Reply to Top 10 Public Colleges in the US

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]1) UC Berkeley 
2) UCLA
3) Michigan
4) UVA
5) Georgia Tech
6) UNC CH
7) UC Irvine
8) UC Santa Barbra
9) W&M
10) UT Austin

What do you guys think. I think mine is pretty similar to US News (excluding Florida lol). [b]Criteria I used were selectivity, average test scores, academic prestige, etc[/b].[/quote]

UC Irvine should not be on.  If you look at UC schools, UC San Diego should be on before it.  I guess UC Santa Barbara may be up and coming, but would not put it ahead of W&M and UT Austin and would think schools like Washington and Wisconsin would be deserving of consideration.

If you are looking at this from an undergraduate perspective, it seems to me your criteria above don't really capture that.  A school can have high academic prestige due to its graduate programs, but that often doesn't translate to great undergraduate experience and opportunities. Indicators there should be things like 4 year graduation rate, alumni satisfaction and giving rates, etc.

[/quote]
Those are the absolute worst indicators to judge schools based on and really only exist to hurt public universities based on non-academic factors.

4-year graduation rate means the students at the school take easy majors, don't fail courses with subjective grading, attend full-time due to no extracurricular commitments i.e. jobs, etc.

Meanwhile public universities are full of students majoring in tough STEM subjects where grading is objective - meaning students fail. Public university students also often hold part-time jobs with significant time commitments i.e. 20 hours+ per week, and therefore these students take fewer courses and take longer to finish.

The easiest way to raise the 4-year graduation rate is to target and admit only wealthy students who won't need to work part-time and will major in easy majors because their family's wealth and connections will carry them through life. Schools like Vanderbilt, Duke and Northwestern have done this to great effect in recent times, and historically it is how the Ivies built their reputation and its what they still currently practice.

Same with alumni satisfaction. Want great alumni satisfaction? Make college a summer camp with luxury dorms, fitness centers, easy academics allowing for great amount of time spent in social clubs. To pay for this, attract and admit only wealthy students that can afford the luxuries and social clubs. Again, look at the &quot;T20&quot; outside of MIT, Caltech, Cornell and Hopkins.

Same with alumni giving. Public universities are funded by taxpayers, and therefore a) students feel they have already contributed through taxes, b) public university students tend to take student loans to pay tuition themselves rather than their parents paying it for them - adding to the belief that they've done enough - and c) public universities other than Michigan/Virginia don't have large alumni outreach programs for fund-raising as their funding is through the state.

Add on to the fact that public university students are generally poorer to begin with, without large familial wealth cushions, and simply can afford to contribute less than private university alums. [/quote]

Alternatively, a high 4-year graduation rate means the students 1) can get the classes they need to graduate 2) don't run up unnecessary debt or incur opportunity costs in delayed earnings and 3) are generally happy with their experience and making proper academic process because the university is committed to undergraduates.  And a high alumni giving rate is correlated with alumni satisfaction with their experience with the school and whether they believe they received value for their investment.

Many public schools are using undergraduates to prop up research and graduate programs.  [/quote]

1) Getting classes needed for graduation is way overstated.
2) Publics cost 1/5 of privates. May be worth comparing debt and opportunity cost between privates, but not when comparing to publics. 
3) Meaningless

High alumni satisfaction again, simply is based on enjoying one's social time at school, not academic quality. More rigor means less satisfaction for most students because academics becomes a great source of stress.

[b]High alumni giving rate has nothing to do with believing they received value for their investment,[/b] moreso an attempt to further improve the standing of the school which helps the alum's own career.

Again, 4-year graduation rate difference is based on the easiness of the school and the wealth of the students.

UVa and W&M have the highest 4-year graduation rates among publics. They are largely liberal-arts focused universities. They also have the wealthiest median income among publics:

UVa at $155k with 67% from top 20%
W&M at $176k with 76% from top 20%, respectively.

IIRC, UVa has the largest percentage of students from the top 1% of wealth among publics, and rivals privates in that regard.

