The rankings in the title are of course The Rankings, aka the love-to-hate but always-so-important U.S. News rankings. I finally came across data about universities' U.S. news rankings over the years; specifically, a website called publicuniversityhonors.com has the U.S. News rankings for 57 leading universities from 1983 to 2007. It shows how the rankings for universities that were in the top 50 at least at some point during that period fared over the years. (Some rankings are not provided for the years where U.S. news only grouped universities by tiers.)
The reason I am interested in rankings over time is that I am trying to better understand which university have been able to make a noticeable, long-lasting rise through the rankings while others have just bobbled up and down along with the tweaks U.S. News makes to its rankings every year. It is great to have as aspirational peer M.I.T. or Harvard or Penn or Notre Dame or Vanderbilt, but if those universities have been at the top for a very long time, it may be useful to also have as aspirational peers universities that have been able to rise through the rankings - in other words, aspirational peers not only in terms of the ranking they currently occupy or the quality of the education they deliver or the strategic positioning they have in higher ed, but in terms of trajectory path.
Here is what I found for the period for 1983 to 2007:
- U.C. Berkeley dropped from #5 in 1983 to #24 in 1989 back to #13 in 1990 and stayed in the #20s between 1995 and 2007.
- University of Chicago has gone from #6 to #14 back to #9 in the time period considered.
- University of Michigan Ann Arbor was initially ranked #7 and then stayed in the #20s between 1997 and 2007.
- University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign was at #8 and then after years of unavailable data reemerged at #45, and stayed in the #40s.
- (there are a lot of public universities that dropped in the rankings during that time frame, probably due to funding issues, so I won't go over all of them)
- Washington University in St Louis seems to have been able to slightly move up in the rankings during that time period.
- Interestingly enough, back in those days Lehigh was apparently in the high #30s, perhaps due to its strong engineering reputation, while it has been solidly in the high #40s for a few years now.
- University of Southern California, like WashU, seems to have been able to slightly move up in the rankings during that time period.
- UNC Chapel Hill slipped in the rankings during that time period.
- U.Virginia also slipped slightly.
- Penn rose.
Of course that data only tells part of the story, for instance UCSB used not to be in the top 50 but then managed to stay there very steadily during the time period considered, which is an accomplishment too, and now they are ranked #30. It would definitely be best if the data was available until 2021 rather than 2007.
Anyway, I have to wonder whether some private universities benefited from a widespread decrease in funding (?) of the public universities, pushing high-quality professors and students toward the private universities that were able to take advantage of the moment. Our previous provost often referred to USC and I remember him gifting faculty (maybe at the Emerging Leaders seminar?) The Contrarian's Guide to Leadership. USC continues to be ranked #24 in US News (acceptance rate: 11%, graduation rate: 92%, average cost after aid: $30k), while WashU is #16 (acceptance rate: 14%, graduation rate: 94%, average cost after aid: $27k) and Penn is #8 (acceptance rate: 8%, graduation rate: 95%, average cost after aid: $25k). (In case my readers are wondering about Lehigh's stats: acceptance rate: 32%, graduation rate: 89%, average cost after aid: $31k, and SMU's: acceptance rate: 47%, graduation rate: 79%, average cost after aid: $37k. All numbers courtesy of Google.com.) USC, WashU and Penn are universities I'd love to know more about, even if they are not necessarily aspirational peers, but to better understand how they pulled off their rise through the rankings and managed not to slip back down.
Just like something disrupted negatively public universities in the US News rankings from 1983 to 2007, the upcoming demographic change in the high school student population promises to disrupt the rankings to the advantage of universities that can embrace this shift. The advantage, I think, will be for universities that have exceptional programs in place to welcome first-generation students and/or students of underrepresented minorities.
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