that the highest ranked colleges had the best teachers, quality of life, post graduation career opportunities, smartest students, post-college career satisfaction, etc.
It turns out the #1 most important factor that determines a school’s rating is… graduation rate within 6 years.
I’m not saying that’s not important, but I was surprised that that’s the #1 most important factor. Here’s the breakdown by category:
I. Outcomes - 35%
A. Graduation and retention - 22%
i. Graduation rate within 6 years - 17.6%
ii. Average first-year retention rate - 4.4%
B. Graduation rate performance - 8%
C. Actual six-year graduation rate relative to predicted for Fall 2011 entering class - 8%
D. Social Mobility - 5%
i. Pell Grant graduation rates - 2.5%
ii. Pell Grant graduation rates compared with all other students - 2.5%
II. Faculty Resources - 20%:
A. Class size - 8%
B. Faculty salary - 7%
C. Proportion of full-time faculty with the highest degree in their fields - 3%
D. Student-faculty ratio - 1%
E. Proportion of faculty who are full time - 1%
III. Expert Opinion - 20%
A. Peer assessment - 15%
B. High school counselor assessment - 5%
IV. Financial Resources - 10%
A. Average spending per student on instruction, research, student services - 10%
V. Student Excellence - 10%
A. Standardized test scores - 7.75%
B. % of incoming students from top 10% of high school class - 2.25%
VI. Alumni Giving - 5%
A. % of alumni who donate - 5%
And if it’s easier just to see each of the criteria from highest weight to lowest:
17.6% - Graduation rate within 6 years (Outcomes: Graduation and Retention Rates)
15% - Peer assessment (Expert Opinion)
10% - Average spending per student on instruction, research, student services (Financial Resources)
8% - Actual six-year graduation rate relative to predicted for Fall 2011 entering class (Outcomes: Graduation Rate Performance)
8% - Class size (Faculty Resources)
7.75% - Standardized test scores (Student Excellence)
7% - Faculty salary (Faculty Resources)
5% - High school counselor assessment (Expert Opinion)
5% - Alumni giving - % of alumni who donate (Alumni Giving)
4.4% - Average first-year retention rate (Outcomes: Graduation and Retention Rates)
3% - Proportion of full-time faculty with the highest degree in their fields (Faculty Resources)
2.5% - Pell Grant graduation rates (Outcomes: Social Mobility)
2.5% - Pell Grant graduation rates compared with all other students (Outcomes: Social Mobility)
2.25% - High school class standing - % of incoming students from top 10% of high school class (Student Excellence)
1% - Student-faculty ratio (Faculty Resources)
1% - Proportion of faculty who are full time (Faculty Resources)
Maybe I’m the only one who didn’t realize this. To me, I’m not sure I would consider graduation rate within 6 years to be the most important criterion. I’m fairly confident that wherever my daughter goes, she’ll graduate within 6 years. The other factors seem much more important by comparison.
Looks like the above is accounted for in the following measures, though they add up to less than the weight of raw graduation rate:
8.0% Actual six-year graduation rate relative to predicted entering class
2.5% Pell Grant graduation rates compared with all other students
This is a good point. But USNWR could (and, IMHO, should) correct for this when ranking the top colleges. Should a school that graduates 97% of their students really be ranked higher than one that graduates 93%? To me, this biases the rankings against schools (e.g., Caltech) that recognize that graduating with a rigorous degree should be hard. Frankly, it is appropriate that some students fail out. Currently, USNWR is effectively encouraging schools to find ways to let mediocre students (who exist even at the very best schools) coast through to graduation.
If a college has higher graduation rates than predicted based on its entering students, is that because of:
A. Better student academic support, better financial aid, fewer administrative problems, etc., or
B. Offering easy majors and courses and grade inflation for students to slide through and graduate, even if they would not be able to handle the academic rigor that most students see.
?
Presumably, the answer varies by college, and some colleges may have some of both.
A is generally desirable. B may not be directly harmful in a localized sense, but could (over time if enough marginal students graduate and appear to employers or others as “how did s/he graduate from ____?”) harm the reputation of the specific college or college in general. But it could be that the most selective colleges have only a small percentage students who need B to graduate (probably the academically weakest of both the development admits and recruited athletes who were admitted to standards far below the usual level), so the effect of them on their reputations is small (and the academically weak development admits become successful for other reasons like connections).
I had the same thought @foosondaughter. This has been happening at the high school level for years. In many states the graduation rate holds significantly more weight in accreditation and funding calculations than it did years ago. The result has been the creation of “credit recovery” programs that allow failing students to pass classes with significantly less time and effort than repeating an entire year of a course. In schools that are under pressure to raise graduation rates, teachers often complain of being pressured into passing students who years ago would have failed. It would be unfortunate if this started happening at the college level, and would probably only stand to further decrease the value of a bachelor’s degree.
I am all for raising graduation rates, but I fear using this sole data point as a focal point might only cause schools to lower their standards just to push more students through.