Based on an analysis of National Science Foundation research grants for 2011 and 2012, the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Michigan, and the University of Texas at Austin lead public universities in the number of students who go on to study science, engineering, and social sciences at Ivy schools and other prestigious private graduate programs.
In a previous post, “Public Universities that Ivy Leaguers Choose for Grad School,” we discussed the leading public choices for Ivy students awarded NSF grants. This post looks at the reverse phenomenon: public university students who received NSF grants to do research at elite private universities.
About 29% of the graduates of public universities who receive NSF grants go on to prestigious private schools for grad work. This is almost exactly the same percentage of Ivy grads who opt for public research universities for their graduate work.
Please bear in mind that many more students from public universities attend elite private schools, even in science and engineering fields, but do so without NSF grants.
UC Berkeley stands out either way you view the analysis: far more grads of elite private schools choose Berkeley for graduate work than they do any other public institution, and Berkeley sends a much higher number of its grads on to the elite private schools for research than do other public universities.
The private universities included are Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Stanford, MIT, Caltech, Chicago, Penn, Cornell, Brown, Dartmouth, Duke, Johns Hopkins, and Northwestern.
Below is a list of the leading public universities who send the most graduates with NSF grants to study at elite private institutions:
UC Berkeley
Harvard (12), Princeton (1), Columbia (4), Stanford (16), MIT (18), Caltech (5), Cornell (6), Brown (1), Duke (4), Johns Hopkins (1), Northwestern (3)
Michigan
Harvard (4), Princeton (2), Stanford (2), MIT (6), Caltech (2), Chicago (2), Brown (1), Duke (2), Johns Hopkins (1), Northwestern (3)
UT Austin
Harvard (1), Princeton (2), Columbia (1), Stanford (7), MIT (7), Caltech (2), Chicago (1), Cornell (1), Duke (1), Northwestern (1)
Washington (tie with Wisconsin)
Harvard (5), Yale (2), Columbia (1), Stanford (2), MIT (4), Penn (1), Cornell (1), Duke (2), Northwestern (1)
Wisconsin (tie with Washington)
Harvard (4), Princeton (1), Columbia (1), Stanford (1), MIT (4), Caltech (1), Penn (1), Brown (1), Duke (2), Johns Hopkins (2), Northwestern (1)
Arizona (tied with Illinois)
Harvard (2), Yale (1), Columbia (1), Stanford (7), MIT (1), Caltech (1), Cornell (2), Duke (1), Northwestern (1)
Illinois (tied with Arizona)
Yale (2), Columbia (1), Stanford (2), MIT (6), Caltech (2), Chicago (1), Cornell (1), Duke (1), Northwestern (1)
UC San Diego
Harvard (3), Yale (1), Columbia (1), Stanford (4), MIT (3), Caltech (1), Cornell (1), Northwestern (1)
Maryland (tied with UCLA)
Harvard (1), Stanford (1), MIT (2), Caltech (1), Penn (1), Cornell (1), Duke (4), Johns Hopkins (2), Northwestern (1)
UCLA (tied with Maryland)
Harvard (1), Princeton (1), Columbia (1), Stanford (4), MIT (1), Caltech (2), Penn (1), Duke (1), Johns Hopkins (1), Northwestern (1)
Virginia
Harvard (2), Yale (1), Princeton (1), Columbia (1), Stanford (3), Chicago (1), Penn (1), Duke (1), Johns Hopkins (1)
Georgia Tech
Columbia (1), Stanford (4), MIT (4), Cornell (2)
The following universities are tied, at 10 each:
Florida
Columbia (1), Stanford (1) MIT (2), Chicago (1), Penn (1), Duke (1), Johns Hopkins (1), Northwestern (2)
Minnesota
Harvard (1), Yale (1), MIT (1), Caltech (3), Cornell (2), Duke (1), Northwestern (1)
Ohio State
Harvard (1), Yale (1), MIT (3), Cornell (2), Duke (1), Northwestern (2)
The following universities each had four or more NSF recipients who attended one of the private institutions listed above:
UC Santa Barbara (9)
Arizona State (9)
Rutgers (9)
UC Davis (8)
Penn State (7)
Pitt (7)
Clemson (6)
NC State (6)
Stony Brook (6)
Alabama (5)
North Carolina (5)
UC Irvine (5)
Georgia (4)
Indiana (4)
Massachusetts (4)
South Carolina (4)
Texas A&M (4)
The University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Texas at Austin lead public universities in the number of National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowships awarded in the last two years, with UC Berkeley far in front. The University of Michigan and the University of Washington lead public universities in Fulbright Student Awards.
NSF fellowships are for research in science, engineering, and the social sciences. Fulbright scholarships are for work in foreign countries and cover a broader range of disciplines.
In this post, we are not limiting our report to the 50 universities we follow, but will list awards for all leading public universities, including the University of California, Berkeley.
A more detailed discussion of these awards and the relative performance of public and private universities will appear as a separate page on the home menu.
Leaders in NSF Awards:
1. UC Berkeley
2. UT Austin
3. Washington
4. Georgia Tech
5. Michigan
6. Wisconsin
7. Florida
7. Illinois
9. UCLA
10. Maryland
11. UC Davis
12. Arizona
12. UC San Diego
14. Minnesota
15. Ohio State
Over the years, U.S. News has established its annual “Best Colleges” report as the most important ranking guide, but our analysis of the rankings indicates that some leading public universities have not been ranked as highly as they deserve to be. The most striking examples are UC Berkeley and the University of Michigan. In general, however, the U.S. News rankings are relatively fair to public universities, given the criteria that the magazine uses.
In the early years of the Best Colleges report, public universities were frequent visitors to the top 25. But North Carolina fell from 20th in 1991 to 29th in 2012; the University of Virginia from 18th to 25th; and U.C. Berkeley from 13th to 21st. In the years since 1991, the five leading public universities have fallen seven places in the rankings.
One reason for the declining presence of leading public universities among the top ranks of all universities is clear: money. State support for public universities is down sharply, resulting in severe cuts at almost every public institution. And money has a very great deal to do with the U.S. News rankings, often with good reason.
See our Adjusted U.S. News Rankings for the Top 25 Below
The U.S. News category of Faculty Resources, which places a premium on faculty pay and small class size, is one of the most influential factors in achieving a high graduation rate, an extremely important outcome metric in the U.S. News rankings. And Faculty Resources are more in evidence when enrollment is relatively small and funding is generous.
In addition to Faculty Resources, the other factors that have the largest impact on the graduation rate are Academic Reputation and Student Selectivity. Assuming that a high graduation rate is an indisputably significant outcome, we have taken these three factors as being the most important to university rankings, at least in the methodology used by U.S. News.
We do not include the graduation rate itself as a metric because in doing so we would create a magnifying effect; i.e., the graduation rate would multiply an effect that is already strongly present in the other factors. We have also excluded a metric for Alumni Giving and Financial Resources, in part because the former strongly favors private universities and because U.S. News appears to include different components for public universities in the Financial Resources category. Therefore, in essence, we are analyzing the universities in a way that considers the due impact of funding but does not over-emphasize that impact.
Although we analyzed all 52 universities (including ties) that are listed as the top 50 national universities, the results for several public universities ranked lower than 25 appear to be strongly influenced by other factors, including unusually high undergraduate enrollment levels. Some of these schools were ranked higher by U.S News than by our adjusted rankings, and some were ranked lower by U.S. News. Of the latter, it appears that UC Irvine and UC Santa Barbara are the most likely to have been underrated, though not because of unusually high undergraduate enrollment levels. The comparative rankings for several schools, public and private, in the lower 25 do not vary significantly (by more than 3 places).
Below is an adjusted ranking of the top 25 national universities in 2012:
The well-known Kiplinger Best Value Report gives us one measure of how our universities compare when it comes to delivering a college education at a cost that has strong value in relation to the quality of the school. The Kiplinger Report looks at cost from the perspective of net student expenses for tuition, fees, etc. The Report is very useful in that respect. The Report appears to track other national rankings when it comes to the quality side of the equation.
But many visitors to this site want to know whether outstanding public universities can really compete with the private elites, especially the Ivy League schools. So we will offer a comparison that uses as a measure of quality the two most prominent postgraduate fellowships, in terms of the total numbers awarded: the National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship Program grants and the Fulbright Student Fellowship grants. The measure of cost we will use is the amount expended by the universities for each degree granted. We are emphasizing quality and efficiency, rather than quality and consumer expense.
