Which state has the public research university with the higher 5-year graduation rate, Florida or Wisconsin?
What are the most expensive private colleges in each state?
Which state’s public university had 20% of undergraduates with PLUS loans, Michigan or Mississippi?
Which private colleges had the highest 4-year graduation rates in Massachusetts and New York?
You know getting into college must be tough when some of the highest achieving high schools are experiencing suicide clusters. It’s not really that surprising given what you hear in the popular media. Come April 1st every year, you would think that most high school students don’t have a chance of getting into their first choice college. All you hear is how few students colleges are accepting into their freshman classes and the despair of the worthy students and their families.
Evaluating Liberal Arts Colleges by how much graduates make is antithetical to the concept of a liberal arts education in so many ways. But given the fact that 100 Liberal Arts Colleges now cost more than $50,000, I don’t care how much aid the students are receiving, families have every right to know what kind of pay-off the student can expect. This doesn’t mean that families don’t appreciate the value of a liberal arts education. It’s just recognition that there will bills and loans to repay after graduation.
Last September a group of 80 colleges announced a new college application designed to improve access, affordability, and success. They actually call themselves the Coalition for Access, Affordability, and Success. But for some reason, the counselors who work with high school students, both private and school-based, don’t seem impressed with the new option. Maybe because the Coalition apparently hasn’t even piloted the application yet or listed any committed Community Based Organizations?
This fall’s college rankings have made earnings and return on investment a more prominent consideration when selecting a college. And with the ever increasing cost of college, this is a very reasonable reaction. However, ranking colleges by some form of graduates’ salaries has its own set of problems. Teachers simply don’t make as much as engineers or investment bankers but we need teachers. Incomes are higher in areas with higher costs of living. And these are just some of the obvious issues of ranking universities by graduates’ salaries. But this shouldn’t stop you from using the available information–just understand its limitations.
In my last post, I talked about how even colleges are subjected to the laws of supply and demand. The more students want to attend a college, the more the college can charge. If you want to pay less for college, you need to consider colleges with higher acceptance rates. Now I want to look at why so many students are interested in the same college. What makes 50 or fewer colleges so much more attractive than the remaining 1,500? Can you say “college rankings?”
You may have missed the excitement last May when Ronald Nelson announced he was going to attend the University of Alabama. This was a big deal not because Alabama had grabbed the top football recruit in the nation. It was a big deal because Nelson was actually accepted at all eight Ivy League schools, Stanford, Johns Hopkins, and Washington University in St. Louis. He turned them all down to attend the honors college at the University of Alabama.
Despite the newly revised federal College Scorecard released this weekend along with new data elements for evaluating schools, US News College Rankings probably isn’t too worried about losing its fan base. After all, you can’t find out what THE BEST college is in the nation with just a click. And let’s face it, everyone loves a horse race–no one cares what the trainers are actually doing. But for those who might actually be interested in how the schools achieved their rankings, you should be aware of the following:
With the increasing number of college rankings available, it’s easy to forget that the US News Best College Rankings reigned without competition for 20 years. In 2005, The Washington Monthly published its alternative college rankings designed to evaluate the value of colleges as a social institution. For 10 years, The Washington Monthly College Rankings have been asking what can colleges do for society rather than ranking them on the quality of their students.
