Aug. 19, 2005

A Better Way to Evaluate Colleges

Today, U.S. News & World Report will once again come out with its annual college rankings. Having worked as a college administrator my entire professional life, I often get questions about the usefulness of such rankings in the search process.

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While rankings such as those published by U.S. News and World Report offer some useful data, I have developed a different set of five simple criteria or considerations for evaluating the value and for choosing one of the best educational experiences offered by our country’s 600 liberal arts colleges. Were I to provide counsel to parents of students interested in attending one of these colleges — or to educators wondering how their institutions are doing — here are five lines of questioning I’d suggest they pursue:

1. Has the institution’s faculty been granted a Phi Beta Kappa chapter? Founded in 1776, Phi Beta Kappa is the nation’s oldest and strongest academic honor society. Only those colleges or universities that meet the most rigorous academic standards are granted chapters. Criteria for membership include the number of volumes in the library, the number of faculty members who hold terminal (doctorate) degrees, and the number of faculty members who are members of Phi Beta Kappa. Membership in Phi Beta Kappa is an icon for maintaining a faculty of high caliber. Of the more than 4,000 colleges and universities in the country, only 270-7 percent — have been granted Phi Beta Kappa chapters. Other measures of academic quality include accreditations by national organizations, honors and awards received by faculty, and participation of students in undergraduate research and related regional and national competitions.

2. Has the college or university earned a favorable rating (A or better) by Moody’s Investors Service or another rating service such as Standard and Poor’s? Moody’s rates bonds issued to finance capital projects. Each series of bonds carries a different rating, but taken in aggregate, the bond ratings provide a meaningful and important gauge of institutional health. No institution can get an A or better rating if it does not have a history of balanced budgets. In Texas, for example, only five of our private colleges have an A or better rating from Moody’s as of June 2005. Bond ratings show financial strength in the way Phi Beta Kappa membership shows an institution’s academic strength. A good bond rating is an indication that an institution has the funding to sustain important academic programs. Other measures of financial health include the annual National Association of College and University Business Officers Endowment Survey and the college’s annual report, which should include a financial statement that shows expenditures for instruction, library and technology, scholarship, maintenance and construction as well as income from tuition, endowment, and gifts and grants.

3. Do graduates of the college earn predominantly Bachelor of Arts degrees? Bachelor of Arts degrees, which often require mastery of a foreign language, are the “union cards” for people who truly pursue undergraduate study in the liberal arts. Generally, it can be said that the higher the ratio of B.A. degrees to pre-professional degrees such as the B.B.A., the greater the college or university’s commitment to teaching. At the strongest liberal arts colleges and universities, at least 75 percent of the degrees awarded each year are B.A.’s as opposed to pre-professional degrees.

4. What percentage of students resides on campus? Living on campus is an important component of a student’s education, as it helps develop a sense of community and civic duty and provides a more complete living and learning environment. Campus residency leads students to participate in campus organizations where they learn valuable leadership and teamwork skills. Ideally, 80 percent or more of a campus’s full-time undergraduates should reside on campus to ensure a vibrant collegiate experience.

5. How diverse is the campus community? Diversity comes in many forms: racial/ethnic, gender, socio/economic, age, geographic, to name a few. A hallmark of a broad-based undergraduate education is consideration of a variety of perspectives based on the different experiences of diverse students and faculty. This type of rich and vibrant dialogue proves invaluable in students’ future professional, civic and personal lives. As a threshold, campus communities of students, faculty and staff should include 20 percent or more who represent populations other than its dominant majority.

I’m not saying that we should throw out rankings such as those compiled by U.S. News. An unfortunate characteristic of our society is that we always want to know who is No. 1 – whether it be in the classroom or on the football field. But the problem with rankings is that they encourage institutions that are uniquely different to change their programs in an attempt to improve their rankings. This doesn’t make sense for institutions that have specific missions that do not complement the rankings game.

For students who want to choose a great liberal arts college, I believe the above five questions are the ones that should be asked. You won’t find a college in America that meets these criteria and isn’t a great liberal arts college.

Jake B. Schrum is president of Southwestern University, in Georgetown, Tex.

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Comments

It is perhaps not widely known that Phi Beta Kappa will not authorize a chapter at a college or university whose administration has been censored by the American Association of University Professors.

I would add to a list of variables to be considered in rankings the percentage of tenured and tenure-track faculty employed by the institution.

Jane Buck, National President at American Association of University Professors, at 9:02 am EDT on August 19, 2005

What about some analysis of personal success?

The cab-driver/published philospher is one thing.

The brilliantly unemployed are another.

Bart S., at 10:28 am EDT on August 19, 2005

a well-trained liberal arts student wouldn’t buy this

What a remarkable coincidence: Under this ranking system, Southwestern University is on par with Amherst, Pomona, and Oberlin.

Surely, it would be possible to make further judgments of quality beyond the ones offered by the author.

Chris Shea, at 10:43 am EDT on August 19, 2005

I guess Jake’s assumption is that the colleges previously have been shown to actually teach something and the students actually have learned something from the experience(the colleges really have some accountability for educating the students). It seems to me that across the spectrum of US colleges this is the first issue to solidly and fairly establish. After that other criteria can be used, Jake’s included, to judge the worth of a given college. In other words, is the college in question really going about the business of educating students?

lyn prendergast, at 11:59 am EDT on August 19, 2005

Quality of student learning — if we could determine what it was — would be the ultimate relevant criterion for ranking undergraduate colleges. Perhaps refinements in assessment would get us there.

