University Times

Pitt jumped up six spots to tie for No. 58 among all the nation’s PhD-granting universities in the 2012 edition of U.S. News & World Report’s “America’s Best Colleges” rankings. Pitt tied with Connecticut, Florida and Texas A&M. Last year Pitt tied for 64th.

Among the 118 national public institutions ranked by U.S. News, Pitt tied for 19th, with the same three schools as on the overall list, up four slots from last year. Last year Pitt tied for 23rd among the publics.

Harvard and Princeton tied at the top of the overall list this year, followed by Yale and Columbia, with California Institute of Technology, Chicago, MIT, Penn and Stanford all tying for 5th, among all 280 American doctorate-granting schools listed (172 public institutions, 101 private institutions and seven for-profit institutions).

(The magazine ranks numerically about 75 percent of the total institutions in each category, with the balance listed as unranked.)

Last year, Harvard topped the list, followed by Princeton, Yale and Columbia, with Stanford and Penn tying for 5th.

The University of California-Berkeley, which was ranked No. 21 overall, again held the top spot among the publics, followed by UCLA and the University of Virginia (tied for 25th overall), Michigan-Ann Arbor (28th overall) and North Carolina-Chapel Hill (29th overall).

In addition to Penn, Pennsylvania institutions ranked by U.S. News among the overall top 50 national universities were Carnegie Mellon (tied for 23rd), Lehigh (tied for 38th) and Penn State (tied for 45th overall; tied for 13th among the publics).

The college ratings were published this week in an issue of the magazine in abridged form. More extensive ranking lists, which were the source for this story, are posted on the magazine’s web site: www.usnews.com.

Kinds of institutions

U.S. News has ranked undergraduate programs at colleges and universities annually since 1983.

This year, U.S. News updated its institutional categories based on the 2010 revisions made to the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching’s Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education, the first major revisions made by the Carnegie Foundation since 2006, the magazine stated.

U.S. News continues to use the same category names as last year: national universities (including Pitt); national liberal arts colleges; regional universities, and regional colleges. However, as a result of this latest Carnegie classification revision, more than 100 colleges have switched ranking categories (for example, from national liberal arts to regional colleges, or vice versa) and some schools have been added to the rankings for the first time. In most cases, these category changes were the main explanation for the biggest movements in this year’s Best Colleges rankings, according to the magazine.

For the first time, U.S. News has included in the rankings all for-profit colleges and universities that grant bachelor’s degrees, are regionally accredited and were eligible to be ranked based on whether they met the U.S. News criteria to be included in the rankings. The for-profits include many schools that have large online bachelor’s degree programs.

Overall, U.S. News breaks down approximately 1,400 of the nation’s four-year higher education institutions. Each grouping includes public and private institutions. Among national institutions, the magazine ranks the top 200, including ties.

National universities are defined by U.S. News as those institutions that “offer a wide range of undergraduate majors, master’s and doctoral degrees. These colleges also are committed to ground-breaking research.”

(The magazine also annually ranks graduate programs. See March 17 University Times. Note that following the publication of its grad school rankings, U.S. News retracted rankings on 11 of its 12 engineering specialty areas, reverting to rankings from the previous year.)

Methodology

U.S. News gathers data from the institutions each year. According to the magazine, 92 percent of the 1,378 schools returned surveys supplying data for this year’s rankings. Missing data were drawn from sources such as the American Association of University Professors, the National Collegiate Athletic Association, the Council for Aid to Education and the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES).

For the first time this year, in the case of colleges that have declined to fill out the U.S. News statistical survey for at least two years, and for schools new to the rankings that did not respond to the survey request, the magazine made extensive use of the statistical data those institutions were required to report to the NCES on such factors as SAT and ACT scores, acceptance rates, faculty resources and retention rates.

The rankings for national universities are derived from a comparison of seven weighted indicators: undergraduate academic reputation (22.5 percent of the total score); graduation and retention rates (20 percent); faculty resources (20 percent); student selectivity (15 percent); financial resources (10 percent); graduation rate performance (7.5 percent), and alumni giving (5 percent).

• At 22.5 percent of the overall score, undergraduate academic reputation remains the largest single weighted measure in the overall score.

According to the magazine, to measure academic reputation the ranking formula gives significant weight to the opinions of those in a position to judge a school’s undergraduate academic excellence by surveying presidents, provosts and deans of admissions. In addition, the magazine surveys high school guidance counselors for their views on national universities.

Of the 4,580 academicians surveyed, 43 percent responded. Of the 1,787 counselors at public high schools that appeared in the 2010 U.S. News Best High Schools rankings, as well as an additional 600 college counselors at the largest independent schools, surveyed this year, 21 percent responded, the magazine stated.

• Regarding the graduation and retention rates, according to U.S. News, “the higher the proportion of freshmen who return to campus for sophomore year and eventually graduate, the better a school is apt to be at offering the classes and services that students need to succeed. This measure has two components: Six-year graduation rate (80 percent of the retention score) and freshman retention rate (20 percent).”

