The U didn’t make first cut in this year’s U.S. News & World Report list of top universities nationwide, dropping from its 120th ranking last year to become a “tier-3 school” in the third percentage quartile.
Of the 262 schools ranked, comprising 164 public and 98 private, the U dropped from the bottom of the second tier to the next 25th percentile of schools, which are not placed in any order.
“We could very well be near the top of the third tier,” said Paul Brinkman, associate vice president for budget and planning.
Although the report did not disclose why schools received-or did not receive-specific ratings, U.S. News & World Report Director of Data Research Robert Morse said universities are ranked based on financial resources and faculty resources, class size, student/faculty ratio, admission data and acceptance rates, alumni giving rates, graduation and retention rates, graduation rate performance and reputation among peers for undergraduate academic quality.
But Brinkman said these ratings should be taken with a grain of salt.
“Universities don’t change much overnight,” he said.
U spokeswoman Coralie Alder said the U may have dropped because of its low tuition rates and state funding, high number of working students and often-prolonged graduation rates. She said minor fluctuations in data can cause large changes in ratings, so it’s hard to know why the U went down.
“U.S. News favors schools that turn away large numbers of applicants and provide high salaries for faculty,” Alder said. “Their surveys are inherently structured to favor schools where students move away to small university towns to focus solely on their studies, graduate in four years and have their parents pay for their educations.”
Brinkman said the U probably doesn’t look good to publications like U.S. News because it accepts 91 percent of freshmen who apply. But he said this occurs because the U allows incoming students to calculate their admissions index from ACT scores and high school grade point average to see if they will be accepted.
“Other schools do the opposite — they get students to apply so that they can deny them, so that they can move up in the rankings,” Brinkman said. “We’ve chosen not to play that game.”
Brinkman called the rankings “meaningless,” saying that students will get out of their education what they put into it.
“If I go to Princeton, am I guaranteed to get an education? No, I’m not,” Brinkman said.
If the U were to go up in the rankings, Alder said they would have to receive a “significant increase” in state funding and cut the size of the entering class by at least one third.
Alder said recent increases in research and development funding, due to the U’s participation with the Utah Science Technology and Research, or USTAR program, could cause an increase in national recognition.
But the U was not completely off the map in the U.S. News rankings. The College of Engineering received recognition, although it dropped from last year’s 60 ranking to a 70 ranking.
Dean Richard Brown said the top ranking can be attributed to the state’s engineering initiative that has been in place for the past six years, providing resources to hire more faculty, improve facilities and labs and strengthen the college’s infrastructure. Brown said the new Warnock Engineering Building is evidence of this success.
Since the engineering initiative started in 1999, graduation in the College of Engineering has increased 66 percent.
“We’ve never seen a stronger demand for our graduates,” Brown said.
The graduate program in engineering received a higher ranking of 55, an average of all departmental rankings. Biomedical engineering received the best ranking of 19.
The U was also one of 23 schools mentioned for having top service learning programs.
Marshall Welch, director of the Lowell Bennion Community Service Center, said the U offers over 150 service learning courses.
The U was also recognized for having one of the lowest rates of undergraduate debt. Forty-six percent of students graduate with a debt averaging $13,714.