It seems the Forbes list addresses the age old question, if US News combined the National University and National Liberal Arts College lists, where would the NESCACs fall? I think Williams, Amherst, Pomona and Swarthmore would be considered T20 if US News combined the lists, not sure why Pomona is #36 and Claremont McKenna is #26?
Where should they be?
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Is it an age old question? My sense, at least from this crowd - those who routinely participate in this thread - is that measuring LACs against R1s is a foolâs errand and represents a spurious comparison. At least thatâs the way I feel.
These rankings are fun for purposes of generating a little banter but shouldnât be taken that seriously. As long as weâre on it, Iâll note that Forbes has historically been good to several liberal arts colleges, my favorite one being among them, and tougher on others that are ostensibly great schools. Look at where they have Vassar and Carleton. Pretty puzzling.
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Agreed, LACs are unique, but they could be compared with the larger schools in terms of the academic reputation measure, it would be interesting to see how they are rated vs the Ivies for example in academic reputation.
Hard to get an honest comparison between the two models since academic strength in higher education circles is almost universally identified with producing research. In the German model which gained a foothold in America after the Civil War, the paid staff had one duty: to conduct research and publish their results and students paid for the privilege of sitting in the same room with them.
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Eh, I think @circuitrider has it right. If not THE driver, then a significant driver, of academic reputation generally in that crowd is research output and the publishing resumes of the faculty. By that measure, or even just giving significant weight to the measure as I think you have to do, the University of Washington, ranked #50, gets more research and publishing done in a week than Swarthmore does in a year ⊠or more. Like Nick Saban said, thereâs a reason they have weight divisions in boxing.
So, letâs stay in our division. Back to Forbes, here is the top 50 small college ranking refenced above (NESCACs in bold):
- Williams
- Cal Tech (we could have a whole other conversation about these guys)
- Amherst
- Swarthmore
- Claremont McKenna
- Wellesley
- Pomona
- Washington & Lee (@cinnamon1212)
- Bowdoin
- Colgate
- Wesleyan
- Haverford (@gotham_mom)
- Harvey Mudd
- Davidson
- Babson
- Holy Cross
- Lafayette
- Franklyn Wolin College of Engineering
- Bucknell
- Colby
- Hamilton
- Trinity University (Tx)
- Barnard
- Trinity College
- Carleton
- Richmond
- Smith
- Grinnell
- Bates
- Vassar
- Occidental
- Cooper Union
- Brandeis
- Dickinson
- Union
- Scripps
- Rose Hulman
- Franklyn & Marshall
- Pitzer
- Colorado College
- Illinois Institute of Technology
- Kenyon
- Gettysburg
- Bryn Mawr
- DePauw
- Kalamazoo
- St. Olaf
- Conn
- University of Portland (Iâm used to seeing this one with the regional college rankings)
- SUNY Maritime
Hereâs a snippet from the accompanying article about a NESCAC founding member school that @merc81 didnât include in his quote:
Little Ivy, Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn., offers a dual degree 3-2 program, in which engineering undergraduates spend three years at Wesleyan and two years at either the California Institute of Technology (also on this list), Columbia University or Dartmouth College and earn two bachelorâs degrees in five years.
Finally, some notable (IMO) exclusions from the T50:
- Middlebury (odd since it ranks #52 on the combined list and suggesting a mistake)
- Oberlin
- Skidmore
- Mount Holyoke
- Whitman
- Reed
- Macalester
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The Middlebury âomissionâ is due to an IPEDs reporting requirement for 12-month enrollment which makes it look like Middlebury has over 4000 students rather than the roughly 2600 that it actually has. This quirk is driven by the summer language programs.
If not for this they would slot in at 12 on this list based on their overall ranking.
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Last year when Middlebury dropped to 19 in USNews, the college said that this new 12-month headcount negatively impacted their financial resources score. It makes a big difference estimating spending per student and other financial measures when you use an undergrad enrollment figure of 4,137 vs 2,730.
The other interesting quirk in the Forbes rankingâBowdoin is ahead of W&L in the comprehensive ranking, but behind W&L in the small colleges ranking. A mistake?
