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WSJ did rating of universities & colleges that appeared in today's paper. David , I don't know if you or colleagues caught this so thought I'd pass it along.
Part of a longer note I sent to my president this morning:
The WSJ claims that its ranking is distinguished by focusing on outcomes rather more than inputs and on valuing student reports of fit, engagement and so on. I think you should be able to see a simplified version of the data at http://www.wsj.com/graphics/college-rankings-2016/. There's also a full methodology link.
We're #241. As I scan the adjacent schools, it's not a bad neighborhood.
-- Schools are rated on a series of sub-scales. We end up doing well on all but one of them, the scale which measures diversity. There, I'm not sure. 25% of our kids are students of color, nearly 30% are first-gen and some larger percentage qualify for Pell Grants. In the past we've had trouble with data reporting (uhh, one of our guys left three zeros off our endowment per student estimate; it turns out having $54 per student in your endowment is a bit on the thin side), which might account for it.
Assuming we're actually merely mediocre in terms of diversity rather than wretched, Augie is in the top 10 of colleges and universities in Illinois. Assuming that the wretched number is right, we're 12th.
As to 499, they actually rate over 800 but don't publish the sub-scales on anyone below 500.
I've learned not to put much into all the many rankings of colleges and universities. There are so many variables that can skew rankings, and every study puts different weightings on the variables it chooses to include. I have seen rankings for some colleges range from top 10% to bottom 20% for the same school in studies released the same year. Heck, there are some studies I would hope to be near the bottom if I were a school.
There's an interesting finding from a long ago study. Student engagement is good: you ought to send your kids to places where the students do the readings, do the homework, work with peers outside of class, talk with their teachers and so on. That's measured in something called the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE, commonly called "Nessie").
Here's the finding: there was an inverse relationship between US News ranking and NSSE scores. The most famous colleges had the least actively-engaged students, at least as measured by the things NSSE tracks. Places like Harvard, they hypothesized, had low NSSE scores because the students were hyper-competitive and self-focused and the faculty had better things to do with their time than talk to undergrads.
Every ranking says same thing - focusing on outcomes - and if they do and have different rankings means they are looking at different data.
I agree rankings are not everything and may not be accurate. However it is good to look at them because OTHERs are looking at them. Then again, sometimes it is good to see what you expect to see. RICE at #4 as per Money Magazine and #15 as per US News as an example. Big difference, but still you know it is good. It is unfortunate if my daughter gets in, I just may not be able to afford it. Purchasing an MBA from a good school later would be cheaper if having a "label" on your forehead is important.
PS - I don't want flak about saying the word "Purchase". A lot of "executive MBA" friends of mine don't like me using it because they think they "earned" it. Let me tell you, if you are paying tuition out of your own pocket you are purchasing the degree, because there is someone equally smart as you who couldn't afford it.
A college degree is like a driver's license. There are people on the road who will NEVER learn to drive and there are people who don't know jack. The problem is some licenses are gold plated. A big deal is made about "student experience". I don't want my child to be miserable, but there is something about perseverance and hard work. I want to slap the kid who can go to Harvard but decides not to because it has low NSSE scores.
You have your entire life left to LEARN, if THAT is your objective. Otherwise you get the best degree you can afford. And yes, BEST is not just your definition of it, because even if you don't care, others do and that makes a difference for prospective employers and even if you are going to be self-employed.
"Every ranking says same thing - focusing on outcomes ..."
Oddly, most of them do the opposite. They focus on inputs. They want to know how much money you spend, how much money you have in your endowment, how good your entering students are, how many PhD's populate your faculty and so on. The outcomes stuff is usually six-year graduation rate (heads up for parents: there's a reason that big schools lobbied against reporting four- or even five-year rates), maybe retention, maybe some iffy salary data.
Why focus on inputs? Because it's easy and the data is reliable, though not predictive.
What about outcomes? Here's a surprise. It turns out that schools that try to help the most disadvantaged youth (a) have almost no resources to work with and (b) have students who have been ill-prepared. In consequence, their grad rates are abysmal, at least when benchmarked against the U. of Illinois or Augie. Our typical outcome measures dismiss those schools as failures and they end up ranked 8,000th or some such. And yet they transform the lives of thousands of kids who otherwise would have been completely discarded by the system.
Curious judgment. Somehow the top-tier schools that focus on self-perpetuating a certain circle (Trump is a UPenn graduate as are three of his children, and I'm guessing they're on scholarship because that's what a smart businessman would expect) and boosting their endowments feel a lot more like failures to me.
" ... if you are paying tuition out of your own pocket you are purchasing the degree, because there is someone equally smart as you who couldn't afford it." --
Equally smart does not mean the same as: equally literate, equally well educated, equally skilled, or equally prepared (for a given task/profession). That education is what the degree attests to. It is not purchased, but rather earned and acquired.
It grinds me a bit because many uneducated people decry and debunk the values of higher education with off-hand comments like: "My kid is very bright. Already knows a lot. I don't understand why he should attend college."
... So let's not equate being smart with being well educated. They represent two different (but complementary) attributes. Not to say that everyone needs a college degree. Multiple avenues to acquiring an education exist as we are all aware. But smart and educated constitute two different animals.
