Reply to 40 Colleges & Universities Receive 5 Star Academic Rating

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]UVA is weak in STEM. So much for academic ratings. Another BS ranking. [/quote]

Agreed. Berkeley blows away UVA in academic departments. [/quote]

The book lists Berkeley's top programs as: Biological Science, Business, Chemistry, Computer Science, Economics, Engineering, English, and Psychology.[/quote]

That’s a very small sampling of Cal’s strengths.  Berkeley has top programs in almost all of its offerings. Way, way more than UVA.  It isn’t even close.  That is only gets a 4.5 star rating from this ranking is a joke. [/quote]

Probably the impacted major thing plus the high % TAs teaching undergrads vs. profs [/quote]

That and class sizes.

But I would think all this would apply to each of the big public universities.  I personally don’t see UVA and UCLA offering a better academic experience than Berkeley.  They are fantastic values, but that’s really a different thing.  I would have all three at 4.5.  And drop some of the other 4.5s to 4.0.

It’s worth remembering the authors of college guides want to sell books.  And if all the top rated schools for actual academic experience are of small to medium undergrad size, they might have a reduced audience.

Maybe there should be different rankings for public universities vs private universities vs LACs.  Similar to USNWR but with a category for national public unis.  The trade offs and experiences are so different across the groups.  Having different lists would force more reflection on what matters to a given student and family, rather than just automatically valuing the higher ranked thing when apples, oranges, and bananas are being compared. [/quote]

I started this thread. I agree with the above quoted post's suggestion that, among elite schools, Private National Universities should be viewed differently than Public National Universities for ranking purposes, and that LACs belong in a totally different category.

When all types of schools are combined, I think that the Wall Street Journal / Times Higher Education (WSJ/THE) rankings do a great job due to the focus on outcomes (heavier weighting for outcomes).

Also agree that families and students have different priorities for their undergraduate experience.

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The problem with the THE/WSJ consolidated list is that their methodology was originally devised for comparing global universities where research is the priority.  It’s really not well suited for LACs, which don’t exist in the UK (where THE is based.). This is why there are no LACs in their combined top 20 of US colleges. This should give pause when considering how LACs are entirely focused on undergrads, are half of the 20 best endowed colleges on a per student basis are LACs.

To be more specific, 30% of their weighting goes towards “Resources.”  But that is weighted as 11% finance per student, 11% faculty per student, and 8% research papers per faculty.  We know that papers per faculty is biased towards universities straight off.  But the other 22% is also going to be misleading, because faculty and finances are not evenly split amongst grads and undergrads when both are present; there’s going to be far more money and faculty time spent on grad students than on undergrads on a per student basis.  A compensating adjustment needs to be taking place but isn’t.  (For me this was one of the key takeaways of the recent Columbia analysis of how their numbers were overstating undergrad investment… universities simply lack established conventions on how to do this; it’s less of an issue when comparing to other universities but distortions will be more pronounced when comparing to LACs where necessarily 100% of the funds and faculty focus go to educating the undergrad population).  
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I disagree as the methodology used by the WSJ/THE 2022 college rankings focuses on areas that are fair to both National Universities and to Liberal Arts Colleges.

The 4 weighted areas used: Outcomes 40%, Resources 30%, Engagement 20%, and Environment 10%

https://timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankings/wall-street-journal-times-higher-education-college-rankings-2022[/quote]

In the case of an LAC, 100% of the resources (30%) go to the undergrads.

In the case of the university, we don’t really know how much of a budget or a professor’s office or research time goes to an undergrad vs the grad student, we only know they prioritize the latter but that the metrics used by WSJ don’t explain if or how they account for that difference.  
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You make very strong arguments in favor of SLACs with high endowments or high endowments per student (or am i reading too much into your well reasoned comments ?).

I agree that some will prefer a near 100% focus on undergraduate education in a more intimate setting rather than attending a much larger school with a significant presence of graduate students.

Among elite Private National Universities, some student populations are about 50% undergraduate and 50% graduate students (Northwestern University is an example where grad students may outnumber undergrads), but this provides more resources and engenders a serious academic environment.

It would be interesting to list the top 20 private National Universities by percentage of grad students & undergraduates.[/quote]

You are not misreading, and I appreciate the kind words.  :-)

I don’t know of a listing that sorts NUs by undergrad percentage.  However, my impression is that split was a factor many used when responding to the USNWR survey specifically asking for focus on undergrad teaching.  You've probably seen it, but here's the link:

https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-universities/undergraduate-teaching

I would agree NUs with a large percentage of undergrads offer an interesting compromise (as do LACs with traditions in encouraging undergrad research).  Research opportunities can be very rewarding for the sufficiently motivated and undeterred.  At the large universities, the trick it seems is not giving up after the first couple years of overpacked lecture halls and (comparatively) aloof profs. [/quote]

I have several family members who have attended a variety of elite Private National Universities and experienced few large classes and many classes with fewer than 20 students--often fewer than 12 students. Northwestern, Chicago, Columbia, Duke, Brown, and a couple of others. [/quote]

I believe you, but I think it tends to be a bigger issue in the sciences where the large nature of certain introductory courses factors as much or more into the “weeding” than the course content.  There’s some data for this in the CDS (assuming one isn’t dealing with a school that opts not to publish!).

Average class size data is useful but has to be considered carefully when schools report.  A school that has 1 class of 99 students and 1 class of 1 student can claim an average class size of 50 even though 99% of the students experience double that.   This is why one reason why some schools have so many barely attended classes.  It pulls the average down in a way that may not represent the typical experience.

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US News Best Colleges breaks class size down to "percentage of classes under 20 students" and "percentage of classes over 50 students". To the best of my knowledge, US News does not use "average class size" in its ratings and ranking system.

Among the top 50 National Universities, the Univ. of California schools have a lot of classes of 50 or more students.

Many Private National Universities among the US News Best Colleges top 50 report high percentages (65% or more) of classes with fewer than 20 students. Whether or not this includes break-out sections and labs from large lecture classes is not clear, but it is reasonable to assume that they are included.

My understanding is that the large classes at National Universities tend to be introductory courses in the sciences--with small sections of break-out classes and labs which may often be led by a graduate PhD student--and large intro classes in psychology and sometimes intro econ courses.[/quote]

Yes, that's how US News does it.  When I was saying some colleges report average class size, I meant on their own websites.  For example, if you go to UPenn's Facts and Figures page, they report the average class size for the College of Arts and Sciences is 15.  They don't specify if that's a mean or a median, and they don't offer an average class size for Wharton or for the School of Engineering, where I imagine faculty have higher average salaries.

But even how US News does it can be misleading.  Applying their approach to the earlier example (one class of 1 student and one of 99), US News would count that as 50% of courses under 20 even though a given student is 99 time more likely to be taking a course over 50 students.

It's a tricky problem. The best thing imo is to examine the actual enrollment info for courses at a college that is being seriously considered.  Different schools share different amounts of information.  A private university known for undergraduate teaching focus (per US News) like Princeton puts that info in the public domain where enrollment and total seats for current and up to 3 years back can be examined on an individual course basis can be examined.  An LAC known for the same like Carleton also does that (current plus 5 years back).  When I check for Harvard or UPenn, that appears to require a student login.

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