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If you want to limit the pool to only students who come from families who can afford to spend $200,000 on their children’s education, you’re free to do that. However, I still think the number of low to middle-class families for whom jet-skiing, alpine skiing, cross-country skiing, wind-surfing, parachute-jumping, or, private airplane flying, would trump the socio-economic milieu of a school, are fairly miniscule.</p>
<p>I wish we knew how they got these ratings, their methodology is poor at best. For instance how did they determine what % of faculty has won a significant award? Or the amount of faculty in National Academics? There ratings seem to have no real calculations behind them.</p>
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<p>I didn’t say anything about expensive equipment like jet skis and airplanes. And I’ve never heard of any kid choosing a school based on those very expensive toys. But I have heard of a lot, even lower income kids, who want to keep surfing in college. </p>
<p>A surf board doesn’t cost that much and the waves are free. There are low cost options, community colleges and Cal State campuses, located in or near beach towns. And as I said, I’ve seen plenty of kids choose them on that basis. Sure, it has to work financially too. But they really only looked at schools that could combine surfing and affordability.</p>
<p>“A surf board doesn’t cost that much and the waves are free.”</p>
<p>You still have to buy a wet suit! ;-)</p>
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Exactly. And, since the best surfing in the U.S. would still entail OOS tuition for 90% of all Americans, the pool we’re talking about is still “miniscule”. Luckily, private colleges like Occidental, Stanford, and, Pomona, are there to meet the surfing needs of those land-locked <em>kahunas</em> from Detroit, Birmingham, San Dusky and Des Moines.</p>
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Of course U Va is a southern school. It’s where Gowan Stevens learned to drink like a gentleman.</p>
<p>Second that. UVa is a very southern school thart happens to attract lots of Yankees as is much of the state of Virginia outside NOVA.</p>
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<p>You seem to be suggesting that all criteria are equally important and interesting, and at the same time equally arbitrary. </p>
<p>In my opinion, modern research universities have one primary purpose. They exist to discover and spread knowledge, primarily through teaching and research. The Washington Monthly “Social Mobility” and “Service” measurements aren’t germaine to that at all. They do address desirable collateral effects, but I’m not sure they measure them (especially “Social Mobility”) very well.</p>
<p>We can talk about Ford and GM as corporate citizens, how they contribute to the state of Michigan (or other communities), how well they treat their workers, etc. Those things are important. Ultimately, though, their success as companies depends on how good they are at making cars. This is something that can be objectively evaluated (not easily, not without disagreement, but still it can be done).</p>
<p>^^ You’d have to perform quite the hefty mental gymnastic in order divorce students and their milieu from a university’s “product”. I don’t think you can do that any more than you can manufacture a car out of thin air.</p>
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<p>Well, Texas is Texas and in a lot of ways it’s a unique bird, but Texas was a slave state, part of the Confederacy, a reliable part of the old “Solid South” for the Democratic Party in the days before federally enforced desegregation, and it had the same Jim Crow laws and “separate-but-equal” education system that other Southern states had. Lyndon Johnson was widely hailed as the first Southerner to be elected President since the Civil War. </p>
<p>Virginia’s history is similar. Heck, Richmond was the capital of the Confederacy; can’t get much more Southern than that. UVA was founded by that quintessential Southern planter, Thomas Jefferson. Did it get lost? </p>
<p>Missouri was a slave state and was claimed by the Confederacy and its legislature tried to secede but federal troops took over the state capital and abolished the secessionist government; Missouri thereafter was under federal control, but it had Southern sympathies, especially in St. Louis, where slaves were sold on the steps of the courthouse. The Dred Scott case, in many ways the tinderbox that set off the Civil War, was about whether Dred Scott who had been a slave in St. Louis and lived for many years in Minnesota which didn’t recognize slavery could be compelled to return to St. Louis in slavery. St. Louis had closer economic and cultural ties to Memphis and New Orleans than to the North. As recently as 2007, St. Louis magazine published a lengthy article with the title “Northern? Southern? Eastern? Western? St. Louis is all–and none–of the above.” So if THEY can’t figure it out, I don’t think I’m too far off base in classifying St. Louis as a borderline case.</p>
