<p>I was just wondering if someone could explain the difference to me, and explain how they match up? I'm mostly curious about Villanova and Elon. Villanova is #1 in the north, and Elon is #1 in the south. I understand that neither of these would be ranked #1 if they were with the National Universities. So, where might they fall if ranked with the larger list of well known universities?</p>
<p>For a quick-and-dirty comparison, just look at average SAT scores.
stateuniversity.com ranks all these schools (as well as LACs) together in a single list according to 75th percentile CR+M. For 2012, Villanova is 87th. Actually, it looks like it should be tied for 86th with Richmond, Air Force, UMd, etc. Elon is at #174 (or tied for 171 with UCSB, etc.</p>
<p>If you excluded LACs, and if other measurements were in line with test scores, it appears Villanova would fall somewhere in the 40-60 range of national universities. That’s about where national universities with similar scores fall.</p>
<p>Elon’s aspirational peer is Furman, and in many ways they seem to be catching up to them. You may find it useful to look at Furman’s standing among LACs to evaluate where Elon is heading.</p>
<p>It’s very difficult to compare quality between regional universities and national universities, just as it is between national universities and LACS, because they are different types of institutions with different goals and objectives. National universities are research intensive institutions with goals including the expansion of knowledge through research and publications, the training of the next generation of researchers and academics at the doctorate level, professional training, as well as undergraduate education. In contrast, regional universities are primarily concerned with undergraduate education although they also offer professional degrees and academic masters degrees. They have few if any PhD programs and, while research is often conducted, it is usually at a much less intensive level compared to a national university.</p>
<p>As a result to these differences, regional universities tend to have smaller academic departments with a lesser range of specialties than you typically will find at a national university. They also tend to have greater teaching loads, so their faculty cannot do as much research and writing even if they were so inclined. If given the choice, the vast majority of faculty would choose a national university over a regional based upon teaching load, academic prestige and, quite often, better pay. You will, of course, find exceptions to this general rule.</p>
<p>Another difference is that teaching assistants at national universities tend to be advanced graduate students, often close to completing their PhD. In other words, they are close to being professors themselves. At regionals, teaching assistants are either masters level graduate students or advanced undergraduates. </p>
<p>While national universities tend to be more prestigious, it is not necessarily true that one will get a better undergraduate education at a national university than a regional. Some will argue that faculty at regionals will devote more time to undergraduates because they don’t have to deal with doctoral students, who can take up a lot of time. Faculty at regionals also tend to be evaluated more on teaching ability, which tends to take a back seat to research productivity in faculty evaluations at national universities. But others will argue the opposite. </p>
<p>There are too many variables to make a broad generalization about which is better for an undergraduate education. It depends.</p>
<p>At the regional universities, pre-professional programs tend to be more popular than at many national universities and national LACs. Compare the distribution of “Degrees Conferred” shown in the Common Data Sets, section J. Or compare the listings of most popular majors for each school’s entry on the US News site.</p>
<p>At Villanova, for example, the most popular majors include business/marketing (~31% of 2010-11 degrees conferred), Engineering (~12% of 2010-11 degrees conferred), and “health professions and related programs” (~12% of 2010-11 degrees conferred, apparently covering nursing and various combined degree programs in fields such as Physical Therapy.) At many national universities and most LACs, many of these majors aren’t even offered; most students major in the liberal arts. </p>
<p>Many regional universities (the higher-ranked ones anyway) are urban, Roman Catholic institutions. Villanova, Providence College, Fairfield University, Loyola University Maryland, and the University of Scranton (5 of the top 10 regional universities - North) are all Catholic. Marist (another of the top 10 regional universities - North) also was historically Catholic.</p>
<p>Villanova would be below Boston College but above Syracuse.</p>
<p>These aren’t comparable schools which is why they have different rankings. If you were to port them in, they would probably start in the 50-75 range and drop fairly quickly out of the top 100. They typically aren’t nearly as good as their national university counterparts.</p>