The graduation rate indicates the average proportion of a graduating class who earned a degree in six years or less. Freshman retention indicates the average proportion of freshmen who entered the school in fall 2006 through fall 2009 and returned the following fall.

• To measure faculty resources, the magazine uses six factors from the 2010-11 academic year: class size (proportion of classes with fewer than 20 students and those with 50 or more students); faculty salary (average faculty pay plus benefits adjusted for regional differences); the proportion of professors with the highest degree in their fields; the student-faculty ratio, and the proportion of faculty who are full time.

• Fifty percent of the student selectivity score is derived from the test scores of all enrolled freshmen who took the critical reading and mathematics portions of the SAT or the composite ACT score. (Pitt requires applicants to take either the SAT or the ACT.)

Forty percent of the selectivity score is based on the percentage of enrolled freshmen who graduated in the top 10 percent of their high school class; 10 percent is based on an institution’s acceptance rate in fall 2010, that is, the ratio of admitted students to applicants.

• U.S. News measures financial resources by using the average spending per student on instruction, research, student services and related educational expenditures in the 2009 and 2010 fiscal years. Spending on sports, housing and hospitals is not counted.

• Graduation rate performance is defined as the difference between a school’s six-year graduation rate for the class that entered in 2005 and the predicted rate for that class; the predicted rate is calculated using a formula that accounts for the standardized test scores of students entering in 2005 and the school’s expenditures on the students.

If the actual graduation rate is higher than the predicted rate, the school is judged to have enhanced the students’ achievement. For example, this year Pitt’s predicted six-year graduation rate was 77 percent, while the actual rate was 78 percent.

• The alumni giving rate reflects the average percentage of living alumni with bachelor’s degrees who gave to their school during 2008-09 and 2009-10.

To arrive at a school’s overall rank, U.S. News first calculated the weighted sum of the scores. The final scores were rescaled so that the top school in each category received a value of 100, and the other schools’ weighted scores were calculated as a proportion of that top score.

Final scores for each ranked school were rounded to the nearest whole number and ranked in descending order. Schools that are tied are listed in alphabetical order.

According to the magazine, Pitt’s overall score was 58, with 100 being the highest score; its undergraduate academic reputation score was 71 (with 100 the maximum); its average freshman retention rate was 92 percent, which tied for 98th nationally; its faculty resources ranked 109th nationally; its student selectivity ranked 64th nationally; its financial resources ranked 36th nationally, and its 13 percent alumni giving rate ranked 104th nationally.

High school guidance counselors gave Pitt a composite score of 3.7 out of 5, tying the University for 80th with 19 other national institutions among the 280 national universities ranked by the magazine.

Other campus data

The magazine also reported other Pittsburgh campus data:

• Pitt’s four-year graduation rate for 2010 graduates was 61 percent.

• The six-year graduation rate was 78 percent, tying the University for 66th nationally.

• Pitt’s total undergraduate population in fall 2010 was 18,371, which included 17,083 full-time students and 1,288 part-time students.

• Women comprised 50.7 percent of the undergrad population.

• The percentage of classes in fall 2010 with fewer than 20 students was 41 percent, while the percentage of classes with 50 or more students was 18 percent.

• 51 percent of Pitt freshmen were in the top 10 percent of their 2010 high school class; 85 percent were in the top quarter, and 99 percent in the top half of their class.

• The 25th and 75th SAT percentile rates for fall 2010 freshmen were 1170 and 1370, respectively.

• 54.9 percent of full-time undergraduates receive financial aid, with the average need-based scholarship or grant being $8,281.

• The five most popular majors for 2010 graduates: 14 percent business, management, marketing and related support services; 14 percent social sciences; 11 percent English language and literature/letters; 9 percent health professions and related programs, and 9 percent psychology.

• The student-faculty ratio in fall 2010 was 14:1.

• 88.6 percent of Pitt’s 3,955 faculty in 2010 were full time.

• 45 percent of undergraduates lived in Pitt-affiliated housing.

• 9.6 percent of undergraduates belonged to a fraternity, 8.6 percent to a sorority.

Undergraduate business and engineering programs

Also ranked nationally by U.S. News and World Report were undergraduate business and engineering programs.

Among the 455 undergraduate business programs ranked by U.S. News, Pitt’s College of Business Administration tied for 41st overall (tied for 42nd overall last year) with four other programs: Boston University, the College of William and Mary, South Carolina and Syracuse.

Carnegie Mellon’s business program tied for 9th; Penn State’s program tied for 20th in the overall rankings. Penn’s Wharton business school held the top spot overall in this undergraduate category, just as it did last year.

To arrive at the business program rankings, in spring 2011 U.S. News surveyed deans and senior faculty at undergraduate business programs accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business. Participants (two at each AACSB-accredited business program) were asked to rate the quality of all programs they were familiar with on a scale of 1 (marginal) to 5 (distinguished). The rankings were based solely on this peer survey; 41.7 percent of those surveyed responded, according to the magazine.

