<p>“Alexandre, can you prove that USNWR doesn’t take into account Endowment Per Capita when calculating the Financial Resources category or is this just a mere conjecture on your part? No one seems to know how the Financial Resources section is calculated since USNWR doesn’t reveal that.”</p>
<p>It is not whether or not the USNWR takes endowment and endowment per capita into account when calculating the Financial Resurces category, it is whether or not it uses other criteria too heavily, and if so, why? The main inputs that should go into the Financial Resources ranking are endowment (accounting somehow for state appropriations in the case of public universities), endowment per capital and perhaps operating costs. If that’s that case, Michigan would be ranked among the top 15, not #40. </p>
<p>“At any rate, all the Ivies, Chicago, Caltech, Duke, Hopkins, Stanford, MIT, UCLA, and Berkeley are all more internationally renowned than UMich. There is simply no denying this.”</p>
<p>That is grossly inaccurate. I am not going to bash other universities, but Michigan is widely regarded as one of the top 15 US universities in international circles. Internationally, in Europe, only HYPSM, Cal and Columbia have stronger reputations. In Asia, I would add Cornell and UCLA to that short list. Other Ivies, Chicago, Duke, Hopkins etc…have equally good, but not stronger, reputations among the educated classes. That is why the corporate ranking you seem to regard so highly is clearly confusing MSU for Michigan. No offense against MSU, it is a good university, but it would not be ranked nearly as high if it were not for it being confused for Michigan. Your assumption that the confusion would not life Michigan from whatever ranking it had among US universities to the top 15 US universities assumes that there is a significant difference between Michigan’s ranking (say it was #50 among US universities) and #15. There probably isn’t. Beyond Harvard, Stanford and a couple other US universities, the difference between the remaining top universities would be present, but not significant. Like I said, without the confusion, any accurate rating of Michigan by corporate entities, either US or international, would most likely have it among the top 15.</p>