Charles Muscatine, Prof. of English, emeritus at UC, Berkeley, at 1:05 pm EDT on August 19, 2005

Testing is easy

“Quality of student learning — if we could determine what it was — would be the ultimate relevant criterion ..”

Dang .. I’ve heard of these things called the LSAT, GRE, GMAT, MCAT, et al. They are not perfect (Hilliary, GWB, M. Moore, Condi, et al aren’t, so WTF) — but better than nothing.

Also, recently, I helped develop a quant/qual study on impact of an internal-comm program, pre- and post-program. Also not perfect. But better than nothing.

As Woody Allen observed, life can be crazy, “but sometimes you need the eggs.” Life can go on — if we let it, and not micro-analyze everything, little thing.

Art D, at 1:28 pm EDT on August 19, 2005

There are numerous issues with the college ranking system(s). Some of these include the questionable financial motivation for the companies to sell their product (magazines). This leads to universities channeling limited resources to enhance their ratings on questionable criterion established by the for-profit news corporations. These factors are not certain to actually measure or produce quality. Furthermore, the ranking systems are biased against the community colleges and regional university systems. The on-campus living experience is valuable, but this is not the 1950s. The nature of today’s student and education delivery systems has changed. Distance education is one such example.

Student, at 2:54 pm EDT on August 19, 2005

I have never understood why financial information is considered a measure of academic quality. A measure of stability, to be sure, and perhaps a measure of the ability to pay faculty at a certain level. But that does not necessarily equate to quality.

Alan Contreras, Oregon Office of Degree Authorization, at 8:58 pm EDT on August 19, 2005

Race and Standardized Tests

I like some of your idea for rating schools. However, I object to the last part, and the (I assume purposeful) omission of stadardized test scores and class size as criteria.

I suppose this would create a major change from your idea.

A “diverse” campus is fine and well if it requires no affirmative action type discrimination. However, disqualifying good students by puting them at a disadvantage because of their race, rather than attracting the best students (among the most important aspects of a university, in my view).

At the end of the day, perhaps the most important aspect of our education is what we will learn from the ad-hoc discussions in quad and at the cafeteria tables and dorm rooms from our fellow students.

However, we also learn in discussions with intelligent classmates if the class is so structured (i.e. small and discussion oriented).

If these discussions are with the most intelligent students, they will be the most productive. Likewise with any sort of collaborative work or research.

Being lost in massive lecture hall (sometimes with up to 900 students at some schools) and little-to-no access to professors pretty much means you won’t learn from anything but the text and readings... which all but defeats the purpose of the course.

The student to teacher ratio can be skewed by faculty that teach one class and the like, so class size is a better guide to accessibilty and the possibility of some interactivity.

Kevin, Undergraduate, at 9:27 pm EDT on August 19, 2005

“quality” rating suggestions behind the times

The 4th suggestion, that an institution’s ratio of on-campus to off-campus students be considered as a quality measure, is not appropriate and, given the lame justifications the author provided for it, weak. Over half of college students in the US are now considered “nontraditional,” in that they are financially independent from their parents and/or are working a job (many times full-time hours) while attending school. The vast majority of these students live off-campus. Many of these students provide the so-called “diversity” the author suggests as another quality measure. Considering an influx of these students as detrimental to the quality of a university puts suggestions #4 and #5 in conflict. This suggestion is also behind the times. Just because students couldn’t afford to attend college immediately after high school while living under mommy & daddy’s umbrella doesn’t mean they don’t contribute to the quality of the educational experience at any given university. Indeed, I have found that non-traditional students as a whole are more motivated and place more value on their educational experience (mainly because most are paying for it themselves). This makes the nontraditional student population good role models for their traditional classmates who often have spotty attendance and an “I’ll do only the bare minimum to pass so I can get that piece of paper” attitude. Colleges are realizing the benefits of attracting nontraditional students’ tuition dollars by offering evening/weekend classes, specialized financial aid, and flexible time-to-degree standards. It’s time they also start recognizing and fostering these students’ contributions to campus life, rather than suggesting that their presence indicates an erosion of quality.

RatMOut, at 10:06 am EDT on August 22, 2005

RE: a well-trained liberal arts student wouldn’t buy this

“What a remarkable coincidence: Under this ranking system, Southwestern University is on par with Amherst, Pomona, and Oberlin.”

As a matter of fact, Southwestern IS on par with the schools you mentioned. The list Shrum mentions may not be perfect, but neither is your condescending response. Do you know anything about Southwestern?

SUGrad, at 2:52 pm EDT on September 1, 2005

Well, Southwestern has a median composite SAT score more than 100 points below those other colleges mentioned, and accepts more than twice the percentage of applicants... how are those not objective measures of quality?

Ben, at 11:35 pm EDT on July 1, 2006

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A Better Way to Evaluate Colleges

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Comments

What about some analysis of personal success?

a well-trained liberal arts student wouldn’t buy this

Testing is easy

Race and Standardized Tests

“quality” rating suggestions behind the times

RE: a well-trained liberal arts student wouldn’t buy this

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