Why is Berkeley ranked relatively low?

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of California - Berkeley
1

<p>Hi,</p>

<p>I'm from the UK and doing my research on the US system before applying.</p>

<p>Can anyone tell me why Berkeley ranks surprisingly low in rankings like US News? I say surprisingly because it has a good reputation and, for instance, the Times Higher Education world university rankings has it second in the US when measured from a global perspective. Is Berkeley's ranking with US News an abberation, or is it actually considered weaker (I am concerned with employment prospects and academic prestige) than it's Ivy League/elite-Private alternatives?</p>

<p>Thanks,</p>

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<p>Cal is awesome.</p>

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Can anyone tell me why Berkeley ranks surprisingly low in rankings like US News? I say surprisingly because it has a good reputation and, for instance, the Times Higher Education world university rankings has it second in the US when measured from a global perspective. Is Berkeley's ranking with US News an abberation, or is it actually considered weaker (I am concerned with employment prospects and academic prestige) than it's Ivy League/elite-Private alternatives?

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<p>First off, your data is obsolete. Berkeley is not #2 in the US according to the latest THES ranking. It is actually #6 in the US (#8 overall) in the latest ranking. You are quoting an old ranking from 2004. </p>

<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/THES%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/THES&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>But, to your general point, it's a complicated question with a complicated answer. </p>

<p>To provide a framework for answering your question, let me specify your question more narrowly. Berkeley is ranked relatively low in the USNews * undergraduate * ranking. Pick up a copy of the USNews * graduate * ranking, and you will notice that Berkeley's ranking improves significantly and, depending on the specific graduate program in question (especially the PhD programs) are often times ranked #1 in their field. With that snippet, you should now be able to reconcile USNews with THES, as THES is mostly a graduate ranking. </p>

<p>That gets down to the truth of the matter. I think even the most rabid Berkeley fanatic would have to concede that the Berkeley * undergraduate * program is simply not as good as its undeniably stellar * graduate * programs. The brunt of the problems of Berkeley is disproportionately borne by the undergrads. </p>

<p>I would say that, at the graduate level, especially the PhD level, Berkeley can stand toe-to-toe with any school in the world. It's at the undergraduate level where problems start cropping up. It's still pretty good, but it has difficulty matching the top private undergrad programs.</p>

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<p>By it's very nature as a public institution it has a hard time competing with the privates. Most people who attend Berkeley are from in state (90%+) and our tuition is just about 10k a year (not an exact number) whereas a private institution can charge everyone about 40k+ a year. Also factor in Berkeley's larger size and there you go.</p>

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By it's very nature as a public institution it has a hard time competing with the privates

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<p>I've heard that before, and I don't buy it. After all, the Berkeley PhD programs are also "public", yet they seem to have no problem competing with the private programs.</p>

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Most people who attend Berkeley are from in state (90%+) and our tuition is just about 10k a year (not an exact number) whereas a private institution can charge everyone about 40k+ a year.

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<p>They can, but they don't. In particular, the top private schools tend to have offer * better * financial aid to the needy than Berkeley does. I know a couple of guys who were in-state Californians who got admitted to both Berkeley and Harvard, and found that Harvard would actually be * cheaper * once financial aid was factored in. I will always remember one of them acidly joking that he had always dreamed of going to Berkeley, but he couldn't afford it, so he had 'no choice' but to go to Harvard. </p>

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Also factor in Berkeley's larger size and there you go.