Meanwhile Berkeley and UCLA have lower 4-year graduation rates. Yet they have a much larger proportion of poorer students and a much heavier focus on STEM:

Berkeley at $112k and 54% from top 20
UCLA at $104k and 48% from top 20

Virginia is in no way a wealthier state than California, there really is no reason for such a difference for such a drastic difference between the top publics in the state in terms of wealth
Then you have an entirely engineering-based school like Georgia Tech with a sub-50% 4-year graduation rate.

[/quote]

I think there is a correlation between alumni giving rates and value for investment.  If you take the 10 universities listed by the OP and look at the percentage of graduates that believe they got their &quot;money's worth&quot; on Niche, 3 of the top 4 are also in the top 4 for alumni giving rate (W&M, Georgia Tech, and UNC).  If you look at the bottom 4 for &quot;money's worth&quot;, 3 of the bottom 4 were also in the bottom 4 for alumni giving rate (UC Irvine, UC Berkeley, UCLA).

[/quote]
No, there's a correlation between alumni giving rates and size of the school. It's much easier to get &lt;2,000 graduates per year to contribute, especially through phone banks that these universities use extensively, than getting 7,000+ graduates per year to do the same.

Mass alumni emails simply get ignored, but when you have current students specifically calling you on the phone, its more difficult for the alum to ignore the plea for donations.

Add that on to the fact that students attending smaller schools tend to be wealthier in the beginning of their careers due to familial wealth and can afford to donate. While the majority of kids at large publics are anything but wealthy, often have issues with loans they've taken out on their own, worked part-time through college, etc. and ergo do not contribute due to lack of disposable income.

Look at the alumni giving rates among privates. They are all SLACs other than Dartmouth which is essentially a SLAC with &lt;4,000 students, and Princeton:
https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/the-short-list-college/articles/universities-where-the-most-alumni-donate#:~:text=The%20average%20alumni%20giving%20rate,rates%20of%2044%25%20and%20higher.

Add on to the fact that historically, private colleges have heavily relied on alumni giving while public colleges have had plenty of state funding. Ergo private colleges have tried-and-try operations for alumni donations. Public universities don't.

In fact, considering everything that public universities spend on is disclosed and public information, the public and state government do not view public universities spending large sums of money on lavish alumni functions, alumni outreach, phone banks, etc. favorably - they exist to educate students, not raise money in perpetuity.

[/quote]

UNC and Michigan have giving rates 2x plus the UC schools and they are large.  The difference is they have higher money's worth ratings.  USC has one of the highest giving rates and it is one of the largest privates.[/quote]

UNC is the around the size of UVA at around 18,000 students - differently not large considering most flagships have 30,000.

Michigan does, and Michigan has done a very good job of tapping into their alumni base for a long time. Their sports program helps.

UC schools, on the other hand, hisotrically have been well-funded by the state - a state with very high state taxes - and ergo a) don't focus much on alumni engagement and b) alumni feel that they are already paying for the school through state taxes.

But if you think the academic rigor, difficulty, or quality at Michigan exceeds Berkeley, you'd be wrong, especially in the humanities and social sciences.

Large schools have high alumni satisfaction through sports programs. Otherwise there's nothing connecting a student at Berkeley to the rest of the 30,000 students before and after graduation. USC is similar in that regard. NYU and GW are the opposite - low alumni giving with unknown sports programs.

Small colleges, particularly SLACs, have high alumni satisfaction because they foster a community atmosphere that only a small student body can provide.

However, that doe

UNsn't mean Berkeley should only admit &lt;1,000 students per year to increase alumni giving rates.

Also, there's always a chance of these SLAC's going out of business due to lack of funding, a problem public flagships generally never face.

[/quote]

UNC has higher state funding per student than UC schools, similar family incomes, yet has nearly 3x rate of UCs.  What UNC does have is a significant ly higher percentage who believe they got their money's worth.[/quote]

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