(Summary and Statistics Are at End of Post)
The NSF grants go to more that 2,000 students each year, and about 1,600 students receive the Fulbright grants annually. These awards give us the largest statistical sample that illustrates how institutions public and private compare in at least this one measure of quality. While private elite universities dominate many of the awards given out by private foundations and trusts (Rhodes, Marshall, Gates/Cambridge), the NSF and Fulbright awards, in addition to being far more numerous, must adhere to federal guidelines that reinforce the need for transparency and objectivity.
It is difficult to say exactly how much the best honors programs contribute to excellence within their host universities, but we do know that honors students, as a group, bring the highest test scores and GPAs to their schools, energize honors and non-honors classes, and enhance the reputations of their universities. We also know that honors students benefit greatly from smaller class size and more faculty contact, both key elements in the success of private elites.
After following 50 leading honors programs for many months, we also see that students who are in university-wide honors programs or departmental honors are also those that compete the best for prestigious undergraduate and postgraduate scholarships, which often are seen as a measure of quality.
(We must note that we have included UC Berkeley in the lists below, although UC Berkeley does not, strictly speaking, have a university-wide honors program. The university takes the position that excellence is pervasive on the campus, just as it is in many private elites. Few would argue the point, and certainly we would not.)
The data we use for the cost per degree, by institution, is from the Chronicle of Higher Education. The average cost per degree is for all degrees awarded, undergraduate and graduate, and does not include expenditures for research.
The data for the fellowships comes directly from the National Science Foundation and the Fulbright U.S. Student Program. We selected the 13 public universities that earned the most NSF and Fulbright grants, respectively, and compared them to all eight Ivy League universities along with other private elites that earned the most grants. As a group, these few universities earned almost 40% of all the NSF grants during the two years of 2011 and 2012, and a similarly high percentage of Fulbright grants in 2010 and 2011.
Summary: Students from the public universities earned 778 NSF grants during the two years, and students from the private elites won 723. Out of the total awards to the 26 schools, the public universities earned 51.8% and the private elites won 48.2%. The average institutional cost per degree granted for the public universities in this group is $102,947. The average institutional cost per degree granted for the private universities in this group is $324,505.
Students from the public universities earned 418 Fulbright Student grants during the two years, while students from the private elites won 489 awards. Out of the total awards to the 26 schools, the public universities won 46.1% and the private universities won 53.9%. The average institutional cost per degree granted for the public universities in this group is $108,537. The average institutional cost per degree granted for the private universities is $262,201.
As striking as these comparison are, some of the public universities that have achieved such a high degree of excellence at relatively low cost are the very schools that have been the focus of “reformers” who are bent on focusing on cost savings at the expense of quality. For example, these critics/reformers might say that a cost per degree of approximately $105,600 is outrageous given that the average cost per degree nationwide for four-year public universities is $68,617. And we agree that it is important for students to have access to an inexpensive college education.
But the point here is that, within the broad range of public universities, there must be room for excellence, and excellence does not come cheaply, even if it does come at a relatively low cost at our leading public universities. (In fact, a very few high-performing public universities do come close to or even beat the average cost of $68,617, but they do so mainly by economies of scale in combination with lower regional labor costs.)
Rather than expecting outstanding public universities to achieve impressive results while spending no more than the average that is spent for all state universities, regardless of quality, we should compare the best public universities to the best private universities in order to find a more realistic assessment of their qualitative return on the public investment.
Beneath the data: The much higher expenditures per degree for the private universities are partly a function of their providing a very low student to faculty ratio university-wide, resulting in a high percentage of small classes. All of the private elites have undergraduate enrollments that are much larger than any of the honors programs within the public universities listed below. So a lot of the high cost per degree granted comes from providing small classes to 4,000–8,000 students, or even 14,000 in the case of Cornell.
The average size of the 50 honors programs that we follow is approximately 1,800 students, and they, too, offer small classes. This feature of honors education is great equalizer, and it must be achieved at the same time that the universities are providing a solid education for their typically quite large total undergraduate populations (average of about 25,000 in our group). The honors programs at their best provide smaller versions of the private elite experience for the students fortunate enough to join them.
Another factor is that the institutional costs per degree granted, as shown below in detail, apply to the university as a whole. If the costs were broken down separately for honors students in the public universities, those costs per honors degree granted would rise; however, not all awards are won by honors students, and the extra costs for honors housing, programming, and faculty are already included in the overall costs. Nevertheless, the differences in costs between the private elites and the public elites are not quite as dramatic as the average figures suggest, but the differences still remain very large.