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<p>I don't buy that as a proper excuse either. There is no a-priori reason why a big program can't also be the best program. For example, what's the biggest full-time MBA program in the world? Some giant public school perhaps? Nope. It's the MBA program at Harvard Business School. HBS is an absolute behemoth in size as far as business schools are concerned. Yet HBS is also probably the best business school. </p>

<p>Similarly, many of the Berkeley PhD programs are probably the best in their field, while not being notably smaller than their private-school counterparts. The Berkeley chemistry PhD program, for example, is quite large while also probably being the best such program out there.</p>

<p>Therefore, size by itself doesn't seem to mean that much. What really seems to matter is * improperly managed * size.</p>

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<p>For the middle class, public is a lot cheaper than private.</p>

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<p>Berkeley is a great school everyone in America knows that the US News Rankings are BS. That report has little to do with hiring. The value of the report is suspect among those who can think for themselves. Berkeley is a great school you should apply. I have actually heard employers say that they would never hire " Yale, Princeton, Harvard etc brats to get a days work done" lol. Now I don't necessarily agree with that but hey some people think these schools breed an elite attitude that has nothing to do with being a solid employee and giving an employer a days work. And for many public school is way cheaper. And for many there are great public schools and Berkeley is one of them.</p>

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<p>Exacty. US News Rankings are for prestige whores and/or naive push overs.</p>

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<p>ugh
i absolutley HATE those people who look at US News Rankings, see that one school is ranked one higher than another school, then automatically assume that the first school is wayy better than the one under it</p>

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<p>Stanford's former president had a pretty good idea of what US News rankings are worth: <a href="http://www.stanford.edu/dept/pres-provost/president/speeches/961206gcfallow.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.stanford.edu/dept/pres-provost/president/speeches/961206gcfallow.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

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<p>Though Berkeley's grad school is obviously better than its undergrad, its undergrad is one of the best in the nation. There seems to be this public school bias in the US News ranking, such that public schools (namely Berkeley) rarely make it into the top 20. Sure, this can be backed up with numbers, but I think the metrics and the weights often work for the top privates. I personally think the top 25 are all on par with on another, even if I weren't a Berkeley fan. =)</p>

<p>Gerhard Casper's assessment is legitimate, I find.</p>

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For the middle class, public is a lot cheaper than private.

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<p>Not to harp on the obvious, but public is a lot cheaper * for the residents of that state *. Yet even California, the most populous state in the country, has only about 9% of the country's people. Even if you add in the other states that do have top (i.e. top 25) public schools, it still means that the vast majority of middle-class Americans do not live in states that have strong public universities. What are these people supposed to do? </p>

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Berkeley is a great school everyone in America knows that the US News Rankings are BS. That report has little to do with hiring. The value of the report is suspect among those who can think for themselves. Berkeley is a great school you should apply. I have actually heard employers say that they would never hire " Yale, Princeton, Harvard etc brats to get a days work done" lol.

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<p>Yes of course it has nothing to do with hiring. But that's because hiring is not exactly a matter of merit. Keep in mind that employers are not interested in recruiting the best possible people. Not exactly. What they're really interested in is recruiting the best possible people * that are willing to take their jobs*. </p>

<p>Let's be perfectly honest. A lot (probably most) jobs out there, frankly, aren't that good. They're boring, they bureaucratic, they don't teach you new and cool skills, they don't provide good career development, they don't pay you that well, etc. People don't like taking those kinds of jobs if they have better options.</p>

<p>I'll give you a case in point. I happen to know some of the biggest traditional engineering employers who have been recruiting at MIT for decades are now greatly reducing their recruiting of engineers at MIT in favor of hiring at a bunch of local no-name schools. The reason? It's not because the MIT engineers are not good enough. Far from it - in fact, * they're too good *, and they know it. Specifically, those employers complain that the MIT engineers demand "too much" money, "too many" perks and want a fast track to promotion and strong career development that these companies, frankly, can't provide (because if they did, existing employees would complain that they never got any fast track to promotion and didn't get any career development, so why should these new people get it?). Hence, few MIT students want to work for them, preferring cool and sexy companies like Google. The few that they do get tend to quit rather quickly, as they see their old classmates doing well in their careers while they're stuck in dead-end boring projects. </p>