<p>The U.S. Census Bureau defines the South to include Texas and Virginia, but not Missouri; but Wikipedia includes Missouri in a list of states that “some sources may also classify . . . as Southern.” Southern Living magazine lists 2 Texas cities, San Antonio and Austin, among its top 10 “best Southern cities,” along with New Orleans. Wikipedia lists Dallas #1, Houston #2, and Washington-Arlington-Alexandria #4 among “largest Southern cities,” with San Antonio at #9, Austin #11, Virginia Beach-Norfolk-Newport News #12, Richmond #17, New Orleans #19, and El Paso #24. </p>
<p>And New Orleans not Southern? LOL. New Orleans is not in Cajun country, by the way; that’s mostly in the bayou country to the west of New Orleans; there’s very little Cajun influence in New Orleans. Maybe you’re confusing Cajun with Creole? But even apart from that, New Orleans is a quintessentially Southern city. Heck, the South is called “Dixie” because of the French “dix” (ten) on the $10 Confederate dollar banknotes printed in New Orleans. Granted, New Orleans has always been a unique corner of the South, more Catholic, more Creole, with perhaps looser morals than many white Protestant Southerners are comfortable with, but I’ve never, ever heard anyone deny that it’s part of the South. Until now.</p>
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Why do you suppose some people prefer to buy a Prius? Why did my parents refuse to ever consider buying a Japanese car?</p>
<p>I think there are lots of factors in all kinds of decisions–my problem with these rankings is that somebody other than me decides how the different factors should be weighted in deciding which college is “best.” US News, in particular, has weighting that I don’t agree with.</p>
<p>^ “US News, in particular, has weighting that I don’t agree with.”</p>
<p>In actuality it seems very few of us agree precisely with any of the ranking approaches. Nonetheless, each ranking provides some potentially useful information if we understand what it represents. Ideally, we should have something built along the lines of the CC matching program. There are many variables but not enough and not some key ones in the CC program. What I like about the CC program is that we get to decide if we want a variable included or not. If we include it, we can select a crude weighting. Even with such a tool I still think there is a very significant issue which is oftern overlooked. We generally seem to consider rankings to stand alone. Rankings are but one piece of information. For me, the key issue is the match. Most often someone is conducting a search to select a college or colleges. Why is that person going to college? There are dozens of possible reasons and they have to be taken into account. The issue is not only about the college itself but rather the match of the college’s attributes with the potential students objectives. If we all think rankings can be better, how can we do something to make this happen?</p>
<p>The most realistic ranking system would be one that places colleges in tiers, not by strict numerical rank. For the individual student, particular academic/social/athletic/career interests/proclivities will fine-tune the “fit”. Also, must co-mingle university programs and LAC’s as that very much boils down to personal choice. For example, tier 1 could broadly include, in no particular order (and this is just an example, not intended to be comprehensive): HYPS, MIT, Cal Tech, Chicago, Columbia, Penn, Dartmouth, Swarthmore, Pomona, Amherst, Williams, Middlebury, etc. (i.e. 15-20 top liberal arts and research institutions). Strict ranking makes no sense, as Harvard is not “better” than MIT or Swarthmore, they are excellent but very different schools, and it boils down to the given student’s interests and philosophy (if lucky enough to be accepted). A serious athlete might be happier at Stanford than Yale or Williams over Swarthmore, a tech braniac at Cal Tech over Princeton. You can only precisely rank what you can quantify (e.g. per capita endowment).</p>
<p>The Center for Measuring Univ Performance provides data by year on major faculty awards and NAS members from good sources. Good site</p>
<p>[The</a> Center for Measuring University Performance](<a href=“http://mup.asu.edu/]The”>http://mup.asu.edu/)</p>
<p>[Master’s</a> University Rankings 2011 | Washington Monthly](<a href=“http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/college_guide/rankings_2011/masters_universities_rank.php]Master’s”>http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/college_guide/rankings_2011/masters_universities_rank.php)</p>
<p>Maybe we should argue about the Master’s Universities category as well. :)</p>
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Washington is a city of Southern efficiency and Northern charm.</p>
<p>Bclintock…</p>
<p>Your point that this “low Pell” list is largely “southern” and that suggests that they don’t care about things like “upward mobility” for the less fortunate is your way of suggesting that these schools don’t have a large % of Pell kids because they are racist…and that’s not a fair assumption.</p>
<p>Most schools can only do so much…most don’t have ivy-like endowments. And, they have to help those who are beyond Pell as well (and those kids aren’t in those “Pell” stats, but are attending these schools and receiving some aid.)</p>
<p>since when is helping a student with an EFC of $6k (beyond Pell) not being concerned about “upward mobility”???</p>