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No it doesnât address anything, because ranking LACs along with research universities is like ranking SUVs along with sports cars, while treating the standards for SUVs as though they are objective criteria of excellence.
In a ranking of fruit, using the criteria by which orange breeds are ranked, Honeycrisp apples will rank pretty low, and coconuts wouldnât even be ranked. Does that mean that Navel Oranges are âbetter fruitâ than Honeycrisp apples?
What next? They rank Community Colleges based on the same criteria as they use for research universities?
âPasedena City Colleges was ranked #791 in our ranking system because they arenât investing money into research, are not selective, and Alumni donât make a lot of moneyâ
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Seems like such an easy variable to manage. If you want your ranking to have legitimacy you would think youâd want to avoid this kind of gaffe.
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Furthermore, a person who is setting out to create rankings should have at least a passing familiarity with the entities that the are ranking. If they are simply going through IPEDS to search for colleges by the total number of students, and ignore all other characteristics that make comparisons very difficult, it is difficult to take their rankings seriously.
I mean, Caltech has few undergraduates, but comparing it to LACs is ridiculous. In fact, Caltech is, in many ways, in its own category. However, it is far closer to research universities like MIT than it is to any small college. If they want to compare undergraduate âexperienceâ, it really doesnât fit with LACs, though it an be compared to other colleges with strong focusses on engineering and physical sciences.
But there is not a single serious high school senior who is trying to choose between Caltech and Amherst, or even has them both on their college list.
For a list to have even the smallest bit of value, they should help students select between colleges that will go on the list.
Of course, the only real value of these rankings, especially those from magazines like âForbesâ, is to help the wealthy readers of Forbes feel good about themselves. âLook, you attended a Top College, which shows that Youâre Smartâ.
Looking at Forbes rankings, they really are out of touch with reality. For example, no, Columbia University should NOT have a financial rating of A+. I know a large number of faculty there, and they say that the university is in some deep financial trouble. So if Forbes doesnât even know about the finances of the colleges that it is ranking, how can we trust anything else it claims?
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One of the few attributes shared by all T100 colleges and universities has been their ability to attract wealthy applicants the overwhelming majority of whom will meet their academic standards. Thatâs no mean feat considering how competitive the marketplace is, especially in regions of the U.S. where the gold standard is often represented by a state-supported public university. How do LACs do it? I think by offering a sense of community. Each one is slightly different from the other; we compare them endlessly, essentially turning each Fall term into an extended form of comparison shopping. I think as long as you have rich people, this will always be the case.
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I do have a feeling that kids who are looking at LACs (and their parents) tend to focus more on fit than on ranking. Not because they are less affected by things like âprestigeâ, but because in a small college which is primarily residential lack of fit has a much stronger negative impact than in a larger university. Fit is even more critical in rural or suburban LACs.
I will, as I tend to do, also like to point out, again, that the number of students who choose to attend LACs are really small. There are fewer than 200-250 colleges that are LACs. If each has 2,000 students (most have fewer, but for the sake of this argument), that is 400,000 to 500,000 students. There are around 10.5 million undergraduate students attending four year college, so fewer than 4%-5% of all undergraduates attend a LAC.
In many ways, LACs are niche colleges. The majors offered, the teaching methodologies, and the âcollege experienceâ are not the ones that interest the vast majority of college-bound students. So it is unsurprising that high school students who choose LACs are not looking for the same characteristics that other high school students look for in prospective colleges.
Interestingly, my kidâs high school is actually well known for the percent of students it sends to LACs, with application and acceptance rates to LACs is much higher than acceptance rates to other private colleges with similar acceptance rates. Nonetheless, the number of high achieving students who attend state flagships in the Midwest is much higher.
Well, I do think you have to solve for the number of people who can afford to send their kids away from home to a private residential college for four years. I think youâll arrive at a much smaller number.
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In addition to affordability, there are many large high schools in the US, often representing the combination of a few middle schools, which themselves are the result of combining several elementary schools. Students often say that going to a college that is smaller than their high school is a step backward. So yes, youâre right that the # of college students at LACs is a small percentage of all college students. But the appetite for them is smaller as well. I also think it can be hard to articulate the value of that experience to kids who have not necessarily enjoyed that in high school.
