US News 2020 rankings

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Times World Rankings

https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankings/2020/world-ranking#!/page/0/length/25/sort_by/rank/sort_order/asc/cols/stats

This has more to do with graduate research.

And Michigan comes out ahead once again.

As well it should, it spends over a half a billion of your tuition dollars on research every year. Funny they don't put that in brochures.

Are you saying that's a bad thing?

FYI, nearly every school I have ever visited talks about research they do. It's a hallmark of a top institution and that's how you get faculty that are leaders in the field.

Yes I am. First, they are not up front about it. M Most people assume their tuition goes toward their education. Second, just like anything else, it goes to increase student debt. Third, if you do the math, it means a sizeable (25%+ or so in this case) percentage of your tuition dollars are probably going to pay researchers and research costs.

What people "assume" is meaningless.

Research is a critical part of every substantive university and a tremendous asset to the students and faculty. It's shocking to me to hear someone complain about research.

Also, most research is funded by grants.

I don't know where you are coming from.

The grants don't cover about 30% of total cost. That falls disproportionately to undergrads. In the case of Michigan, institutional contribution is over 1/3rd of tuition revenue. So you are saying no one should be concerned when US higher ed is the most expensive in the world and student loan debt is $1.6B, more than any consumer debt other than mortgage, you should know where I am coming from.

No, I really don't.

The research Michigan does has no effect on what a student chooses to borrow.

The student debt problem (which is real) isn't even tangentially related to that.

Michigan spends over a half a billion of its internal funds every year to pay its share of research expenditures. You can see that in the NSF data. The external grants do not cover all. So the next question is "where does it come from?" Revenues like room and board are dedicated to room and board and fees are targeted as well. The only sources of revenue that can be applied to it because they aren't allocated to something else are general fund (tuition and state support) and endowments and gifts that are targeted to research. If you think this money comes from endowment, assuming a 5% payout, the entire UM endowment couldn't quite pay for it (assuming all could be directed to research rather than donor targeted uses like athletics or a professorship in the law school). So we are largely down to tuition and state support which are commingled in a general fund. State support, if entirely allocated to research, would only cover about 60%. That leaves tuition. Since students go into debt to pay college expenses and tuition is an obvious component of it, institutionally funded research is a component of student debt.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:This ain’t the dumber than dumb Florida of old, it seems!

Florida may still be dumb, overall. But it’s such a huge state now that the top publics in the state are competitive.

Their schools are so inexpensive and the scholarships are given out like candy. Plenty of kids choose Florida for undergrad because it's completely free to them. Then they can use that savings to go to fancier grad schools.

They are cheaper out-of-state than many other publics in-state.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Michigan is not a top 25 school lol. At TJ it's regarded as worse than Nova cc

I guess those TJ kids aren’t so bright after all.

[Anonymous]

Please don’t blame tj kids for that poster’s trolling.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Please don’t blame tj kids for that poster’s trolling.

It’s a not very creative UVA troll that constantly bashes UM.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Times World Rankings

https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankings/2020/world-ranking#!/page/0/length/25/sort_by/rank/sort_order/asc/cols/stats

This has more to do with graduate research.

And Michigan comes out ahead once again.

As well it should, it spends over a half a billion of your tuition dollars on research every year. Funny they don't put that in brochures.

I'm surprised that this is such a bugaboo for you. Tons of undergraduate and graduate students get to participate in those research projects. That is valuable experience.

https://lsa.umich.edu/urop/students.html

This is at the same time the problem for the undergraduates. Public schools like Michigan, UC-Berkeley or UIUC spend a large proportion of their resources on graduate programs and research. Professors only care about their research and do not give a damn to undergraduate teaching because their career and fame only depend on their research. This is why you find you as an undergrad student would have a hard time finding opportunity to interact with professors in those schools. Many courses are not taught by professors but by graduate students. A Berkeley faculty said his class is as large as 2000 students, taught in a theater. These large public schools may have decent research, but that contributes almost nothing to my undergraduate experience. This problem is especially wide spread when the schools have a student body of 40,000 or more. A ranking heavy on graduate programs typically means not good for undergraduate education given a same overall school budget.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Times World Rankings

https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankings/2020/world-ranking#!/page/0/length/25/sort_by/rank/sort_order/asc/cols/stats

This has more to do with graduate research.

And Michigan comes out ahead once again.

As well it should, it spends over a half a billion of your tuition dollars on research every year. Funny they don't put that in brochures.

More likely US tax dollars and private sector partnership dollars, not tuition dollars, but if you understood University research, you would know that.

No, you don't understand research. Those are separate sources. The major sources are externally funded federal, private externally funded, and internal. Internal usually depends heavily on tuition or state appropriations. The reason internal is needed is that external does not cover full costs.