Still another consideration is that the costs per degree are subject to regional cost of living influences. Part of the high cost of public and private universities operating on the East and West coasts, and in parts of the upper Midwest, are affected by the higher cost of living and the greater prevalence of collective bargaining practices. These factors are present especially near the major cities of New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Detroit.
Another matter of note is that the UC campuses generally rely less on honors programs and small classes to produce research stars than they do on highly selective overall admissions requirements and the superior quality of faculty. UC Berkeley is the most striking example of this model, particularly evident in the NSF category, in which Berkeley’s success is remarkable.
NSF Fellowships and Cost Per Degree Granted, by Institution, 2011 and 2012
1. UC Berkeley: total grants (165) cost per degree granted ($97,934)
2. MIT: total grants (115) cost per degree granted ($341,769)
3. Harvard: total grants (82) cost per degree granted ($343,004)
4. Cornell: total grants (78) cost per degree granted ($151,211)
5. Stanford: total grants (76) cost per degree granted ($345,440)
6. UT Austin: total grants (73) cost per degree granted ($88,150).
7. Washington: total grants (66) cost per degree granted ($133,636)
8. Princeton: total grants (61) cost per degree granted ($371,620)
9. Georgia Tech:total grants (59) cost per degree granted ($83,823)
9. Michigan: total grants (59) cost per degree granted ($129,206)
11. Wisconsin: total grants (57) cost per degree granted ($92,402)
11. Caltech: total grants (54) cost per degree granted ($618,681)
11. Yale: total grants (54) cost per degree granted ($502,748)
14. Columbia: total grants (52) cost per degree granted ($226,200)
15. Brown: total grants (45) cost per degree granted ($202,217)
15. Florida: total grants (45) cost per degree granted ($66,767)
15. Illinois: total grants (45) cost per degree granted ($86,083)
18. UCLA: total grants (44) cost per degree granted ($155,681)
19. Maryland: total grants (43) cost per degree granted ($75,806)
20. UC Davis: total grants (42) cost per degree granted ($116,134)
21. UC San Diego: total grants (40) cost per degree granted ($127,401)
21. Arizona: total grants (40) cost per degree granted ($85,829)
23. Duke: total grants (34) cost per degree granted ($287,850)
24. Chicago: total grants (33) cost per degree granted ($267,725)
25. Penn: total grants (25) cost per degree granted ($264,802)
26. Dartmouth: total grants (14) cost per degree granted ($292,754)
Fulbright Student Fellowships and Cost Per Degree Granted, by Institution, 2010 and 2011
1. Michigan: total grants (69) cost per degree granted ($129,206)
2. Yale: total grants (59) cost per degree granted ($502,748)
3. Stanford: total grants (49) cost per degree granted ($345,440)
4. Northwestern: total grants (48) cost per degree granted ($178,716)
5. Chicago: total grants (46) cost per degree granted ($267,725)
6. Columbia: total grants (41) cost per degree granted ($226,200)
7. Washington: total grants (40) cost per degree granted ($136,636)
8. Arizona State: total grants (38) cost per degree granted ($61,520)
8. Harvard: total grants (38) cost per degree granted ($343,004)
10. Boston College: total grants (37) cost per degree granted ($106,401)
11. Cornell: total grants (35) cost per degree granted ($151,211)
12. Princeton: total grants (34) cost per degree granted ($374,620)
13. North Carolina: total grants (33) cost per degree granted ($137,719)
14. Johns Hopkins: total grants (32) cost per degree granted ($269,246)
15. UC Berkeley: total grants (31) cost per degree granted ($97,934)
16. Maryland: total grants (30) cost per degree granted ($75,806)
17. Rutgers: total grants (30) cost per degree granted ($133,842)
18. Arizona: total grants (29) cost per degree granted ($85,289)
19. George Washington: total grants (28) cost per degree granted ($86,190)
19. Illinois: total grants (28) cost per degree granted ($86,083)
21. Pitt: total grants (26) cost per degree granted ($103,393)
22. Penn: total grants (25) cost per degree granted ($264,802)
23. Wisconsin: total grants (24) cost per degree granted ($92,402)
24. UCLA: total grants (21) cost per degree granted ($155,681)
25. Minnesota: total grants (19) cost per degree granted ($118,476)
26. Dartmouth: total grants (17) cost per degree granted ($292,754)
As noted elsewhere on this site, the private elites–Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, etc.–typically dominate the best-known prestigious postgraduate scholarships and fellowships, such as the Rhodes and Marshall awards.