Higher Ed is way behind in developing and implementing instruments that really measure what students learn during their tenure in college. Sometimes called "assessment," a good system requires the faculty to say in concrete terms what it takes to earn credit in a particular course and what level of achievement is required to earn a degree. Generally speaking, merely attainment of a certain grade has been used to measure student performance. To compare what students at college A and those at college B have accomplished in four or so years would require assessment instruments that can be compared. Some professional organizations in more applied disciplines provide these instruments, but there is a paucity of measurement tools for typical liberal arts fields. When I retired from 40+ years of university language teaching, we were just getting the job done. I do know that other universities in Michigan were thumbing their noses at those at the state department of education level who were pressing programs to develop proper assessment. My youngest kid goes to the top-rated public institution on the WSJ list, but I'll bet she never gets an exit assessment in her major before graduation. David is right: you need to compare outputs to compare the quality of an institution. Right now, it's hard to do, especially for prospective students and their families.
Comments
Well they get an A for beautiful fall foliage, if David's periodic snapshots are any example of what they have to work with. /envy
The WSJ claims that its ranking is distinguished by focusing on outcomes rather more than inputs and on valuing student reports of fit, engagement and so on. I think you should be able to see a simplified version of the data at http://www.wsj.com/graphics/college-rankings-2016/. There's also a full methodology link.
We're #241. As I scan the adjacent schools, it's not a bad neighborhood.
--
Schools are rated on a series of sub-scales. We end up doing well on all but one of them, the scale which measures diversity. There, I'm not sure. 25% of our kids are students of color, nearly 30% are first-gen and some larger percentage qualify for Pell Grants. In the past we've had trouble with data reporting (uhh, one of our guys left three zeros off our endowment per student estimate; it turns out having $54 per student in your endowment is a bit on the thin side), which might account for it.
Assuming we're actually merely mediocre in terms of diversity rather than wretched, Augie is in the top 10 of colleges and universities in Illinois. Assuming that the wretched number is right, we're 12th.
As to 499, they actually rate over 800 but don't publish the sub-scales on anyone below 500.
For what it's worth,
David
Here's the finding: there was an inverse relationship between US News ranking and NSSE scores. The most famous colleges had the least actively-engaged students, at least as measured by the things NSSE tracks. Places like Harvard, they hypothesized, had low NSSE scores because the students were hyper-competitive and self-focused and the faculty had better things to do with their time than talk to undergrads.
David
I agree rankings are not everything and may not be accurate. However it is good to look at them because OTHERs are looking at them. Then again, sometimes it is good to see what you expect to see. RICE at #4 as per Money Magazine and #15 as per US News as an example. Big difference, but still you know it is good. It is unfortunate if my daughter gets in, I just may not be able to afford it. Purchasing an MBA from a good school later would be cheaper if having a "label" on your forehead is important.
PS - I don't want flak about saying the word "Purchase". A lot of "executive MBA" friends of mine don't like me using it because they think they "earned" it. Let me tell you, if you are paying tuition out of your own pocket you are purchasing the degree, because there is someone equally smart as you who couldn't afford it.
A college degree is like a driver's license. There are people on the road who will NEVER learn to drive and there are people who don't know jack. The problem is some licenses are gold plated. A big deal is made about "student experience". I don't want my child to be miserable, but there is something about perseverance and hard work. I want to slap the kid who can go to Harvard but decides not to because it has low NSSE scores.
You have your entire life left to LEARN, if THAT is your objective. Otherwise you get the best degree you can afford. And yes, BEST is not just your definition of it, because even if you don't care, others do and that makes a difference for prospective employers and even if you are going to be self-employed.
Oddly, most of them do the opposite. They focus on inputs. They want to know how much money you spend, how much money you have in your endowment, how good your entering students are, how many PhD's populate your faculty and so on. The outcomes stuff is usually six-year graduation rate (heads up for parents: there's a reason that big schools lobbied against reporting four- or even five-year rates), maybe retention, maybe some iffy salary data.
Why focus on inputs? Because it's easy and the data is reliable, though not predictive.
What about outcomes? Here's a surprise. It turns out that schools that try to help the most disadvantaged youth (a) have almost no resources to work with and (b) have students who have been ill-prepared. In consequence, their grad rates are abysmal, at least when benchmarked against the U. of Illinois or Augie. Our typical outcome measures dismiss those schools as failures and they end up ranked 8,000th or some such. And yet they transform the lives of thousands of kids who otherwise would have been completely discarded by the system.
Curious judgment. Somehow the top-tier schools that focus on self-perpetuating a certain circle (Trump is a UPenn graduate as are three of his children, and I'm guessing they're on scholarship because that's what a smart businessman would expect) and boosting their endowments feel a lot more like failures to me.
David
--
Equally smart does not mean the same as: equally literate, equally well educated, equally skilled, or equally prepared (for a given task/profession). That education is what the degree attests to. It is not purchased, but rather earned and acquired.
It grinds me a bit because many uneducated people decry and debunk the values of higher education with off-hand comments like: "My kid is very bright. Already knows a lot. I don't understand why he should attend college."
... So let's not equate being smart with being well educated. They represent two different (but complementary) attributes. Not to say that everyone needs a college degree. Multiple avenues to acquiring an education exist as we are all aware. But smart and educated constitute two different animals.