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]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]

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