UConn Back In Top 20 In U.S. News & World Report Ranking

[upstater]

The largest universities today are online entities. I do agree that there is a risk of churning out credentials. But, I suspect there is also money to be made in educating to a higher level. Imagine if an online "startup" could show that their students performed higher than a top university on third party testing, i.e., LSATs

I envision universities hiring user experience teams to deliver an optimized experience that blends a real-time interactive experience with online instruction and prepackaged content. That's already happening to a certain extent, but agree, that many universities are feeling their way through it, and we are still on the front end of things.

Q: does filling out scantron tests really represent what we value? Kaplan could do better than universities in training customers to take a test. All the online instruction and prepackaged content will be superficial. Knowledge will suffer in the end, but the industry will be awash in money. Universities are an industry of hundreds of billions of dollars, if not a trillion. When that money is siphoned to corporations instead, we'll have a massive new corporate bureaucracy that will have its own reason for being. 20 years ago, students dealt with one individual faculty member per class, and on that basis, his/her performance was judged. In the future, each student will be pitted against tens of thousands of efficiency experts.

 

[1husky]

Only 1 pt separates UCONN from the next three public universities: Texas, Ohio State, and Washington. The stellar stats of the incoming class along with nearly 150 new faculty (many leaders in their respective field), will enable UCONN to pass at least two more public institutions come the fall 0f 2014.

Are you saying UConn will pass two of Texas, Ohio State, or Washington by next year? I could maybe see Ohio State in the next decade but the other two I find hard to believe we would ever pass. Admittedly, I have no knowledge of how these things work but my perception has always been Texas and UW are there with UNC, GT, UCLA, and other top publics.

 

[Gfunk]

GFunk loves showing up in these threads playing his favorite game of "my list is better than your list"

I really have no idea what you're talking about. Did you read my posts carefully? I certainly applauded UConn's rise in US News. But how often is this thing cited at this point? It's just tiring & only spells out part of the picture. BIG schools look at all levels of the university mission - the AAU things is not to be taken lightly, though I feel it's overstated.

Lastly, I've been quite clear on this board here since joining Boneyard: UConn to the BIG would be a sweet addition.

 

[Gfunk]

I do find it incredibly hard to believe that there are grad students out there looking at US News grad rankings when the grad programs are actually ranked by the National Academies and Carnegie. If this is happening, I would suggest such students reconsider the prospect of grad school.

I disagree. I still have my 2006 US News Undergraduate Rankings & the Public Policy - City Management section will always have my annotations. Granted, I looked at NSR and Carnegie as well. US News was a decent primer, but of all the publications I used, aside from actual faculty publications, Planetizen's Best Urban Regional Planning Guide worked best for my field. Planetizen, US News, Carnegie and NSR had a lot of crossover. More importantly, I spent time speaking and writing to faculty and current grad students, as well as reviewing applied program opportunities that earned credits, and of course internship opportunities. Somewhat less fortunate, I put too much emphasis on funding opportunities, and proximity to home mattered. I wasn't exactly solvent when I started grad school.

 

[upstater]

I disagree. I still have my 2006 US News Undergraduate Rankings & the Public Policy - City Management section will always have my annotations. Granted, I looked at NSR and Carnegie as well. US News was a decent primer, but of all the publications I used, aside from actual faculty publications, Planetizen's Best Urban Regional Planning Guide worked best for my field. Planetizen, US News, Carnegie and NSR had a lot of crossover. More importantly, I spent time speaking and writing to faculty and current grad students, as well as reviewing applied program opportunities that earned credits, and of course internship opportunities. Somewhat less fortunate, I put too much emphasis on funding opportunities, and proximity to home mattered. I wasn't exactly solvent when I started grad school.

Well, you learn something new every day.

The truth is, for non-preprofessional programs, we apply to places according to what our advisors tell us. They're writing the letters, they know our interests. When you're on the market later on, it doesn't matter what school you went to, as long as you're good. So, rankings might probably help you outside academia. I wouldn't know about that.

 

[Rumrunner]

For better or worse, US News rankings are the most popular, most widely reported and most impactful ranking system used by prospective undergrad applicants. That is without dispute. That is why schools almost without exception participate in the voluntary survey.

