<p>“USNWR’s Financial Resources rating is flawed. They do not separate graduate research from the expenditures. This gives preference to universities with medical schools. Take UCLA and Cal…Cal has a bigger endowment and fewer students. The only difference is UCLA’s medical school expenditures are included.”</p>
<p>Excellent point UCB. UCSD and UCLA both include medical school spending in their calculation, as do most universities ranked in the top 20 for Financial Resources. Schools like Brown, Cornell, Michigan etc… do not include medical school spending in their figures, which explains why they perform relatively poorly. Schools with no medical schools, such as Cal, Rice and UT-Austin also suffer as a result. Yet another way in which universities use the very flawed USNWR formula to their advantage.</p>
<p>“The metric also rewards wasteful spending.”</p>
<p>Again an excellent point. Public universities have been very responsible with their fiscal policies while private universities have been spending unwisely. This explains why many private universities have been forced to borrow lately, causing them to be downgraded by S&P and Moodey’s.</p>