You can read this from a former provost: https://www.changinghighereducation.com/2016/08/the-high-cost-of-funded-research.html

He claims that for every 1000 external funds there is a $300 internal expense--and his accounting is quite tilted to his conception--counting for instance overhead expenses that are multi-use, not considering faculty lines in typical ways etc. But research grants still then provides 70% more revenue than it costs. A good portion of this goes directly to the university. Professors don't get to keep any of their grant money (save for summer salary if they use the money for that) so the revenue goes to paying graduate stipends and tuition and undergraduate work-study students, purchasing equipment that lives on in the university, paying overhead costs (which are also used for many purposes) travel for presenting on research and buying out time that the university would otherwise be paying them as a full-time employees.

And ultimately his claim seems to be not that he has evidence that tuition is used to pay the portion of the internal costs of research but that it might be. And all that is not considering that professors participation in research is what makes them knowledgeable and current and capable of teaching, and that student participation in research is important to their education.

No, the grant typically covers 70% of the total cost. He was a provost at two top 25 schools. Perhaps he knows what he is talking about.

But the "cost" of the grant are a lot of expenses that also go into university coffers. I conduct university research. I understand what he's saying and have direct experience. He's correct that external funded research doesn't provide all the money that people think it does, and sometimes institutions overreach with internal funds, but everyone plays around with these numbers. Every grant comes with an indirect amount which goes directly to universities (can be around 50% of the budget), but what is not counted as indirect ALSO benefits the university by paying student wages and faculty salaries and lab expenses. All he's arguing is that external research is not the full win it seems to be because institutions spend money to get the money. But it's still an overall win because otherwise the institutions would be spending money to not get the money, not have graduate TAs to teach courses, have to pay full faculty salaries etc.

[Anonymous]

And, there wouldn't be the research, which presumably, is part of why we have Universities in the 21st century.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Times World Rankings

https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankings/2020/world-ranking#!/page/0/length/25/sort_by/rank/sort_order/asc/cols/stats

This has more to do with graduate research.

And Michigan comes out ahead once again.

As well it should, it spends over a half a billion of your tuition dollars on research every year. Funny they don't put that in brochures.

More likely US tax dollars and private sector partnership dollars, not tuition dollars, but if you understood University research, you would know that.

No, you don't understand research. Those are separate sources. The major sources are externally funded federal, private externally funded, and internal. Internal usually depends heavily on tuition or state appropriations. The reason internal is needed is that external does not cover full costs.

You can read this from a former provost: https://www.changinghighereducation.com/2016/08/the-high-cost-of-funded-research.html

He claims that for every 1000 external funds there is a $300 internal expense--and his accounting is quite tilted to his conception--counting for instance overhead expenses that are multi-use, not considering faculty lines in typical ways etc. But research grants still then provides 70% more revenue than it costs. A good portion of this goes directly to the university. Professors don't get to keep any of their grant money (save for summer salary if they use the money for that) so the revenue goes to paying graduate stipends and tuition and undergraduate work-study students, purchasing equipment that lives on in the university, paying overhead costs (which are also used for many purposes) travel for presenting on research and buying out time that the university would otherwise be paying them as a full-time employees.

And ultimately his claim seems to be not that he has evidence that tuition is used to pay the portion of the internal costs of research but that it might be. And all that is not considering that professors participation in research is what makes them knowledgeable and current and capable of teaching, and that student participation in research is important to their education.

No, the grant typically covers 70% of the total cost. He was a provost at two top 25 schools. Perhaps he knows what he is talking about.

But the "cost" of the grant are a lot of expenses that also go into university coffers. I conduct university research. I understand what he's saying and have direct experience. He's correct that external funded research doesn't provide all the money that people think it does, and sometimes institutions overreach with internal funds, but everyone plays around with these numbers. Every grant comes with an indirect amount which goes directly to universities (can be around 50% of the budget), but what is not counted as indirect ALSO benefits the university by paying student wages and faculty salaries and lab expenses. All he's arguing is that external research is not the full win it seems to be because institutions spend money to get the money. But it's still an overall win because otherwise the institutions would be spending money to not get the money, not have graduate TAs to teach courses, have to pay full faculty salaries etc.

I'm sure the university thinks it is an overall win, or otherwise they wouldn't do it. But I think you misunderstand what he is getting at. The university has to spend money to get money as you say. On average it is about $30 for every $100 of external grant. The bulk of that $30 the university has to come up with comes from the general fund. The primary sources of the general fund are (for a state university) tuition and state appropriation. Due to the structure of the university (graduate professional schools keep their tuition revenue and graduates in Arts and Sciences are subsidized), the burden of the cross-subsidy to fund research falls on the undergraduates. They are getting the shaft. Researchers and graduate students benefit. So as a PP said, you should consider carefully when choosing a big research university for undergraduate education.

