<p>I know US News Rankings don’t really mean much, but unfortunately most students rate the quality of a school based on US News. The UVa Administration has been saying for the past 10 years, how they have a plan to get us into the top 10 or top 15. Instead we have actually dropped from 17 or 18 to 23 now. What’s keeping us back? US News tells us exactly how they rate us, why can’t the administration improve? </p>
<p>The arguement most people give is that state funding cuts prevent us from doing this and that. Well, not to be critical, but everyone is having budget cuts and private universities just raise tuition. The other arguement people give is that every university is trying to raise its rank and hence any improvement is not seen in the rankings. This may be true, but other universities have moved up (Penn, I think was like 16 or something and now is 4 - and it is much harder to go from 16 to 4 than it is from 23 to 15 or 10). I looked over the Virginia 2020 plan and it seems like it is just a lot of rhetoric. </p>
<p>Do you guys have any suggestions on how to improve our rank?</p>
<p>We’d have lots more qualified applicants who refuse to apply for state universities, tuitions WILL increase, our wealthy students will pay for them. and endowment will increase too, so our financial aid would be better, and we would make sure poor students can attend UVa as well</p>
<p>That’s the MOST effective way to do the job.</p>
<p>then, it’s money, raise more money, more money, and more monee. colleges are like corporations, whoever has the most money wins. We need more funds, give a better touch to our campus, hire even better professors…</p>
<p>be on the news, let everyone know about us.</p>
<p>decrease class size (accept less people), improve teacher to student ratio</p>
<p>if you look at the endowment rankings (not per student, but overall) they closely mirror the USNR rankings. No one goes to Emory if they get into UVa but they are ranked higher because they have $$$. UVa is in the midst of a 3 billion dollar capital campaign. If this succeeds like they hope (which they should–most alumni are loaded), UVa should catapult in the rankings. This is what people are looking at who say UVa will become top 10.</p>
<p>VA Alum-- penn went way up because they cleaned up the neighborhood around them so people are no longer scared to attend. This easy, obvious opportunity actually made it easier for them to jump to 4. THe rankings are also self perpetuating, as penn began to climb it became a “hot” school that increased its momentum, perception and is no longer the safety ivy (“there’s always cornell!” as they say)</p>
<p>I believe the Law School and the Business School are already pretty much private, with some state control. However, turning completely private, I read somewhere, requires us to buy all the buildings at UVa from the state. That would mean we would have to dip into our endowment - plus I don’t think the state would let us do it. </p>
<p>jacl11905, </p>
<p>Every major university is also trying to raise money. One thing about ranks though is that Emory has a larger endowment than Columbia (from National Association of College and University Business Officers) - clearly Columbia is ranked higher than Emory. One good thing to note is that our endowment went up 55.1% between 2003 and 2004. The next nearest University in the top 25 in terms of endowments was Notre Dame at 20.3%.</p>
<p>I think we should try to aim for 10 Billion by 2010 and a top 10 ranking in terms of endowment.</p>
<p>i dont understand how increasing the capital of UVa directly increases the rankings? How does that work?? Arent academic factors taken highly into account??</p>
<p>VAalum-- yeah everyone is raising money, but the scale, 3bill is huge (since we’re focusing on penn/columbia their entire endowments are only slightly over 4) and every indication is that this effort will be successful</p>
<p>thrills-- you’re right “academics” is a huge factor, columbia is still ahead of emory as VAalum points out. My point is only that money is something that feeds into the strengths of UVa. Endowment also enables attracting good students through merit aid, good teachers with incentives and improving faculty/student ratio etc. in addition to constructing new facilities. Also money is more disparate. While Harvard has double the financial resources of say Yale, the “academic reputation” category has differences of .1 The rankings were changed years ago when Cal Tech kept coming in as number 1. The easiest way for USNWR to put Harvard back on top (where they thought they belonged) was to create a formula where money was the greatest factor. Also, Penn accepted way more than half of its applicants even in the 80s thus “safety” and derision</p>
