We’re number 33!
According to the latest rankings by Time Magazine, my current university — California State University Dominguez Hills — is ranked #33 in the nation. Among more than 2,500 colleges and universities.
As people on campus have been quick to point out, Harvard is several spots below us. (If you’re curious, UC Riverside comes out as #1. California public universities are featured quite well on this list.).
How the heck could this be? This survey used new variables that the current US federal government is using to classify universities on how well they serve their students. It takes into account cost, graduation rate, and rates of student aid. If you remove graduation rate from the equation, we come in at #4. Here’s the take on it from the CSUDH campus.
What does this mean, and what does this change?
I think the only thing it means is something we’ve already known: College rankings reflect the values that you put into the equations. Colleges with massive endowments and extraordinarily high rates of alumni giving have done well in the rankings that have been the common currency, used by the US News and World Report. If you measure affordability and accessibility, then you get entirely different results, reflecting entirely different values.
If you look at the differences that we make in the lives of our students, we deliver. Moreover in many cases, the differences that we make would not have been made unless we made them. As we prepare for graduation this upcoming weekend, this is something that’ll be on the forefront of my mind.
What does this change? As far as I know (and this is not too extensive in this regard) this could be one of the first national quantitative rankings that doesn’t place our campus in the bottom quarter. Some — though not that many — of my colleagues on campus have a severe inferiority complex about our place of work. It is true that we are under-resourced, which manifests in many limitations. We have always said, “We serve our students well!” and now it’s nice to have this form of external validation.
This also is more than just window dressing, because to some extent these rankings can drive federal policies. I think they were just invented so that the predatory for-profit “universities” can’t use public money for private profit. But at least on our campus, this is a win, and we’ll take it.
Did you hear about this ranking? How did your campus fare? What do you think these Time rankings mean and don’t mean?
I only heard about it because of this post.
My current university does rather poorly (in the 600s), which I suspect is mostly because of the high average cost. Our financial aid is not the best. We have a higher percentage of Pell Grant recipients than I realized, which is pleasing – I guess the different programs that we have to bring in more underrepresented and disadvantaged students are working!
My MS university sucks (it’s in the four-digit section of the rankings). Average cost is really high, which I think is a shame for a university that carved out its identity as a commuter school for working-class people and only recently started jumping in prestige. This concern about identity was a big deal to many students when I was there. Its graduation rate is rather low for what I’d expect, and I am curious whether that is a four-year or six-year graduation rate, because this university makes heavy use of co-ops and it is normal for students to graduate in five years rather than four.
My bachelor’s university is in the 50s. This is pretty decent, and reflects positive changes made in the last decade or so, but we could and should improve. I am sad that we didn’t beat Harvard (when did Harvard get 18% Pell Grant students?). Average cost isn’t too bad but we could do better. Pell Grants are a percentage point lower than the 18% figure that is on the university’s website – perhaps the data at TIME is from a past year?
My school, University of Georgia, came in at #102.