A Sea Of Red

First, two things -


1. I know we care little about US News and their school ranking system, however -
2. A LOT of other people and thousands upon thousands of prospective students do (and their parents)


If you cannot agree to the 2nd fact then discontinue reading as the following information will not matter to you.


http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandrevie ... /academics


1. 44:1 faculty to student ratio??? Are they using the online program?
2. 28 % four year grad rates??? Again, where are they getting this info?


I can only imagine how many bright prospective students were scared off by this US News nonsense, but again -


Regardless of how we feel, thousands of would be student and parents are looking at it. If we really want to become a top national university I think we might want to at least cater to US News and other ranking sites a tiny bit - this puts us in a horrible light and will not help us reach our goals.


Thoughts? I mean how is this possibly good for us? If you do not think it matters, how then do you suggest we market ourselves in order to get better students here?

Supposedly the 28% 4 year grad rate is normal.

Schfourteenteen wrote:Supposedly the 28% 4 year grad rate is normal.

Not only that, but when you have to drop a class that you're required to take because of a professor who clearly lacks the mental facualties to teach, that becomes a problem.

Having said that, most of the profs are great.

Faculty Profile
23:1 Student/professor ratio
418 Full-time faculty
53 Full-time faculty with Academic Administration responsibility
1462 Adjunct faculty
70% Full-time faculty hold terminal degrees

http://www.liberty.edu/index.cfm?PID=6925

Given how easy it is to get into Liberty, I'm actually a little shocked that the graduation rate isn't a little lower. We let anybody in, and give them a chance, but not everyone can cut it.

HMO, I'm not sure where liberty gets the 23:1 student to professor ratio, because I've never had a class under 30, and I've had 4 total under 50. That's out of about 20 classes I've had.

jbock13 wrote:HMO, I'm not sure where liberty gets the 23:1 student to professor ratio, because I've never had a class under 30, and I've had 4 total under 50. That's out of about 20 classes I've had.

I've had a few between 20-30 and this is my 3rd year at LU. It all depends on what major/class you're taking.

jbock13 wrote:HMO, I'm not sure where liberty gets the 23:1 student to professor ratio, because I've never had a class under 30, and I've had 4 total under 50. That's out of about 20 classes I've had.

What is your major? Comms? Business? There are some very large majors out there, but for every large major I can show you 5 majors like FACS and Music Ministry and SMGT where 30 people would be considered their large lecture hall class.

As far as class size is concerned, it is also generally true that as you get into the upper level classes in just about any major, the classes will get smaller.

Hold My Own wrote:

jbock13 wrote:HMO, I'm not sure where liberty gets the 23:1 student to professor ratio, because I've never had a class under 30, and I've had 4 total under 50. That's out of about 20 classes I've had.

What is your major? Comms? Business? There are some very large majors out there, but for every large major I can show you 5 majors like FACS and Music Ministry and SMGT where 30 people would be considered their large lecture hall class.

History.

Let's see Math 100 and 110 were small classes. Spanish is pretty small. That's the only three I can think of that I've taken that have less than 50. Granted, I've yet to begin my core classes, and those will be smaller.

I had quite a few classes in my health promotions major with around 20 students.

I can only count one COMS class that had more than 20 people and that was COMS 101...everything else had 20 or fewer...I took bowling and that had I think 40. Most of your required general classes (like EVAN 101, THEO 201 and 202, COMS 101 among others) are going to be pretty big and will skew student/teacher ratios

I think my COMS 101, COMS 110, COMS 210 and a couple others every COMS major takes had around 30 students, but most of the rest were between 10-20. Sportswriting had only 8, LOVED that class.

Way off track here - let's bring it back. Thousands of potential students see this info. How do we combat it? Can LU contact US News and ask them to change it?

Im sure they could but I honestly dont know a lot of people who carry around a copy of teh US News and World Report rankings and when they make a visit (or inquire) they say on a tour "So I was reading in the US News and World Report college rankings about your school and wanted you to explain a few things"

I mean Im not saying this isnt legit data but Im not gonna sit here wringing my hands about it like you are logic

BJWilliams wrote:Im sure they could but I honestly dont know a lot of people who carry around a copy of teh US News and World Report rankings and when they make a visit (or inquire) they say on a tour "So I was reading in the US News and World Report college rankings about your school and wanted you to explain a few things"

I mean Im not saying this isnt legit data but Im not gonna sit here wringing my hands about it like you are logic

On the contrary, US News is regarded by many as the final say with regards to college rankings.

We all need to put ourselves in the kid's shoes - it matters not what WE think.....it matters ALL what they and their parents think. As much as we do not like it; their perception is their reality. We can ignore it and lose kids or find a way around it.

Thoughts?

I've been MIA the last few days and haven't thought much about this thread. Then tonight (at 2am go figure) I remember a conversation I had with JLFjr in 2010 about the US Rankings. Here's the direct quote in the email:

We had a meeting today about how US News ranks colleges. We found that the rankings are a product of how schools report their numbers. For example, we only report about 4200 applications each year even though we receive 28,000. Our recruitment people spend time working with applicants to fully complete their applications until we get the number of completed applications we are seeking. When we hit 4200, we stop and don’t follow up with the other 24,000. So, that means we accept nearly 4000 of the 4200. That gives us a high selectivity percentage (94%) which is viewed as a negative. Other schools report all of their apps to make their %s look high and that pushes them up in the US News ratings. It is all hocus pocus and we are not reporting numbers based on what US News thinks is important.

Students/parents perception is their reality. We can fight the system all we want but the fact remains -

1. US News reports 44:1 class size
2. A LOT of prospective students and parents take US News into consideration regardless of whether or not we think it's a good or bad way to report the stats.


Again what you or I think about rankings and US News matters not - when you are trying to recruit top quality students and steal them from UVA/Tech/W&M/Richmond having this information out there cannot help you and can only hurt.

Also - maybe if we took a look at the other 24,000 we would find more/better students? Raising the academic profile is a priority so I hear. Larger population size = better sample ?

Wanted to get the facts to share. I'm told these numbers are submitted every 2 years, maybe even longer. Once Liberty realized how these numbers were determined the proper corrections were made to get a better score. Seems like the 2011 numbers (which when it should be updated again I assume) should represent the numbers I posted from the website. This big increase has to be because of the dramatic growth of online. I remember when I was in school, 2002-2006 the student:professor was very close to the 23:1. Now if that was Residential only I have no idea....I just remember numbers along that range being mentioned at Liberty college for a weekend and friendly fridays. Hope this helps some.

Most of the info used by US News comes from a survey form that they send out to all colleges and it is very similar to the Common Data Set that nearly all schools submit for use in college guide materials. If you go to any college's website and search under Common Data Set you should find it (usually-some don't share theirs). It looks like this:

http://apa.wisc.edu/CDS_USNews/CDS_2011.pdf

The US News version for the prior year--it's longer and in three sections

http://apa.wisc.edu/CDS_USNEWS/2010MainSurvey.pdf

http://apa.wisc.edu/CDS_USNEWS/2010Fina ... Survey.pdf

http://apa.wisc.edu/CDS_USNEWS/2010FinanceSurvey.pdf