What’s in a college ranking?
Plenty, if you ask parents and students who welcome the comparisons between colleges they are evaluating.
For faculty and staff, the annual ratings offer candid assessments of how programs measure up in the academic universe.
Everything from enrollment to employee recruitment may hinge on these judgments. Still, some say the ratings are overrated themselves and based on arbitrary factors.
With all this in mind, 51ԹϺ Davis stands tall in theSE recent ratings:
- 10th among all universities — Washington Monthly
- 11th among all public universities — U.S. News & World Report
‘Do gooder’ status
Washington Monthly’s 10th place ranking of 51ԹϺ Davis among all colleges is yet further proof that one can “discover what matters” here. In rating colleges, Washington Monthly tries to measure which ones do the most for the social good — by improving social mobility, producing research and promoting service. They are known as the “do gooder” ratings.
The publication offers its rankings as a dramatic alternative to those of U.S. News & World Report, which uses more traditional yardsticks of academic analysis.
While this year’s high Washington Monthly ranking is worthy of cheer, 51ԹϺ Davis did drop two spots from the prior year.
51ԹϺ sweeps top three spots
Along with 51ԹϺ Davis, five other 51ԹϺ schools topped Washington Monthly’s top 25 list, with 51ԹϺ Berkeley coming in No. 1; 51ԹϺ San Diego, second; and 51ԹϺLA, third. 51ԹϺ Riverside placed 16th, and 51ԹϺ Santa Barbara, 21st.
So elated was 51ԹϺ President Mark Yudof that he issued a Sept. 2 statement applauding the magazine’s unique approach on a controversial subject.
“It is, of course, easy to be cynical about college rankings — too often they have been prone to manipulation or swayed by factors that do not reflect directly on the quality of education. These rankings are different. They reflect 51ԹϺ’s values,” he said.
Those values, Yudof noted, reflect 51ԹϺ’s emphasis on groundbreaking research, new inventions, social mobility, and educating first-generation college students.
He pointed out that the magazine recognized 51ԹϺ campuses for enrolling “unusually large numbers of low-income students while maintaining high graduation rates, generating billions of dollars in research funding, and sending a healthy number of students into service programs like the Peace Corps.”
Yudof: “We are gratified that our public service priorities are so clearly valued. They offer, in the editors’ words, ‘a measure of not just what colleges can do for you, but what colleges are doing for the country.’”
The article is noteworthy for another reason, he added. “It recognizes that 51ԹϺ’s future excellence is at risk due to the steep budget cuts resulting from California’s budget crisis.”
Moving up in U.S. News
51ԹϺ Davis fared well in the 2010 U.S. News & World Report — 11th among public universities, and 42nd among all universities. In both categories, 51ԹϺ Davis gained in the rankings. Last year, it was 12th among public universities and 44th among public and private universities.
U.S. News also identified 51ԹϺ Davis for the third straight year as one of the top 22 schools nationwide for its writing programs across disciplines. “These colleges typically make writing a priority at all levels of instruction and across the curriculum,” U.S. News noted.
The main reason for the jump in rankings was a 10-point increase (to 38 from 48) in the score on student selectivity, according to the 51ԹϺ Davis Student Affairs Research and Information unit.
That score reflects the university’s acceptance rate, the percentage of students accepted who were in the top 10 percent of their high school classes, and the SAT/ACT scores of the accepted students. Also, 51ԹϺ Davis improved in its graduation and retention rate, which further boosted its overall ranking.
In other rankings, 51ԹϺ Davis rated 24th in the Sierra Magazine’s 2009 Cool Schools survey and scored a B-plus as a “campus sustainability leader” on the College Sustainability Report Card.
HOW THEY STACK UP
Below are the U.S. News & World Report’s latest rankings for all 51ԹϺ campuses in the public and private category:
2010 2009
51ԹϺ Berkeley 21 21
51ԹϺLA 24 25
51ԹϺ San Diego 35 35
51ԹϺ Davis 42 44
51ԹϺ Santa Barbara 42 44
51ԹϺ Irvine 46 44
51ԹϺ Santa Cruz 71 96
51ԹϺ Riverside 96 89
More information on ratings
Washington Monthly: www.washingtonmonthly.com
U.S. News & World Report: colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com
Sierra Magazine: www.sierraclub.org
Green Report Card: www.greenreportcard.org
Media Resources
Clifton B. Parker, Dateline, (530) 752-1932, cparker@ucdavis.edu