But when it comes to earning research fellowships from the National Science Foundation (NSF), students at major public research universities hold their own against the private elites. The NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program awarded almost 2,100 grants in 2011, each with a value of more than $40,000. The grants are good for up to three years of graduate research at an accredited university of the student’s choice.
Indeed, the University of California, Berkeley, led all schools in winning NSF grants in 2011, and by a wide margin. In fact, the entire UC System has a much better track record with NSF grants than with other prestigious awards.
“The program recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students in NSF-supported science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines who are pursuing research-based master’s and doctoral degrees at accredited US institutions,” according to the NSF site.
In 2011, almost 40 percent of the NSF grants went to students from only 26 universities. Students from the eight Ivy League schools plus Stanford, MIT, Caltech, Duke, and Chicago earned 361 NSF grants in 2011, and students from the 13 public universities with the most awards won 410 grants. Granted, the private elites have much smaller undergraduate enrollments than the public universities, but they are also much more selective overall.
Even if UC Berkeley totals are not included, the leading universities of the 50 we follow on this site compete almost evenly with the private elites for NSF grants. Although we did not include NSF grants in our recent book, A Review of Fifty Public University Honors Programs, we will probably do so in the next edition. This could result in some significant changes in rankings.
The good news for public higher education is that the best public research universities are delivering on the promise of excellence to their brightest students, many of whom are drawn to the universities because honors programs give them special opportunities to thrive.
While it costs a great deal to educate science, technology, engineering, and math students, and to provide smaller classes through honors programs, the contributions the students make to their states and to the entire nation are essential to public health, the national economy, and even to national security.
Below is a list of all 26 universities, pubic and private, along with the number of NSF grants for 2011. (Note: there could be very minor errors in this list. Please notify the editor if your total is off by even one award.)
Both Kiplinger and the Princeton Review present a top 10 list of the best values in public education–the state universities that provide a very high level of quality at a reasonable sticker price or at a price that is offset by financial aid.
Each list has eight universities among the 50 we follow on this site, although they are not the same eight schools. Four universities among the 50 are on both lists: North Carolina, Florida, Virginia, and Georgia.
There are significant differences between the two lists, no surprise considering how much their respective methodologies differ. But one thing is clear: the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is the top value in just about anybody’s book.
UNC Chapel Hill tops the Kiplinger and Princeton lists, nothing new for the university, since it has been ranked number one by Kiplinger for 12 straight years. Being on either list among the top 100 is a high honor in itself, but being in the top 10 is an outstanding indicator of value.
The Princeton list places much more emphasis on what students actually believe about the schools they are attending, although the list also relies on some of the same stats as Kiplinger: admissions requirements, financial aid, tuition, etc. One major difference is that Kiplinger includes three University of California campuses on its list, and Princeton has none.
Below is a list of leading public universities that are on both lists:
UNC Chapel Hill–Kiplinger (1), Princeton (1)
Florida–Kiplinger (2), Princeton (7)
Virginia–Kiplinger (3), Princeton (2)
William & Mary–Kiplinger (4), Princeton (6)
New College of Florida–Kiplinger (5), Princeton (3)
Georgia–Kiplinger (6), Princeton (8)
Below are the schools that are on the Kiplinger top-10 list only:
UC Berkeley–(7)
Maryland–(8)
UCLA–(9)
UC San Diego (10)
And here are the schools that are on the Princeton top-10 list only:
Binghamton–(4)
Wisconsin–(5)
Washington–(9)
UT Austin–(10)
According to the Princeton Review, four of the 50 universities we currently follow on this site are among the top 20 in the country when it comes to providing career counseling and placement assistance to new graduates.
The University of Florida ranks number one in the nation in this category, among all major universities, public and private.
Here is the list of the top 20:
1. University of Florida
2. Northeastern University
3. Penn State University
4. University of Texas at Austin
5. Barnard College
6. Claremont McKenna College
7. Rochester Institute of Technology
8. Bentley University
9. Clemson University
10. University of Richmond
11. Missouri University of Science and Technology
12. Spelman College
13. Yale University
14. Cornell University
15. Lafayette University
16. University of Missouri
17. Worcester Polytechnic Institute
18. American University
19. Southern Methodist University
20. Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering
The Big Ten schools are famous for football, but they should also be famous for the number of honors colleges and programs at some of those schools that are among the best in the nation.
