What’s in a college ranking?

Plenty, if you ask parents and students who welcome the comparisons between colleges they are evaluating.

For faculty and staff, the annual ratings offer candid assessments of how programs measure up in the academic universe.

Everything from enrollment to employee recruitment may hinge on these judgments. Still, some say the ratings are overrated themselves and based on arbitrary factors.

With all this in mind, UC Davis stands tall in theSE recent ratings:

• 10th among all universities — Washington Monthly
• 11th among all public universities — U.S. News & World Report

‘Do gooder’ status

Washington Monthly’s 10th place ranking of UC Davis among all colleges is yet further proof that one can “discover what matters” here. In rating colleges, Washington Monthly tries to measure which ones do the most for the social good — by improving social mobility, producing research and promoting service. They are known as the “do gooder” ratings.

The publication offers its rankings as a dramatic alternative to those of U.S. News & World Report, which uses more traditional yardsticks of academic analysis.

While this year’s high Washington Monthly ranking is worthy of cheer, UC Davis did drop two spots from the prior year.

UC sweeps top three spots

Along with UC Davis, five other UC schools topped Washington Monthly’s top 25 list, with UC Berkeley coming in No. 1; UC San Diego, second; and UCLA, third. UC Riverside placed 16th, and UC Santa Barbara, 21st.

So elated was UC President Mark Yudof that he issued a Sept. 2 statement applauding the magazine’s unique approach on a controversial subject.

“It is, of course, easy to be cynical about college rankings — too often they have been prone to manipulation or swayed by factors that do not reflect directly on the quality of education. These rankings are different. They reflect UC’s values,” he said.

Those values, Yudof noted, reflect UC’s emphasis on groundbreaking research, new inventions, social mobility, and educating first-generation college students.

He pointed out that the magazine recognized UC campuses for enrolling “unusually large numbers of low-income students while maintaining high graduation rates, generating billions of dollars in research funding, and sending a healthy number of students into service programs like the Peace Corps.”

Yudof: “We are gratified that our public service priorities are so clearly valued. They offer, in the editors’ words, ‘a measure of not just what colleges can do for you, but what colleges are doing for the country.’”

The article is noteworthy for another reason, he added. “It recognizes that UC’s future excellence is at risk due to the steep budget cuts resulting from California’s budget crisis.”

Moving up in U.S. News

UC Davis fared well in the 2010 U.S. News & World Report — 11th among public universities, and 42nd among all universities. In both categories, UC Davis gained in the rankings. Last year, it was 12th among public universities and 44th among public and private universities.

U.S. News also identified UC Davis for the third straight year as one of the top 22 schools nationwide for its writing programs across disciplines. “These colleges typically make writing a priority at all levels of instruction and across the curriculum,” U.S. News noted.

The main reason for the jump in rankings was a 10-point increase (to 38 from 48) in the score on student selectivity, according to the UC Davis Student Affairs Research and Information unit.

That score reflects the university’s acceptance rate, the percentage of students accepted who were in the top 10 percent of their high school classes, and the SAT/ACT scores of the accepted students. Also, UC Davis improved in its graduation and retention rate, which further boosted its overall ranking.

In other rankings, UC Davis rated 24th in the Sierra Magazine’s 2009 Cool Schools survey and scored a B-plus as a “campus sustainability leader” on the College Sustainability Report Card.

HOW THEY STACK UP

Below are the U.S. News & World Report’s latest rankings for all UC campuses in the public and private category:

                                     2010             2009

UC Berkeley                     21                 21

UCLA                               24                 25

UC San Diego                  35                 35

UC Davis                        42                 44

UC Santa Barbara           42                 44

UC Irvine                        46                 44

UC Santa Cruz                71                 96

UC Riverside                   96                 89
 

More information on ratings

Washington Monthly: www.washingtonmonthly.com

U.S. News & World Report: colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com

Sierra Magazine: www.sierraclub.org

Green Report Card: www.greenreportcard.org