So you may say the undergraduates still may benefit due to the overall university receiving more money. Some research was done on the UC system a while ago. It found that approximately 1/3rd of faculty time was spend on research, 1/3rd on graduate education, and 1/3rd on undergraduate education. With this breakdown, undergraduate students are paying more than the actual cost of education. The UCs get a subsidy from the state, but given the way the university actually uses that money, the undergraduates don't benefit.

[Anonymous]

These rankings use a government source of information to determine "instruction" expenditures. The problem is, guidelines allow them to roll research expenditures into that total, even though it obviously isn't instruction.

"Universities often report a number that appears to indicate how much the university spends on instruction. We might believe that this number accurately represents teaching expenses and even do some analysis based on that belief. We would be wrong to do so." -- John V. Lombardi, former Provost of Hopkins and President of the University of Florida

https://www.changinghighereducation.com/2015/03/cost-allocation-in-the-research-university.html#more

[Anonymous]

Anyone surprised at University of Rochester coming in at 29? I feel like I don’t hear about that one too often but “top thirty” is pretty good.

[Anonymous]

Pitchbook Rankings 2019 out.
https://pitchbook.com/news/articles/pitchbook-universities-2019

#1 Stanford
#2 Cal
#3 MIT
#4 Harvard
#5 Penn
#6 Cornell
#7 Michigan
#8 Tel Aviv Univ
#9 Texas
#10 UIUC

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Does anyone even care about any of the schools ranked outside the Top 25?

Yes. And is there a sudden invisible cutoff between 25 and 26?

I really think a good consistent list of top schools is to look at is how College Confidential organizes it. There are the ivies in one category, top universities in another, and then top liberal arts colleges. This is consistent and is not ranked.

Ivies:
Brown
Columbia
Cornell
Dartmouth
Harvard
Penn
Princeton
Yale

Top universities:
Berkekely
UCLA
Cal Tech
Carnegie Mellon
Chicago
Duke
Emory
Georgetown
Hopkins
MIT
Michigan
Chapel Hill
Northwestern
Notre Dame
Rice
Stanford
Tulane
UVA
Vanderbilt
Wash U

Top Liberal Arts Colleges:
Amherst
Barnard
Bates
Bowdoin
Bryn Mayr
Carleton
Claremont
Colby
Colgate
Davidson
Grinnell
Hamilton
Harvey Mudd
Haverford
Kenyon
Macalester
Middlebury
Mount Holyoke
Oberlin
Pomona
Reed
Smith
Swarthmore
Trinity
Vassar
Washington & Lee
Wellesley
Wesleyan
Whitman
Williams

All other schools in one separate batch alphabetically.

Simple, clean.

Huh? The Ivies are not necessarily better than other top schools.

Nobody is saying that. It is just a way to organize top schools. They are all top schools, just not ranked. Ivy League is what it is.

It’s an athletic league. That’s what it is. Like the Big Ten. It was established in 1954, so the concept isn’t even that old.

God I'm so tired of this canard.

I am not saying the Ivy League colleges are better than any other. I am saying words and phrases have meanings, and when you say "Ivy League" to most people they don't think of sports the way they do when you say "Big Ten". Stop saying this, you sound like a petulant or bitter person. You're not persuading anyone.

And to repeat, this is not an endorsement of Ivy League schools, simply a rage against stupidity.

If you don’t think they’re better than any other, then why use them as a group in a school ranking?

News flash: I didn't. I am not the person responsible for what the term "Ivy League" means in common understanding. I'm simply pointing out that it does and to imply otherwise is both petulant and stupid.

So because it’s come to mean something that isn’t true, that means you have to use it that way too? Use it accurately.

so are public Ivies just public schools that play football in the Ivy League?

Yes. UVA and Berkeley both play in the IVY League, but Michigan actually won this year.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Michigan's liberal arts college (LSA) is in fact a brainless, sports and cocaine and binge drinking obsessed school. Terrific engineering and grad programs, but LSA is a rah-rah frat life easy A's diploma mill.

Evidence that the partying at Michigan is any worse than at any number of other academically strong schools?

Harvard has infamous frat parties that have their fair share of cocaine and binge drinking. I went to a prep school -- trust me, those kids do TONS of drugs.

Harvard most certainly does not have "infamous frat parties" and far fewer kids use cocaine than at any of the big state schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Michigan's liberal arts college (LSA) is in fact a brainless, sports and cocaine and binge drinking obsessed school. Terrific engineering and grad programs, but LSA is a rah-rah frat life easy A's diploma mill.

Evidence that the partying at Michigan is any worse than at any number of other academically strong schools?

Harvard has infamous frat parties that have their fair share of cocaine and binge drinking. I went to a prep school -- trust me, those kids do TONS of drugs.

Harvard most certainly does not have "infamous frat parties" and far fewer kids use cocaine than at any of the big state schools.

How on earth do you know? Has there been a comparative study re alcohol, weed, opioid and cocaine use in the last 2 years at all of the ‘big state schools’ and Harvard that I missed? I’d love to see a link.