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Committee Offers Plans to Raise U.S. News Rankings
By Robin Herron
George Mason could move from the third to the second tier of U.S. News &
World Report’s college ranking, Provost Peter Stearns reported to the
faculty and the Board of Visitors in late November.
This conclusion came from the investigations of a committee that has met several
times over the past few months to examine what the university needs to do to improve
its standings in the influential annual rankings. Sitting on the committee with
Stearns are Andrew Flagel, director of Admissions; Michael Wood, coordinator of
institutional research in Institutional Research and Reporting; and Robert Ehrlich,
professor of physics, who had previously studied the issue. Stearns expects the
committee to meet twice yearly from now on.
While cautioning that the U.S. News ranking should not be taken too
seriously, Stearns outlined a plan that would affect George Mason’s performance
in the seven major categories on which the rankings are based. Those categories
are as follows:
- Academic reputation, which is determined by surveying presidents, provosts,
and deans of admissions at peer institutions
- Retention of freshmen and the proportion of students who graduate in six years
or less
- Faculty resources, which include class size, faculty salary, percentage of
faculty with terminal degrees, student-to-faculty ratio, and percentage of full-time
faculty
- Student selectivity, which includes SAT and ACT scores of entering freshmen,
the proportion of freshmen in the top 10 percent of their high school class, and
the institution’s acceptance rate and yield of applicants
- Financial resources, which are based on the institution’s per student
spending
- Graduation rate performance, which measures the difference between a school’s
six-year graduation rate for a class and its predicted rate
- Alumni giving rate
Under the committee’s proposal, the faculty resources category, which
makes up 20 percent of an institution’s score, would be boosted by allocating
an estimated $7 million to hire 100 new instructional faculty with terminal degrees.
Stearns pointed out that this move would in turn positively affect up to five
subcategories: percentage of faculty with a top degree, percentage of full-time
faculty, undergraduate student-to-faculty ratio, number of classes with fewer
than 20 students, and number of classes with more than 50 students. An additional
$3.5 million in the proposal would go to new undergraduate scholarships to attract
top-level students, which would increase freshman GPA; public relations and marketing
efforts to recruit top students and influence peer evaluators; and hiring more
advisors to improve student retention.
George Mason is already in the second tier in the academic reputation and
student selectivity categories, Stearns explained, and, with an overall score
of 150, is in the upper end of tier three. Second tier rankings range from 53
to 130.
Stearns said the university could also boost its ranking by reporting the high
school class ranks of entering freshmen. In addition, efforts are under way to
improve the graduation and retention rates, he said, and encouraging alumni giving
would also enhance the university’s score.
“There are some aspects of the ranking that don’t suit us too well,”
Stearns said, noting that a shrinking enrollment would benefit class size and
selectivity but is incompatible with the university’s plans for growth. “Also,
many of our students work, so they take a while to graduate.” He noted disappointment
that the ranking criteria don’t include factors such as diversity or information
technology use.
However, the major stumbling block to moving up in the rankings, Stearns said,
is the budget. Currently, only $5.7 million in the base budget is targeted to
areas that would affect the rankings.
While confident that the university could move to tier two with the plan, Stearns
was not optimistic that the budgetary support for the initiative is present. In
fact, the university’s rankings “may even drop because of circumstances
not within our control,” he said. “We’d be delighted if state officials
would join us in helping to close the resources gap between us and the top-ranked
schools or that resources and performance would more closely match.”
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