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Kudos to the University of California. Many other public universities are very dissapointing. I would think that providing college educations to their consituen

Kudos to the University of California. Many other public universities are very dissapointing. I would think that providing college educations to their consituents, regardless of income, would be part of their missions.

Amorymeltzer 11y ago
It's worth noting that Vassar, at #8, is the leading Private university on this list; Vassar was #1 last year. The difference? Last year only listed schools with 4-year grad rate of 75%, this year used a 75% 5-year rate ( http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/17/upshot/college-access-index-2015-the-details.html http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/17/upshot/college-access-inde... ); the former only allowed two public schools. That bears repeating: a 4-year, 75% graduation rate was better than almost EVERY public school in the country. By that measure, the University of California doesn't even make the list.
- digikata 11y ago
  If you take the Pell Grant share as a rough indication of proportion of students that might get drop out or stretch out their study over longer times due to financial straits, Vassar has a 22% share vs 40% for UC Irvine this year. Also Vassar shows an endowment per student of 32x the top public university. So 4 year 75% grad rate is great, but note that the achievement is in the context of a smaller proportion of pressured students and access to much higher resources.
  - Amorymeltzer 11y ago
    My comment was more to compare last year's results and note why they were so different. The criteria changed, that's worth paying attention to. To a student, though, graduation rate is a very important number. There's some interesting info here on graduation rates at the UCs, broken down by pell and non-pell over 4, 5, and 6 years: http://accountability.universityofcalifornia.edu/2015/chapters/chapter-3.html#3.1.1 http://accountability.universityofcalifornia.edu/2015/chapte... Basically, there's a sizable but variable difference in 4-year graduation rate between pell and non-pell, but that all but vanishes in the 5- and 6-year rates. To your second point, of course. Harvard/Yale/Princeton/Stanford have over a million USD per student, no public school can compare to private on those ends.

Amorymeltzer 11y ago

It's worth noting that Vassar, at #8, is the leading Private university on this list; Vassar was #1 last year. The difference? Last year only listed schools with 4-year grad rate of 75%, this year used a 75% 5-year rate ( http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/17/upshot/college-access-index-2015-the-details.html http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/17/upshot/college-access-inde... ); the former only allowed two public schools. That bears repeating: a 4-year, 75% graduation rate was better than almost EVERY public school in the country. By that measure, the University of California doesn't even make the list.

digikata 11y ago
If you take the Pell Grant share as a rough indication of proportion of students that might get drop out or stretch out their study over longer times due to financial straits, Vassar has a 22% share vs 40% for UC Irvine this year. Also Vassar shows an endowment per student of 32x the top public university. So 4 year 75% grad rate is great, but note that the achievement is in the context of a smaller proportion of pressured students and access to much higher resources.
- Amorymeltzer 11y ago
  My comment was more to compare last year's results and note why they were so different. The criteria changed, that's worth paying attention to. To a student, though, graduation rate is a very important number. There's some interesting info here on graduation rates at the UCs, broken down by pell and non-pell over 4, 5, and 6 years: http://accountability.universityofcalifornia.edu/2015/chapters/chapter-3.html#3.1.1 http://accountability.universityofcalifornia.edu/2015/chapte... Basically, there's a sizable but variable difference in 4-year graduation rate between pell and non-pell, but that all but vanishes in the 5- and 6-year rates. To your second point, of course. Harvard/Yale/Princeton/Stanford have over a million USD per student, no public school can compare to private on those ends.