Rhetorically, if US News rankings are unimportant, then why did schools like emory, tulane, villanova, etc. try to cheat in the information reported to them? Why do college presidents tout them when the rankings are favorable. I won't bore you with the list of colleges that use the rankings in their marketing of the university- they are legion-, but here's johns hopkins press release
http://hub.jhu.edu/2013/09/10/us-news-annual-rankings

put out showing it moving up to #12. The same day as the rankings came out. What would cause a world class university like johns hopkins to do that this if the rankings were meaningless?

As for objective evidence that rankings matter, please see this harvard study:
http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/6834.html

Salience in Quality Disclosure: Evidence from the US News College
AUTHOR ABSTRACT
How do rankings affect demand? This paper investigates the impact of college rankings, and the visibility of those rankings, on students' application decisions. Using natural experiments from U.S. News and World Report College Rankings, we present two main findings. First, we identify a causal impact of rankings on application decisions. When explicit rankings of colleges are published in U.S. News, a one-rank improvement leads to a 1-percentage-point increase in the number of applications to that college. Second, we show that the response to the information represented in rankings depends on the way in which that information is presented. Rankings have no effect on application decisions when colleges are listed alphabetically, even when readers are provided data on college quality and the methodology used to calculate rankings. This finding provides evidence that the salience of information is a central determinant of a firm's demand function, even for purchases as large as college attendance.




The bottom line, US News is the first place the general public and prospective applicants look to to see if a school is good or sucks.

UConn's trajectory is inarguable. Can it surpass udub, texas, ohio state? As long as UConn using the incredible change in perception among the public over the past 15 years, especially the last 6-8 years, continues on this trajectory then it is an easy "yes."

Herbst is driving this perception, with concrete initiatives that really is taking academia by storm. Hiring away top professors during global economic uncertainty? Check. Providing billions in capital projects? Check. Orienting the university towards the hard sciences? Check.

And you know what is scary good? UConn hasn't even experienced the full impact of her decisions vis a vis us news rankings. The data is derived from 18 months ago.

Marketing to be successful needs to be simple. And simply, the prevailing view of UConn is that it is becoming world class. Long gone is the thrill of being New England's top public school. UConn is playing in a much deeper pond, the one populated by Cal, ucla, michigan, unc and uva. It isn't able to keep up. Yet. Investment plus top high school students plus incredible resident wealth? The pieces are there.

I really have no idea what you're talking about. Did you read my posts carefully? I certainly applauded UConn's rise in US News. But how often is this thing cited at this point? It's just tiring & only spells out part of the picture. BIG schools look at all levels of the university mission - the AAU things is not to be taken lightly, though I feel it's overstated.

Lastly, I've been quite clear on this board here since joining Boneyard: UConn to the BIG would be a sweet addition.

 

[progrocks]

If in 16 years my kid has to choose between UConn and UT-Austin, I would hope he would choose Austin.

 

[connman]

If in 16 years my kid has to choose between UConn and UT-Austin, I would hope he would choose Austin.

and what is that based on ???

 

[itgoeslike]

Are you saying UConn will pass two of Texas, Ohio State, or Washington by next year? I could maybe see Ohio State in the next decade but the other two I find hard to believe we would ever pass. Admittedly, I have no knowledge of how these things work but my perception has always been Texas and UW are there with UNC, GT, UCLA, and other top publics.

Yes. But, my comments pertain only to the USNWR undergraduate rankings and the data they utilize for ranking universities. If you look at the data from last year that enabled UCONN to move ahead of several schools and new, incoming data, it's not unreasonable to assume like results. Of course, the following is hypothetical, but I could envision UCONN tying and/or passing Ohio State and Washington. Whether a school is better than another is much broader question and typically relates to an individuals needs and education goals. But it terms of basic metrics, it's nice see UCONN progressing in a positive direction.

 

[Gfunk]

Here's yet another metric, albeit I've not fully researched the sources.

I think UConn in the BIG would fall near the top, like Md and Rutgers, in part due to where the undergraduates and graduate students end up for work.

http://www.bizjournals.com/columbus...cities-ranked-by-average.html?s=image_gallery