College Rankings

By: Alyse Speyer

Over the last ten years college rankings have become increasingly important to prospective students. These Ratings allow students and parents to see which college best fits their needs. In the last year the U.S. News and World Report ranked the

University of California, Santa Barbara as 12^th public school in the nation and 45^th in the U.S., Newsweek Magazine voted UCSB as one of America’s 25 Hot Schools in 2005, and The Princeton Review has UCSB as one of the best western colleges. As for how UCSB does in comparison to other colleges around the world, UCSB ranks as 34^th in the world and 26^th in the U.S. in 2005 by Shanghai Jiaotong University’s Academic Ranking of World Universities. But what exactly are these institutions rating here? Are these rankings solely based on academics or are there other factors evaluated?

Shanghai Jiaotong’s rankings are based on four elements. The quality of education denotes 10 percent of the overall evaluation and is indicated by how many alumni win Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals. The number of faculty members with such awards and highly cited researchers in 21 areas makes up 40 percent. The amount of research output found in several noted publications is another 40 percent and the final ten is found on the academic performance of students based on the size of the institution. UCSB’s current faculty has had five Nobel Prize winners since 1998 including two in chemistry, two in physics, and the most recent in economics. Most of the prizewinners were veteran professors at UCSB with the exception of Finn Kydland who joined the faculty in July of 2004, a few months before he was awarded the Nobel Prize for economics in October. The top two public universities, according to the U.S. News are the University of California, Berkeley, which has six current and thirteen deceased faculty Nobel Laureates and the University of Virginia, which has William Faulkner as the only Nobel Laureate. However, UCSB is the only university to have two Noble Prize winners in separate fields during the same year (Herbert Kromer in physics and Alan J. Heeger in chemistry).

According to the U.S. News and World Report, college rankings are based on several detailed categories including “peer assessment [25%]; graduation and retention rate [20%]; faculty resources [20%] (for example, class size); student selectivity [15%] (for example, average admission test scores of incoming students); financial resources [10%]; alumni giving [5%]; and, only for national universities and liberal arts colleges, graduation rate performance [5%].” These criteria rate the campus as a whole including other schools that are linked to the university.

The peer assessment survey is centered on how the heads of other colleges (i.e. deans, presidents, provosts, etc.) view UCSB’s undergraduate program. The last survey was in spring of 2005 and had a 57 percent overall return rate. This survey accounts for 25 percent of the evaluation process, a large amount considering that it’s based on the opinions of other school administrators.

The second factor consists of two subfactors: the average graduation rate of freshman and the average freshman retention rate, or how many freshman return the following fall. The former makes up 80 percent of the overall 20 for the category, while the latter takes the remaining 20 percent. The graduation rate is determined by the number of freshman graduating over a six-year period divided by the classes entering between 1995 and 1998. Therefore returning freshman and all those who graduate within a six-year period are essentially helping the institution gain a better position within the college ranking system.

The Faculty Resources category is comprised of several variables. Class sizes are a vital element to this category making up 40 percent of the total: undergraduate class size with 1-19 students (30%) and with 50 or more students (10%). Another main factor is faculty compensation (35%), or salary and benefits in accordance with regional cost of living (taken from Runzheimer International). The number of faculty members with doctorates or top degrees in their field denotes 15 percent and the remaining ten percent includes the amount of full-time faculty and, respectively, the student/faculty ratio, which is the full-time-equivalent students over the full-time-equivalent faculty excluding professional programs and teaching assistants. UCSB’s current student/faculty ratio is 17 to 1. 

Student selectivity includes acceptance rates (20%), high school class standing in the top ten percentile (40%), SAT and ACT scores (50%). The average GPA for UCSB’s incoming freshman is 3.76 with average SAT and ACT scores of 1182 and 25.  The U.S. News uses the amount of alumni donations as a way of measuring how satisfied the alumni are with their alma mater. So far this year, parents and alumni have donated 1.8 million dollars (approximately $100 per student) to the UCSB Annual Fund, which hopes to reach 2 million by the end of UCSB’s fiscal in June.

Another ten percent is given to the average expenditures of full-time students on student and public services, academic and institutional support, instruction, research, and operations and maintenance. The last five percent is for the graduation rate performance, meaning how many students graduate within the predicted rate for the school, which for UCSB is five years.