In our new book, A Review of Fifty Public University Honors Programs, no less than seven Big Ten programs are among the top 20. And even more impressive is that in the group of top large programs–those that enroll more than 1,800 honors students–the Big Ten has half the programs in the top ten, so to speak. This is important because it indicates not only the quality of the honors programs but also the institutional commitment required to sustain larger programs.
The book reviews the leading public universities in the nation, including those in the top 75 in the U.S. News rankings and/or those that belong to the prestigious Association of American Universities.
Michigan, Penn State, Minnesota, Michigan State, Wisconsin, Illinois, and Indiana are all in the top 20 in Overall Excellence among the 50 programs surveyed.
Michigan, Penn State, Minnesota, Michigan State, and Indiana are on the top 10 list of large programs.
Other leading large programs are Arizona State, Georgia, Arizona, Delaware, Arkansas, and Texas A&M.
By publishing A Review of Fifty Public University Honors Programs, we hope to reach students, parents, and counselors who want and need more detailed information about the leading public honors programs in the country.
For students, we not only show stats about graduation rates, curriculum, and prestigious undergraduate and postgraduate scholarships, but we also discuss the academic strengths of each university and important information about honors housing and other honors benefits, such as priority registration.
We also enable parents, who are understandably very concerned about cost and value, to consider our Excellence Impact data, which show the extent to which the honors program in a given university enhances the value of the university as a whole. Another term for this data is “value-added impact.” It is a fact that many universities that do not rank highly in major national surveys also have some of the best honors colleges and programs in the country. Parents need to have some way of assessing the profound impact that honors education can have.
School counselors have the enormous responsibility of advising students and parents on the suitability of a university, based on matching test scores and academic records with the admission requirements of prospective colleges. The Review, therefore, places each of the fifty programs in a category that fits SAT/ACT and GPA requirements. The Review also has a separate listing of programs that are within universities with a strong focus on engineering, business, and agriculture. Most of these programs are relatively new to honors education, so our information should be even more helpful to counselors trying to understand the sometimes confusing world of honors education.
The work we have done over the past six months has yielded a few insights into the differences between Honors Colleges and Honors Programs. As it turns out, there isn’t much difference until we come to the “value-added” implications, called EXCELLENCE IMPACT in our review (see below).
In our category of OVERALL EXCELLENCE, which includes a metric for prestigious undergraduate and postgraduate scholarships, the mean score for Honors Colleges was 67.82 out of 100; the mean score for Honors Programs was 68.16. This very small difference is statistically insignificant. Even though we show statistical differences as small as .01, we do so because we are presenting rankings within rankings…within rankings. But in terms of OVERALL EXCELLENCE and HONORS FACTORS only, a difference of 2-3 whole points between programs is still small.
Our METHODOLOGY page has an expanded discussion about interpreting our results. We urge readers to refer to it.
In the sub-category of honors housing, the Honors Colleges have a slight but real edge, in this case with an average score of 8.07 versus the 7.44 average score for Honors Programs. Since the maximum score in honors housing is 10.0, this small difference is somewhat significant, although three honors programs do not offer separate honors housing, and their scores in this sub-category reflected that fact.
When it comes to HONORS FACTORS only, the Honors Colleges do better, averaging 57.04 out of a possible 75.0 versus the Honors Program average of 55.77. Again, however, this small difference is not too significant
But when we consider EXCELLENCE IMPACT, or the difference between the national rankings of a university as a whole and our evaluation of each university’s honors programs, there is a significant difference.
Only 24 of the universities under review had honors evaluations that bettered their national rankings. Half of these were honors colleges, and half were honors programs. But…the honors colleges that showed “value added” for their universities as a whole had an average value-added (EXCELLENCE IMPACT) rank of 9.83–a top-ten performance, on average. The honors programs, on the other hand, had an average value-added rank of 14.33.
It must be said that many of the “public elites,” such as Michigan, North Carolina, Washington, and Virginia, offer honors programs instead of maintaining separate colleges, and their relatively high rankings in many surveys make it almost impossible to register any impact through their honors programs.
But the honors colleges do seem to perform somewhat better if the task is to provide a body of excellence within a larger university that does not start out with the resources of the public elites.