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Good point. around 3.9 million students attend private four year nonprofit colleges, and around 2 million students attend public universities as OOS students. So weâre still talking about some 6 million students, so still fewer than 10%.
Also, at least according to the NYT graphs from the 2017 article, Selective LACs have the same income distribution as other selective private colleges and similar to that of selective public universities.
The income distribution of the students of University of Alabama is the same as the distribution of income among the students attending Lawrence University of Wisconsin, not that different from Wheaton (Mass), and some other LACs with similar acceptance rates. If we look at LACs like Knox, Beloit, Gustavus Adolphus, or Agnes Scott, you see that the students there are not as wealthy as the students at Purdue, Indiana, U Washington, NCSU, etc.
The NESCAC are all in the âeliteâ category, and the income distribution of the students are similar to other âeliteâ private colleges, but only around 50 LACs have this income distribution, and public universities like U Virginia and UNC have students who are as wealthy as some of the âeliteâ LACs, or wealthier.
So even among students who have the means to attend a LAC, only a small percentage attend a LAC.
That is exactly why I wrote about LACs as being something a âNicheâ. The small number of students who attend LACs are a function of the small number who are interested in the sort of education provided by a LAC, not because LACs are somehow more competitive than other four year colleges.
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Ah, double the rate in less than two replies. As you say, once you solve for things like âeliteâ status - or my personal favorite - Schools That Donât Offer Engineering, Business, Nursing, or Communications majors, their share probably goes up as well.
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If you look at the professional schools, the top private schools are similarly small in comparison to the state or trade schools, even less than 5 percent. But this does not mean that they are not relevant.
I wrote that few students choose LACs, and it was implied that they donât choose LACs because of the basic characteristics of LACs.
The basic characteristics of LAcs are:
A. The majors that are offered
B. Size, and
C. The teaching philosophy.
That means that you cannot âsolveâ for any students who who want to attend a college which doesnât offer majors that LACs generally do not offer. That ls not how âsolvingâ or âcontrollingâ for a factor works.
So no, your âsolutionâ, based on âSchools That Donât Offer Engineering, Business, Nursing, or Communications majorsâ is meaningless. So is âsolvingâ for students who want to attend a college that is larger than their high school.
What you are essentially claiming is: âYou cannot say that few students choose LACs, because once you âsolveâ for all kids who donât want to attend a college the size of a LAC, students who donât want to attend a college that only has the majors that LACs have, and kids who donât like the teaching philosophy that LACs have, the majority end up at a LACâ.
Or, in short âonce you âsolveâ for students who donât actually want to attend a LAC, you find that the majority want to attend a LACâ
Furthermore, there are many LACs which are not âeliteâ - the majority of âcolleges which change livesâ are such LACs. These LACs are also affordable, so you cannot even control for financial issues. That means that LACs draw from the same pool as other colleges which have the same acceptance rates.
So I think that the â10%â is an overestimate, and I will withdraw that caveat. Most kids who can afford their state flagships can find an affordable LAC. I demonstrated above that the income distribution is many state flagships, including those with high acceptance rates, do not differ from those with many LACs.
On the other hand, looking at the trends in colleges closing, in 10 years it may be true that the LACs will not be affordable, since only the more expensive ones without merit aid will remain open.
In other words, you like to argue. I, for one, would be the first to admit I know nothing about 95% of the over 6,000 four-year colleges and universities you cite as your sample size. My universe is much smaller than that. Most of my friends live within a small sliver of the East Coast. In my experience, the people who had the greatest difficulty completing their studies were those who attended public colleges whether as commuter students or away from home; they felt theyâd had enough knowledge and experience to land an entry level job and that was all they really cared about. Of the people I know who went on to earn a bachelorâs (or beyond), all attended what I would call liberal arts colleges or universities with a college of arts and sciences embedded within it. About one third attended HYPM, another third attended a NESCAC while another third attended a state flagship.