September 18, 2023
Although Tulane improved in most of the indicators measured in last year’s U.S. News rankings and experienced, at most, very small declines in the others, we, like many top private universities, fell significantly in the latest U.S. News survey that was released today. The reason for this precipitous drop is U.S. News’ decision to suddenly and radically alter its methodology for assessing the quality of universities.
By almost any standard we are a better and stronger institution now than we have ever been. The academic quality and diversity of our students have never been higher, and over the past several years we have seen one of the nation’s largest jumps in yield and selectivity. We have also dramatically increased need-based financial aid, making a Tulane education more affordable to the most talented students from all economic backgrounds. In addition, we continue to have one of the lowest student-to-faculty ratios in the country.
The scale and impact of our research is also breaking records. For example, this past year, we garnered the highest level of external grant funding in Tulane’s history, an increase of about 70% over the past six years, which reflects one of the most dramatic expansions in research funding in all of higher education. Our faculty are also being awarded national honors at an unprecedented rate.
So why the significant change? This year’s rankings heavily favor and reward universities for their ability to enroll classes with a high number of first-generation and economically disadvantaged students and further this mission through less stringent admission requirements. We applaud this focus on socio-economic mobility but believe that these new rankings, while potentially valuable for some purposes, are less relevant for most students who are seeking information about where they will find the most engaging and rewarding academic experience.
This year’s rankings also reduced the weight placed on, or threw out entirely, whole categories of criteria that U.S. News highly valued as recently as a year ago – including the academic quality of students, the academic qualifications of the faculty, the number of small classes offered, and the level of financial resources devoted to students and faculty. Again, by these and almost every other measure previously considered or heavily weighted by U.S. News, we perform exceptionally well. But that is not reflected in these rankings since they measure different things, and measure them differently, than they did just a year ago.
We also believe U.S. News made a serious and consequential error in measuring the financial success of our students and the graduation rates of our students who are first-generation, a new ranking criterion. U.S. News based those indicators on publicly available data that only included undergraduates who took out federal student loans, which is a minority of Tulane students. Additionally, these data combine information about full-time students enrolled in Newcomb-Tulane College (NTC) with data about our students enrolled in the School of Professional Advancement (SOPA), a separate undergraduate school for part-time students who are often working adults. All of Tulane’s other student-based indicators used in the rankings, however, are based solely on NTC data. It is also worth noting that this data relates to students who graduated as long as a decade ago. We have reached out to U.S. News regarding this huge discrepancy and are awaiting their response.
This latest iteration of U.S. News’ annual exercise highlights the shortcomings of attempting to numerically rank universities with vastly different missions, sizes, locations, and student populations. Students should be cautious about using a one-size-fits-all ranking to help determine where they’ll attend college.
Michael A. Fitts, President
Robin Forman, Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost
