PRINTThe Seven-Year Slide
Since 2003, the Tigers have tumbled down U.S. News & World Report's college rankings. But that didn't stop 5,620 freshmen from enrolling in 2009.
Elise Catchings
September 17, 2009 | 12:00 a.m. CST
Like a freshman who celebrated too many Thirsty Thursdays and hit the snooze too many times the next morning, MU’s grades are slipping. The dip has nothing to do with student binging, though. In fact, on first glance, MU’s scores look like a healthy B average. In reality, 73, 86, 85, 88, 91, 96 and 102 are more than MU’s collegiate rankings from the past seven years, they’re markers of MU’s descent into the middle-ranks of the U.S. News & World Report’s America’s Best Colleges list.
Each year, U.S. News & World Report releases its list for prospective students who want to compare schools. For the past seven years, MU has fallen a little further in the undergraduate rankings. This year, the school dropped to No. 102 in spite of its $1 billion-plus For All We Call Mizzou campaign drive. U.S. News started the list in 1983, but MU has only been ranked since 2003.
MU is classified with the 262 schools in the national universities category, including Ivy League schools such as Harvard and Princeton. Check out how MU compares to other Big 12 schools. Kansas State, Oklahoma State University and Texas Tech, all Tier III schools, are not ranked.
Baylor 80
University of Colorado 77
University of Kansas 96
University of Nebraska-Lincoln 96
University of Oklahoma 102
Iowa State 88
Texas A&M 61
Texas 47
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A study of US News’ methodology and reasons for MU’s drop this year points to financial and faculty resources as prime culprits, followed by lackluster scores in graduation rate performance and student selectivity, four of the seven broad criteria the magazine studies.
In the 2010 edition of the list, the 102 ranking put MU tied for eighth among Big 12 schools. (For a full breakdown, see chart). And whether it’s right to compare schools, these scores matter. The college rankings bring about 500,000 visitors to the U.S. News Web site per month. The newsweekly’s America’s Best Colleges edition also sells 50 percent more copies on the newsstand than any of its other issues. Studies from the National Bureau of Economic Research show that moving up a ranking on the U.S. News list gives a school a better yield — the percentage of admitted students who actually enroll — and better standardized test scores of new students.
Like anything else, when it’s good, the U.S. News ranking is a bragging right. In fact, it’s the first publication mentioned on the MU Pride Points Web site: “MU is highly ranked in quality and value by U.S. News & World Report, The Fiske Guide to Colleges, Barron’s Best Buys in College Education and numerous other college guides.” MU competes in the national universities list, which includes Harvard and Princeton, this year’s top schools. It’s the largest category with 262 listed schools. But, despite MU’s touting, U.S. News only gives numbered rankings to 138 universities — the rest are listed alphabetically as tier III and IV schools — which means MU hasn’t cracked the top half of those ranked schools.
“The university’s main goal for prospective students is that they have the information that truly reflects what is available to them at MU,” says Christian Basi, associate director of the MU News Bureau. Basi declined Vox’s request to speak with MU Chancellor Brady Deaton.
U.S. News won’t claim to be the end-all of college searching. “Rankings are not meant to provide the level of information to choose one school or another,” says Robert Morse, editor of America’s Best Colleges 2010. “It puts schools into a quantitative system, but it doesn’t measure everything.” Still, the issue’s popularity speaks for itself.
But high school students in Columbia don’t typically consider the publication a collegiate bible, says Pam Massey, a guidance counselor at Hickman High School and a college parent. “Our students look more at the campus and how it works for them than what a book says.”
Sarah Smith, a sophomore at MU, said she used rankings when choosing. Smith initially wanted to attend Purdue because its engineering program was ranked, while MU’s was not. Ultimately, she changed her mind. “I visited and that influenced my decision more than any kind of list,” Smith says. “(Purdue) was a lot of money, and I didn’t really see anything there that (MU) didn’t have.”
Colin Gardner, a senior at Columbia Independent School, says ranking isn’t really a issue. “I think (my parents) would prefer that I go to a school with a rigorous curriculum where I can challenge myself.” His mother agrees. The right program is more important than the rankings, she says.
In part, Basi and Morse have a point: MU certainly doesn’t need the help of a list to attract students. After all, at eight slots higher in the ranking last year, MU attracted the largest freshmen class in its history — 5,812.
Controversy usually surrounds ranking systems, particularly among schools that don’t fare as well on the list. Outspoken critics of the system such as Yale Dean of Admissions Jeffrey Brenzel claim that U.S. News & World Report’s process oversimplifies a college’s services. But the statistics U.S. News uses say more about a school than whether it beats Harvard on the list (Yale, at third, did not). Breaking down the U.S. News score, readers can compare universities in the same category. For MU, the sub-scores reflect the school’s weaknesses in a national light.
Measuring Up
Before the schools for America’s Best Colleges are evaluated, they are divided into four categories based on an institution’s mission statement: national universities, liberal arts colleges, universities-master’s and baccalaureate colleges. The qualifications for each category are straight forward: in a baccalaureate college, fewer than half of the awarded degrees are in a liberal arts field; liberal arts colleges must have at least half of the awarded degrees in a liberal arts area; universities-master’s have master’s programs but few, if any, doctoral programs; and national universities offer a full range of graduate and doctoral options.
Once a school is on the list, U.S. News analysts look at 16 qualifications based on its Common Data Set from the prior year. Those qualifications are then grouped into seven categories (See chart). The information for the categories is taken as a weight percentage so that the final score, like the ACT standardized test, is a composite score.
Lost Profit
The first section, financial resources, is a measure of a school’s financial status per student. It makes up 10 percent of the total score. This category doesn’t lend much weight in the rankings, which should be good news for MU, because it scored 142 of 262 in that sub-score. But the category points to a bigger issue — the budget.
Financial resources were a problem for MU long before 102 ever meant more than a Disney sequel. The 2001 recession hit Missouri’s economy hard with Rawling Sports Co., Sunbeam, Farmland Industries Inc. and General Mills closing plants in Licking, Neosho, Kansas City and Hazelwood, respectively. In 2002, Missouri lost more jobs than California, a state that has notoriously struggled with its budget.
This was bad news for higher education funding, which receives about 11 percent of Missouri’s total revenue. Missouri’s state appropriations, which have never been strong according to Frank Schmidt, a biochemistry professor and former chair of the MU Faculty Council, started to fall. As a member of the Faculty Council, Schmidt met with Chancellor Brady Deaton to discuss faculty concerns and plan policy for the university and witnessed the change in state money. He sees the evidence of it in MU’s current ranking.
“I think that the major issue in the U.S. News & World Report is the financial issue,” Schmidt says. “We haven’t suffered as badly in all rankings because not all rankings put that much emphasis on financial resources.” Schmidt believes the U.S. News ranking points to a serious problem. “The university’s going to have to come up with a different relationship to the state. Otherwise, we’ll end up a backwater state.”
MU’s state appropriations dropped by 12.2 percent in the 2002 fiscal year as a result of the recession. The next year, state funding increased slightly by 2.6 percent, but the trend didn’t last. In the 2004 fiscal year, it fell again — by 3.2 percent.
Although state appropriations started to go up during the 2004-2005 academic year, they still haven’t reached the 2001 fiscal year level when adjusting for inflation. According to MU’s 2009 budget report, MU has lost $337 million in state appropriations over the eight-year period.
“The state has not lived up to its responsibilities,” Schmidt says. Improvement has been too gradual to keep up with the demands of the campus. Without a more drastic turn around, Schmidt says, “I think there’s a real danger that we’ll have a university that doesn’t meet the needs of its students.”
For now, the university’s budget is buoyed by outside support. Even in the midst of a recession, MU not only reached its $1-billion goal for For All We Call Mizzou, but surpassed it by $300,000. MU’s alumni donations sub-score, boosted by the campaign’s success, was 66th in the U.S. News rankings this year compared to a low of 176 in 2006. Alumni donations make up 5 percent of the score. The campaign money helped where state appropriations and tuition fees ran out: $79 million of the fund went to 86 new faculty positions, $210 million to scholarships and $233 million to research grants.
Of course, MU is not unique in budget troubles. Private universities aren’t faring well in the future either because a good portion of funds are tied into the stock market. The recession has hurt endowment revenues, Morse says.
Missouri’s budget still looks better than some other states, such as California and Washington, whose budgets are running up billion-dollar deficits. The impact on higher education on the West Coast has made MU’s hiring and wage freeze look like chump change. The University of California system cut freshmen enrollment this year by 2,300 students. The Washington state legislature trimmed its higher-education funding by 10.6 percent and bumped tuition up 14 percent to make up the loss. Even with the extra tuition money, however, Washington State University had to shut down its entire theater department.
MU has tried the tuition-raising approach. Tuition rates shot up 14.8 percent for residents in the 2003 fiscal year. The next year, rates went up 19.8 percent, going from $194.60 to $209.20 per credit hour. Since then, student fees and tuition replaced state funds as the largest contributors to MU’s operating revenue. The rate for 2009 was $245.60 for residents and $615.30 for nonresidents.
The gap between nonresident and resident fees has remained at roughly the same proportion, with nonresidents paying about two-and-a-half times more per credit hour than residents. The tuition spike for both groups ended in 2007, when the state legislature passed a law that tied tuition increases to the Consumer Price Index. This left one easy option to get more money: tax a bigger student body for student fees.
The More the Merrier
More tuition and fees mean more revenue for the operating budget. Jim Spain, vice provost for undergraduate studies, says that during the past few years MU has been able to cover the gap in state appropriations and meet university needs through enrollment.
Student selectivity rate — a sub-category of the U.S. News report that includes acceptance rate, percent of students who were in the top 10 percent of their high school class, percentage of students who were in the top 25 percent of their high school class, critical reading and math portions of the SAT and composite ACT scores — makes up 15 percent of the overall U.S. News score. In the 2007 edition, when MU was 88, MU’s student selectivity rate was 101 out of the 262 schools. This year it was 135, even though the average ACT score of the incoming class has been increasing from 2006 to 2008. While the selectivity rate keeps the university from slashing programs, it’s hurting the school’s standing.
With 23,659 undergraduates, campus enrollment for the 2009-2010 school year is at an all-time high. Freshmen retention rates are also increasing. The 2006 freshmen retention rate was 84.6 percent, 0.1 percent higher than the previous class’ retention rate. So far, retention rates are not on the rise nationally. MU’s 2007 freshmen class’ retention rate was 85.4 percent. The national average was 76.5 percent.
Total graduation and retention rates make up 20 percent of the U.S. News score. This year MU scored a 99 out of 262. The students are not only coming in droves, they’re staying. For all of MU’s struggles, it’s still more affordable than a private school, especially for residents.
The number of MU students who graduate, compared to how many were predicted to graduate within six years, is still low in the U.S. News rankings (a score of 129), but if freshmen retention rates are at all a preview of the 2006 and 2007 classes’ graduation rates, that number could be trending up.
Then there’s the hiring freeze UM System President Gary Forsee implemented last November. And the wage freeze. Record enrollment means the need for more faculty, but with salaries low even before the recession, complications come into play.
In January, there were 117 open faculty positions. Exceptions were made for endowment or grant positions, and department heads could also file a petition to get around the freeze, which made new hires difficult, but it didn’t stop MU from bringing on more staff to help with class sizes and enrollment. For the 2009-2010 school year, MU was able to hire 29 new tenure or tenure-track faculty, 29 nontenure faculty and 10 instructors.
Most of the new faculty and part-time help this year went to general education courses, Spain says. In some instances, high-demand courses that were typically offered only in the fall semester were added to the spring schedule. But, this year’s solution to balancing class size and staff doesn’t get at the bigger issue — faculty pay.
U.S. News takes class size, student-to-faculty ratio and faculty compensation into consideration with its faculty resources category. Also included in the category, which has 20 percent weight in the composite score, are the percent of faculty that is full-time and the percent that has terminal degrees. MU’s sub-score was 119. Considering MU’s faculty is relatively low-paid compared to other universities, 119 out of 262 isn’t too shabby.
Faculty saw a 7.1 percent increase in pay from the 2007 to 2008 fiscal years, but the increase didn’t help MU’s standing in faculty pay among other public universities. In a study conducted by the American Association of University Professors this spring, MU was ranked 33 out of 34. KU is more than just a smidge ahead in that poll — they’re in the top 10 for best-paid faculty.
