Ranking It
Rice University shines in new U.S. News college rankings, but Texas takes a big fall
It's a good day for Houston's version of an Ivy League level school.
U.S. News & World Report place Rice University 18th among national universities in its new rankings. Published today, the highly-anticipated annual update that sends parents scurrying to their computers to decide where to send their high school seniors touts Princeton University No. 1 overall, ahead of fellow real Ivies Harvard and Yale.
Rice does a little a better in the Best Value category, where a $20, 672 "average cost after receiving grants based on need" earns it a 14th overall standing. Rice is the top Texas representative in both categories, but comes in behind Duke University and Vanderbilt University in the South.
There's more to college life than coursework. Just ask anyone who's stumbled out of Valhalla at 2 a.m.
Other Texas schools in the Top 100 are the University of Texas (52), Southern Methodist University (60), Texas A&M (69), Baylor (75) and TCU (82). The University of Houston came in at 190th.
Critics point out that parents shouldn't take the rankings too seriously for any number of reasons. Universities engage in a variety of tricks to game the system, such as soliciting applications from unqualified students to lower their acceptance rate, much of it is based on a squishy "prestige" factor, and the system encourages schools to spend money, which adds to the rising costs of college.
In a speech at the State University of New York at Buffalo this summer, President Barack Obama recently said that he would prefer to see rankings on a different model. "I think we should rate colleges based on opportunity," the president stated. "Are they helping students from all kinds of backgrounds succeed, and on outcomes, on their value to students and parents."
U.S. News raised the importance of graduation rates and other outcome metrics to 30 percent of the ranking. That didn't affect the schools at the very top, but it did drop the University of Texas at Austin outside the top 50 to 52nd overall.
Regardless, picking a college based on graduation rates and median SAT scores is needlessly reductive. It doesn't take into account whether professors will meet with students outside of office hours to help them succeed, or whether there are organizations that help each student learn leadership skills and discipline.
There's more to college life than coursework. Just ask anyone who's stumbled out of Valhalla at 2 a.m.
