How to Improve USNWR Rankings? What to Drop/Add? What Criteria/Weightings to Change?

[UCBChemEGrad]

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@dconcerned

Financial Resources (10%) Measures average spending per student on instruction, research, student services, and related educational expenditures. Spending on sports, dorms, and hospitals doesn’t count, only the part of a school’s budget that goes towards educating students.

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<p>This is incorrect. Financial resources rating includes “expenditures per student category”.</p>

<p>Description from USNWR:

Expenditures per student. Financial resources are measured by the average spending per full-time-equivalent student on instruction, research, public service, academic support, student services, institutional support, and operations and maintenance (for public institutions only) during the 2005 and 2006 fiscal years. The number of full-time-equivalent students is equal to the number of full-time students plus one third of the number of part-time students. (Note: This includes both undergraduate and graduate students.) We first scaled the public service and research values by the percentage of full-time-equivalent undergraduate students attending the school. Next, we added in total instruction, academic support, student services, institutional support, and operations and maintenance (for public institutions only) and then divided by the number of full-time-equivalent students. After calculating this value, we applied a logarithmic transformation to the spending per full-time-equivalent student, prior to standardizing the value. This calculation process was done for all schools.

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<p>This category makes no claim for separating undergraduate from graduate expenditures. It also favors schools with medical schools. Compare Berkeley’s and UCLA’s financial resources rank…Both are comparable UC universities in size and cost…UCLA has a medical school, Cal doesn’t…UCLA has higher financial resources rank than Cal (UCLA=26, Cal=40).</p>

<p>If USNWR rankings are for undergraduate, why are they including medical school costs for financial resources?</p>

<p>Also this category rewards spending inefficiencies.</p>