<p>bananainpyjamas-- UVa is essentially private already, only 8% of its funding comes from the state. Some people argue that private schools with high tuitions are actually more accessible to the middle class because there is more money available for financial aid from those paying the full 45 grand (yuck)</p>
<p>“no one goes to emory if they get into UVA”</p>
<p>You might be a bit biased. I think otherwise. Possibly people do choose emory over uva due to the greater financial resources, but no matter what the reason they do.</p>
<p>Casteen became President in August 1990. We were 15 at one point. I think the reason is, as many people have pointed out, lack of money - or rather not enough. We receive and pretty much have always received very little from the state of Virginia. I think the state should either:</p>
<p>Give us more money
or
Stop restricting us to the 2/3 In-State, 1/3 Out-Of-State study body.</p>
<p>50-50 would be much better as we would get more quality students and more money - which I hate to say as I was an out of state student when I attended.</p>
<p>Berkeley and UCLA are much more well-funded as the state of California is huge compared to Virginia. </p>
<p>UMich is the only top university in Michigan - hence why the state gives them so much more money (the situation may change in Michigan however, as the auto industry there is not doing that well).<br>
Virginia, smaller than both Michigan and California, supports 2 top schools (UVa and WM) plus a huge engineering school (VT). No wonder the state can’t fund us.</p>
<p>I think the 50-50 In state / Out of State student body is better for all people involved. Plus, Virginia needs to stop asking UVa to take more students. It lowers our selectivity rank and makes the experience worse for all students involved.</p>
<p>It’s nice to think that in theory, but I know way too many people who turned down elite (and at times super-elite) private schools in favor of UVA because of financial issues. Heck I almost did too - Duke gave me zip in financial aid. Doesn’t mean my family can actually afford $45k/yr.</p>
<p>You shouldn’t complain about the in-state out of state ratio. Remember that UNC is limited to 18% out of staters in their first year classes. Many in NoVA already believe that there are too many out of state students in Virginia’s colleges esp. UVA and CWM…</p>
<p>Where does this NoVA thing come from? I never heard the term used to describe anything besides the community college until I headed south to spend a summer at UVA.</p>
<p>tsdad, it really is a question of whether the state will fund UVa or not. UVa receives one of the lowest per student state support for each in-state student, if not the lowest. Michigan for example, gets alot of funding from their state as does UNC. Even Berkeley, with the deficits in California, still receives a substanial amount of state funding.</p>
<p>It is amazing that UVa is so highly ranked given how bad the state of Virginia is in supporting higher education. If we had the state support like Berkeley, UMich, or UNC, we would be top 10 - 15. </p>
<p>So the question is really about fairness. If you get lower tuition and an easier admissions policy, the state should “reimburse” the University. Since the state is not willing to do that, the University should be allowed to take in more out of state students so that the state funding per in state student comes to more respectable levels. </p>
<p>Now one may argue that the University’s purpose is to train Virginians who will help Virginia’s economy. I am fairly sure that if you were to look up any statistic on where UVa students end up (in state or out of state), it would be heavily in Virginia / D.C-Baltimore area.</p>
<p>If the state is willing to give more money per in-state student, then yeah we can go down all the way to 18% for out-of-state students. If not, then the University should be allowed to take in more out of state students.</p>
<p>I understand that many Virginians feel that they “own” the University. But remember, MD and NC are not different countries, and one can easily get in-state residency only after paying a few years of Virginia taxes.</p>
<p>I just want to point out that Michigan doesn’t get much of anything in terms of support either… in fact, only 28% of Michigan’s operating budget comes from the state… and its been going down significantly every year due to how horrible Michigan’s economy is. Tuition at Michigan went up over 12% this year alone.</p>
<p>So yea, Virginia isn’t the only top state school struggling financially right now. If it weren’t for Michigan’s large endowment, the school would be taking a nose dive.</p>
<p>I believe California has continued to support higher education fairly well. I could be wrong but I believe I remember hearing the UC’s received an increase in funding this year.</p>