<p>**If a school can only provide a “full ride” of aid for - say 5% - of its student body in order to also afford to provide aid for those who are beyond Pell, then the school is doing the responsible thing. ** Otherwise, the school will end up having an enrollment (like some PriceyU"s) where the student body is either quite affluent or low income (and on full aid)…with not much representation from the “non Pell” middle class.</p>
<p>Your posts are ignoring that these schools do have a number of Pell kids on campus. 5% of a student body of 25,000 is 1250 Pell kids. 8% is 2000. That isn’t exactly not caring about providing opportunities for very low income kids. And, again, these numbers don’t take into account the low income kids who are just beyond Pell. It also ignores that there are many other college choices for these kids. </p>
<p>“Less rich” schools can only afford X amount of charity.</p>
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<p>Isn’t that exactly what bibliometric rankings do (for example, the QS World - Citations per Faculty Index) do? True, this approach usually applies to graduate schools. I wouldn’t want to weigh it too heavily in an undergraduate ranking, but one could use it. It might be more germaine to some students’ college choices than the ROTC score.</p>
<p>True, you can’t manufacture a car out of thin air. But you can write a car review without making moral judgements about factory conditions or hiring practices. Even if you are willing for moral reasons to pay a premium to drive a Prius, you’d probably appreciate an objective, non-political review that reassures you you’re also buying a safe, reliable, well-designed product.</p>
<p>One nice feature of the WM site is that you can click-sort on any section to deemphasize the others, if you’re so inclined.</p>
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<p>Sure, I’ll buy that. But what’s the “X amount” that these schools can afford? I think you’re letting some of these schools off the hook way too easily. Some have very substantial endowments. </p>
<p>School / 2010 endowment / endowment rank / % Pell recipients</p>
<p>Northwestern / $5.9 billion / 9 / 7%
Notre Dame / $5.2 billion / 14 / 8%
Duke / $4.8 billion / 15 / 9%
WUSTL / $ 4.5 billion / 17 / 6%
UVA / $3.9 billion / 19 / 8%
Vanderbilt / $3 billion / 21 / 8%
Caltech / $1.5 billion / 36 / 9%</p>
<p>Washington & Lee (5% Pell recipients) has the 8th-largest endowment among LACs. Middlebury (9%) is 10th, Oberlin (9%) is 13th, Colgate (8%) is 14th.</p>
<p>And the private schools with the highest percentages of Pell grant recipients aren’t all mega-endowment schools, either. Case Western Reserve is 19% Pell grant recipients—more than twice the rate of the above-named schools. Its $1.5 billion endowment is the 39th-largest, smaller than Northwestern, Notre Dame, Duke, WUSTL, UVA, Vanderbilt, and Caltech’s. Syracuse is 20% Pell recipients; its endowment is just $850 million, roughly half the size of Caltech’s and about 1/7 the size of Northwestern’s. Fordham is 19% Pell recipients; its endowment is only $372 million, the 156th largest, and less than half the size of Wake Forest or Tulane’s—and yet it manages to enroll more than twice the percentage of Pell recipients. The University of San Francisco is 20% Pell recipients; its endowment is a paltry $182 million, about 6% the size of Vanderbilt’s and 3.8% as large as Duke’s.</p>
<p>Nor do all the schools with mega-endowments go out of their way to enroll a lot of Pell-eligible students. Harvard is 13%, Yale 12%, Princeton and Penn only 10%. MIT at 17% and Stanford at 16% do significantly better, but not because they’re richer. Emory, with an endowment slightly smaller than Notre Dame’s and ever so slightly larger than WUSTL’s, enrolls 15% Pell recipients, or 2.5 times the rate of WUSTL and nearly double the rate of Notre Dame.</p>
<p>I think what it really comes down to is that schools that care about serving the least-advantaged will find a way to do so, and those that don’t, won’t. I don’t think that’s entirely about race, and it may not be consciously about race at all, but it’s so hard to separate race from poverty in this country that in the end, as far as consequences are concerned, the policy has the same effect whether race played a role or not.</p>
<p>mom2collegekids, First, a family of 4 making $65K is middle class and in a very different position from a family of 4 making 25K. I’m not sure the first represents much social mobility since a college grad could easily be supporting a family on $65K. </p>
<p>I don’t think these schools are unable to afford Pell Grant kids. I think they only want a certain number and know how to make sure that will happen-- by weighing scores more, by recruiting at certain schools, by not associating with certain programs, etc. You also said that assuming the schools are racist isn’t fair. I’m not sure I agree with you. I mean, I don’t think for a minute some of those schools would be ok if suddenly their entering class was 80% black any more than they want it to be 80% Asian. I think there are schools in our country which are happy serving Pell Grant and minority kids and I think there are others that want a target number. I’ve seen some of the techniques the elite schools will use when they want to bump up #s of minorities or poor kids and they KNOW how to do it. On the other hand, they can weigh alumni relations more, or schedule on campus visits (it’s harder for poor kids to visit unless they’re local) or weigh test scores more or expensive sports/ activities and poof! it’s a different class.</p>