I have heard parents say, “I want my kid to go to the very best college she (or he) can get into.” I have heard others say, “College is a huge cost: we want our child to go to a high quality school, but one that is likely to give him (or her) a good return on our investment.”
Both sentiments are reasonable and rational. For years, the Center for College Affordability and Productivity has done the Best Colleges ranking used by Forbes. Just this week Forbes released a Best Value ranking. Prospective students and their parents considering college would do well to look at both rankings – each provides useful information for those facing choosing a college or university.
The newly released Best Value rankings are designed to identify schools that, relative to other schools, typically give students a lot of “bang for the buck.” The factors in the rankings take into account the answers to several questions on most student and parent minds: Will I be successful in getting through school in a timely matter (four years)? Is it likely I will get a good, well-paying job? And, of course, is it going to cost me a fortune to go there?
The Best College rankings, by contrast, concentrate more on student satisfaction with the college experience as it occurs. For example, do the faculty do a good job of teaching their classes? Do graduates become leaders in their profession? Do a lot of students drop out? There is some overlap between the two rankings, but the Best Value ranking is looking more at “quality per dollar spent” rather than quality alone.
It is interesting to compare the top schools on the two lists. On the Best Colleges list, the top 25 schools are all private institutions, excepting typically one or two of the service academies (e.g, West Point). In the Best Value rankings, a majority of the schools (16 of the top 25) are state schools. The Best College list is dominated by East Coast private schools. Clearly the champion location to go to school from a Best Value list perspective, however, is California. Some 10 of the top 30 schools – one-third – are in the Golden State. And the best value university in America is clearly the University of California – which has three campuses among the top five schools ranked (campuses at Berkeley, Los Angeles, and San Diego). There are also several highly ranked private schools located in California, Stanford, Cal Tech, Harvey Mudd, and Claremont McKenna are all top 30 schools. Florida, which generally does not have many highly ranked schools on the Best Colleges list, has the second best value state school in America in its flagship state university, the University of Florida. Why? A big reason is tuition levels tend to be relatively low at Florida public universities. Similarly, Texas, which does only so-so on the Best College list given its size, has three schools in the top 30 Best Value universities – the University of Texas, Texas A & M, and Rice University.
Yet the list also shows that the “private” vs. “public” distinction is not a good indicator of whether a good will have high value. Brigham Young is the second best value school – and is private with a religious orientation (Mormon); two Catholic schools, Georgetown and Notre Dame are in the top 50 as well. All eight of the Ivy League schools are in the top 40 on the Best Value list. Although having high sticker prices, they also give large amounts of scholarship aid and, of course, are considered very high quality. Children from families earning roughly the median family income or less – say $65,000 a year – are admitted without charge at several of the Ivies.
The region with the least representation near the top of the Best Value list is the Midwest. The University of Illinois, ranked seventh, is the shining exception. Ohio is the only state in the Union with over 10 million population without a single school in the top quarter of the Best Value rankings (top 75 schools). Neighboring Kentucky has a school we did not rank because it is essentially free – Berea College – which, along with Missouri’s College of the Ozark, in some sense is the ultimate best value school.
A caveat is in order. Rankings are enormously useful (despite university protestations to the contrary), but they should never be the sole basis for choosing a school. Individual aptitudes, finances, geographic preferences, major field of study, and a variety of other factors legitimately are important. Not everyone is average – some students do much better, or worse, than the past experiences of students would indicate. Still, if college is on the horizon, give both Forbes rankings a good look.
Richard Vedder directs the Center for College Affordability and Productivity, teaches at Ohio University, and is an Adjunct Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.