<p>Hence, these employers are now shifting recruiting away from MIT and to local no-name (i.e 3rd and 4th tier) schools. At least those students don't demand high salaries. Those students don't demand strong career development and will take the boring jobs without complaint. Of course the reason why they don't complain is because they don't have many good alternatives. For many of them, working for that traditional engineering firm is probably the best they can get. MIT engineering students are very hard to recruit because they have other options and they know it. </p>

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Now I don't necessarily agree with that but hey some people think these schools breed an elite attitude

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<p>And you don't think Berkeley is one of them? Believe me, I have met * plenty of Berkeley students who high-handedly sniff at students who go to, say, UCDavis. Or, especially, to those who go to a CSU. </p>

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Exacty. US News Rankings are for prestige whores and/or naive push overs.

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i absolutley HATE those people who look at US News Rankings, see that one school is ranked one higher than another school, then automatically assume that the first school is wayy better than the one under it

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<p>So then you guys would have to agree that those people who look at the US News * graduate * ranking (or any other grad-dominated ranking like THES or Jiao Tong) and then automatically conclude that Berkeley's high ranking makes it great are also being prestige-whores or being naive push-overs? Seems to me that that's just as bad. </p>

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Stanford's former president had a pretty good idea of what US News rankings are worth: <a href="http://www.stanford.edu/dept/pres-pr...6gcfallow.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.stanford.edu/dept/pres-pr...6gcfallow.html&lt;/a>

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<p>The problem with Casper's complaints is that he doesn't point to any alternative. What other ranking system for undergrad out there is better? Gourman? The grad-dominated systems like THES or Jiao Tong? I believe RP is probably better (although people vociferously complain about that one also). </p>

<p>It's always easy to point out flaws in any ranking system. Maybe THES was flawed when it ranked Berkeley #2 in 2004. Yet of course nobody at Berkeley ever seems to complain about that. </p>

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There seems to be this public school bias in the US News ranking, such that public schools (namely Berkeley) rarely make it into the top 20. Sure, this can be backed up with numbers, but I think the metrics and the weights often work for the top privates. I personally think the top 25 are all on par with on another, even if I weren't a Berkeley fan. =)

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<p>Well, I think you'd find that very few people would say that Michigan (tied for 24) is equal to Princeton(#1). Even a Michigan fanatic like Alexandre would not say such a thing. </p>

<p>Personally, I find it interesting that people complain that USNews is 'biased' against public * undergrad * programs, but nobody ever seems to complain about USNews bias against public * grad * programs. You would think that if USNews really wanted to be biased, it would be biased against public schools in all programs. </p>

<p>I happen to think that that's just a fair reflection of the fact that public grad programs (including Berkeley's) simply tend to be better than public undergrad programs.</p>

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<p>I'll agree that many students at Berkeley are elitists, and they tend to be the ones who barely got in, or who had UCLA as their only comparable alternative. In fact, portions of Cal Day made me sick ("You got into Berkeley EECS! You have to attend.") No thank you, I am not going to choose a university simply because its program is ranked as one of the top of the nation's, for the same reason why I am not going to discount the same university because it is not ranked within the top 10. However, I was glad to find that many of the honors students and R&C scholars did not share this attitude. They all said that they love Berkeley (nothing wrong with that), but they did not put down other schools in the same way that other students did. Perhaps it was because many of these top scholars turned down higher-ranked colleges in favor of Berkeley and so they, too, see that rankings carry little value. Regardless of the reason, it is nice to know that there are those who look beyond a few quantitative measurements of a complex institution.</p>

<p>I believe that Caspar's argument is that universities should be sorted into tiers, and that the rating criteria and methods should be kept constant, or at least made public. With a tier system, Harvard would be considered equal to, say, MIT. You can argue that it is very difficult to compare Harvard to MIT since they are very different schools, but please send your complaints to US News, THES, or any other ranking service provider; they are the ones that are comparing Caltech with Dartmouth. Under a tier system, the horserace aspect of the ranking system would be mitigated. Yes, schools would still aggressively work to move up to the next tier, but things would be put into perspective (is UCLA really worse than UC Berkeley? Of course not, but the rankings indicate as such).</p>

<p>I can't say anything about the undergrad vs. grad rankings, but regardless, Berkeley is still a top university.</p>

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<p>
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Not to harp on the obvious, but public is a lot cheaper for the residents of that state. Yet even California, the most populous state in the country, has only about 9% of the country's people. Even if you add in the other states that do have top (i.e. top 25) public schools, it still means that the vast majority of middle-class Americans do not live in states that have strong public universities. What are these people supposed to do?

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<p>Heh, a valid point. *insert clich</p>

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<p>First of all, Berkeley is still the best public undergraduate institution in the US according to US News. Berkeley's professor and curriculum are certain on par with any of the top prives, but it does not have the resources or the means to cater to its vast undergraduate population. Private schools, on the other hand, admit much fewer students and cost much more, so they are much more able to provide special services academically and otherwise to thier student populations. Therefore, I would argue that the overall quality of education is better at the top prives than at Berkeley. To move up in rankings Berkeley would have to be more selective in their admissions process. Also, in regards to financial aid, most middle class residents of California chose Berkeley over a higher ranked private school because Berkeley is half the price of most private schools. For the middle class who are neither rich enough to pay for college comfortably nor poor enough to get most of their expenses covered, Berkeley is the way to go.</p>

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I believe that Caspar's argument is that universities should be sorted into tiers, and that the rating criteria and methods should be kept constant, or at least made public. With a tier system, Harvard would be considered equal to, say, MIT. ... Under a tier system, the horserace aspect of the ranking system would be mitigated. Yes, schools would still aggressively work to move up to the next tier, but things would be put into perspective (is UCLA really worse than UC Berkeley? Of course not, but the rankings indicate as such).

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<p>Well, I think you actually hit upon one of the problems that such a proposal would engender. Let's say you're a school that is safely ensconced in the top tier. I would agree that if there are only a small number of tiers (i.e. 4 tiers), then Berkeley would be safely ensconced in the top tier. But think about what that would mean. It would mean that the Berkeley administration would know that they could probably get away with doing very little, knowing that only a true disaster would cause them to fall out of the top tier. </p>

<p>Let me give you an example. There was one year in the 90's (I think 95 or 96)when Berkeley actually fell out of the top 25. There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth among many at Berkeley. But at the same time, the adminstration was also spurred to * make Berkeley better *. However, if USNews ranked schools only by tier, then Berkeley would still be a first-tier school, and the administration would not have been spurred to do anything. </p>

<p>It gets down to a simple point. USNews is certainly flawed. But it least it puts constant pressure on administrators to improve the school. It provides incentives. The horserace aspect of USNews may not be entirely healthy, but at least it provides constant incentives. Granted, they are distorted incentives. But at least there are incentives. A tiered system would greatly weaken those incentives.</p>

<p>It would take decades for Berkeley (or any of the top schools) to actually fall out of the top tier of a tiered system, and by that time, the administrators would be retired. Hence, a tiered system is great for the administrators of schools that are safely within the top tier because it means that they don't really have to worry about trying to constantly improve the school. They can sit around and do nothing. In the case of Berkeley's administrators, I strongly suspect that that's exactly what they would do. </p>

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You can argue that it is very difficult to compare Harvard to MIT since they are very different schools, but please send your complaints to US News, THES, or any other ranking service provider; they are the ones that are comparing Caltech with Dartmouth

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<p>Uh, actually, I don't think this is a relevant objection. After all, a tiered system presumably would STILL be comparing Caltech to Dartmouth. Hence, you still end up with this same problem of comparability.</p>

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<p>The US News list gives a lot of points for fundraising, which automatically favors the private schools over the public schools, (which get tax money instead of having to do so much fundraising.) </p>