In addition, U.S. News ranks schools in 12 business specialty areas, which also are based solely on the spring 2011 peer survey. Schools offering any courses in a specialty are eligible to be ranked in that specialty.

In the management information systems specialty, Pitt ranked 16th overall among 21 such programs highlighted online by the magazine. Pitt tied for 17th overall in this area last year.

Among the top 383 accredited undergraduate engineering programs listed for public, private  and for-profit universities that grant PhDs, Pitt’s program tied for 48th (tied for 56th last year) with Arizona, Michigan State and Rutgers. The magazine ranked the top 177.

Carnegie Mellon was ranked 8th and Penn State tied for 17th overall among doctorate-granting schools in the engineering program rankings. MIT was ranked No. 1 by the magazine, the spot it held last year.

Undergrad engineering programs were ranked solely on a spring 2011 peer survey of deans and senior faculty who rated each program they were familiar with. Fifty-four percent of those surveyed at schools that award doctorates responded, according to the magazine.

Special categories

Pitt appeared in a number of special categories listed by U.S. News for national universities.

• In the Best Value Schools category, Pitt ranked 45th nationally. This category is based on standardizing the scores of three variables: The ratio of quality to price accounted for 60 percent of the overall score; the percentage of all undergraduates receiving need-based grants accounted for 25 percent, and the average discount accounted for 15 percent.

In the case of public institutions in this category, 2010-11 out-of-state tuition and percentage of out-of-state students receiving need-based scholarships or grants were used in all calculations.

The ratio of quality to price takes into account a school’s academic quality based on its overall score rank nationally and the 2010-11 net cost of attendance for an out-of-state student who receives the average level of need-based financial aid.

The need-based aid factor is the percentage of all out-of-state undergraduates receiving need-based scholarships or grants during the 2010-11 academic year, with the higher the percentage the better. At Pitt, 41 percent of out-of-state undergraduates received need-based aid.

The average discount is the percentage of a school’s total costs (tuition, room and board, fees, books and other expenses) that is covered by the average need-based scholarship or grant to undergraduates. Pitt’s discount score was 36 percent.

• In the economic diversity category, which shows the percentage of all undergraduates receiving federal Pell grants for low-income students, 33 percent of all Pitt undergraduates received Pell grants, tying the University for 155th among national universities.

According to the magazine, Pell grant percentages were calculated using 2009-10 school year data on the number of Pell grant recipients collected by the U.S. Department of Education and fall 2009 total undergraduate enrollment collected from the colleges themselves. U.S. News noted, “Many experts say that Pell figures are the best available gauge of how many low-income undergrads there are on a given campus.”

• In the campus ethnic diversity category, Pitt scored 0.29 (with 1.0 as the highest score) on the magazine’s diversity index, tying for 185th among all national universities.

According to the magazine, the diversity index is designed to “identify colleges where students are most likely to encounter undergraduates from racial or ethnic groups different from their own.” To arrive at the index, U.S. News factors in the total proportion of minority students, excluding international students, drawn from data from each institution’s 2009-10 school year student body.

• Pitt’s 58 percent acceptance rate tied for 100th lowest nationally.

The regional campuses

According to U.S. News officials, Pitt’s regional campuses were not considered for ranking this year because they are accredited under the University’s accreditation and should not be considered as separate entities as they have been in the past.

U.S. News has been inconsistent over the years in ranking Pitt’s regional campuses. For the last four years, for example, Pitt-Johnstown and Pitt-Bradford were ranked among the regional colleges in the northern region, while Pitt-Greensburg was not considered by the magazine.

Pitt-Greensburg was dropped in the Best Colleges 2007 (published in August 2006) edition of U.S. News because of incomplete data, Robert J. Morse, director of data research at U.S. News & World Report, told the University Times at the time. In the 2008 and 2009 editions, Pitt-Greensburg was not ranked because the campus does not have a separate accreditation, Morse told the University Times in 2008.

Thus, including Pitt-Johnstown and Pitt-Bradford in the 2009 and 2010 rankings was an oversight, Morse acknowledged, since those campuses also are accredited under the University’s accreditation and that, under that tenet, they likewise should not have been included. For example, Penn State’s satellite campuses have been unranked for that reason.

“It was our intention to remove [UPB and UPJ] from the rankings [in the 2010 edition],” Morse told the University Times in 2009. “This was an oversight.”

For the Best Colleges 2011 edition (published in 2010), U.S. News chose to maintain the status quo from the previous year and to include Pitt-Bradford and Pitt-Johnstown, pending the release of the new Carnegie Foundation classifications, Morse said. “We’re going to use the new classifications as a catalyst to re-look at all the schools.”

Pitt-Titusville, primarily a two-year institution, never has been included in the U.S. News rankings.

—Peter Hart