Due to the economy, faculty members have to take extra precautions to secure their futures. Now, faculty have to contribute one percent of their salaries to their retirement and pension funds if they make less than $50,000. If they make more than $50,000, faculty have to pay one percent of the initial $50,000, plus two percent on any wages on top of that. The faculty council tried to spare the first group because it thought the contribution would put a strain on those faculty. In an e-mail, current chair and biochemistry associate professor Leona Rubin said: “Decision makers need to be reminded what it feels like to live on $50,000 minus taxes, SS (Social Security) and health insurance before they consider tapping into this group again.”
Although faculty resources were hurt this year, the current problem is nothing like what it will be in the future if things continue this way. Roughly a third of MU’s current faculty is older than 55.
“If our salaries are not competitive, we will not be able to attract new, young faculty that are needed to teach the next generation and bring the research component of the university to the next higher level,” Rubin says.
Flash Forward
The only subjective part of the U.S. News evaluation is the peer assessment, a system of surveys sent out to the provost and admissions office from each of the universities that asks them to rate their schools on a scale from one to five. For a national university, the peer assessment gives the most weight (25 percent of the overall score), a fact that should have helped MU’s standing this year because MU’s peer assessment score is, at 68, the second-highest U.S. News sub-score.
“It’s ironic that the peer assessment has held strong while other parts have gotten weaker,” Morse says.
Other universities aren’t the only ones who continue to hold MU in high esteem. Despite the financial difficulties straining the staff, the university continues to draw a more high-achieving class than the year before. Last year, the average ACT for first-time college students was 25.5. This year, it was 25.6, the highest in eight years. The state’s average is 21.6, and the national average is 21.1.
College rankings do matter to some high school students, says Paige Reed, another guidance counselor at Hickman. “The kids who look at the lists are the ones who want to put the very best school on their graduate school applications, the same kids who are looking at Ivy Leagues,” she says.
According to Reed, students who look to public universities and state schools such as MU tend to go where the scholarship money is. But Reed stresses that tuition rates aren’t everything. Even if MU maintains a flat tuition rate, many students will still go out of state.
“Some schools have better funding.” Reed says. “Scholarships will make it better to go to an out-of-state school.”
Whether MU can continue to draw students to its campus comes down to funding. So far, it has avoided the pitfalls of other budget-strapped universities. Enrollment numbers are still up, and students are enrolling with higher test scores than ever.
But the budget situation is like the story of the farmer and his mule, Schmidt says. The farmer cuts back 10 percent of the mule’s food, but the mule performs just as well. So, the farmer cuts 10 percent more. The mule keeps working hard. The farmer keeps cutting back, until all of a sudden, he’s left with a dead mule.
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Editor’s note: the following is a letter Vox received by e-mail about the “The Seven-Year Slide.”
I enjoyed the article on Mizzou's college ranking. Thank you for opening us to a needed discussion.
You might want to do a follow-up article as Washington Monthly (Sept/Oct. 2009) had an entire issue on colleges and in particular the editors' "Introduction: A Different Kind of College Ranking," They gave Missouri a higher ranking of 68. See
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/college...
They used three criteria for checking on what colleges are doing for the country: social mobility, research and service.
In other words, they sought what colleges are doing to help economically disadvantaged student earn the market demand in credentials, contribute to new scientific discoveries and highly-trained Ph.D.'s, and emphasize the obligations that students have to serve their communities and the nation at large.
The editors point out the U.S. News & World Report has in their top 20 all private universities. They argue that public universities should receive more credit than they are given because they enroll an unusually large number of low-income students while maintaining a high graduate rate and send a large number of students into service programs such as the Peace Corps or Teach for America.
Only one of the U.S. News & World Report's top 10 made the Washington Monthly top ten: Stanford. Among our Big 12 competitors, Texas A&M, and UT-Austin were in the top 30.
Maybe Washington Monthly has a better measure of excellence as they have ratios which account other aspects, such Pell Grants, predicted/actual graduation rates, research spending, etc.
Betty Winfield
Professor Journalism Studies
University of Missouri Curators' Professor
Posted by Vox Administrator on Sep 18, 2009 at 12:30 p.m. (Report Comment)