<p>Washington Monthly magazine did a ranking based upon student performance, and left out all of the emphasis on fundraising. The public schools totally blow away the private schools.</p>

<p>Here is the direct link to the Washington Monthly College Rankings, notice how differently the schools stack up when the rankings are based upon merit rather than wealth. *Berkeley and UCLA rank #2 and #3, right behind MIT. * The highest Ivy League colleges are Harvard and Yale, which rank no better than #15. </p>

<p><a href="http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2005/0509.collegeguide.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2005/0509.collegeguide.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

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<p>"Well, I think you'd find that very few people would say that Michigan (tied for 24) is equal to Princeton(#1). Even a Michigan fanatic like Alexandre would not say such a thing."</p>

<p>I would. Most people have this idea of supposed quality that has little to no impact once you're at the university. (Do I really care about peer review? Nope. And the like.) As an added note, I usually say "top 25 or so," as it tends to change a bit.</p>

<p>"Personally, I find it interesting that people complain that USNews is 'biased' against public undergrad programs, but nobody ever seems to complain about USNews bias against public grad programs. You would think that if USNews really wanted to be biased, it would be biased against public schools in all programs."</p>

<p>If you want to be picky, amend all those claims as, "US News has a bias against publics in its undergrad rankings." Its undergrad rankings are much more known than its grad rankings; thus there'd more pressure to keep the Ivies at the top, etc. in the undergrad ranking. Or so it seems.</p>

<p>"I happen to think that that's just a fair reflection of the fact that public grad programs (including Berkeley's) simply tend to be better than public undergrad programs."</p>

<p>I don't.</p>

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<p>"It would mean that the Berkeley administration would know that they could probably get away with doing very little, knowing that only a true disaster would cause them to fall out of the top tier."</p>

<p>What? You as well as I know that even where it sits now in rankings, Berkeley doesn't seem to doing much to change its flaws. The undergrad population just keeps getting bigger, perpetuating--and at times instigating--some of the problems (large classes, guaranteed housing years, financial aid, etc.). You've said this before, I think.</p>

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The US News list gives a lot of points for fundraising, which automatically favors the private schools over the public schools, (which get tax money instead of having to do so much fundraising.)

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<p>Yes, but the biggest chunk of US News, the peer assessment, is often argued to favor the public schools more. This might be due to the so called "halo effect" in which Berkeley's outstanding research / grad programs overshadow its undergrad program to a degree that people think the undergrad program is better than it really is. Whether this is actually the reason is up for debate, but if you go by peer assessment alone I think Berkeley would be ranked 6th overall. It'd be pretty hard for me to make an argument that Berkeley has the 6th best undergrad program in the nation. Outside of HYPSM (generally regarded as the top 5), I think CalTech and Columbia clearly run better undergrad programs than Berkeley, with other schools being more debatable.</p>

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Washington Monthly magazine did a ranking based upon student performance, and left out all of the emphasis on fundraising. The public schools totally blow away the private schools.

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<p>We have to consider the source and how it evaluates the colleges. So the public universities does a lot for the nation...but what does it do for the students? I don't think the parents are shelling out ~$20,000 a year to Berkeley to have it research new technological developments for us. It's to buy their kids a good education, a marketable degree, and good grad school opportunities, all of which I think Berkeley is lagging behind the top private schools. I mean, who honestly thinks Texas A&M will offer a better undergrad education than Harvard or Yale?</p>

<p>US News is probably the most influential college ranking system out there today, and as such gets a lot of criticism. However, I don't think it can hold this much influence without at least being somewhat on the right track. I could nitpick here or there (personally I think Berkeley should be around 15) but overall it gives a pretty accurate picture. It's rankings like the 2004 London Times, which places Berkeley 2nd, that often misleads students into thinking Berkeley really offers the 2nd best undergrad education in the nation, then only to come and discover all the problems with major impaction and lack of pre-med/pre-law support and other problems that exist to a much smaller degree or not at all at other privates.</p>