A year after UB's drop from tier two to tier three of national universities in the U.S. News & World Report college rankings, the university has jumped back up into the second tier.
UB returned to its 2000 "academic reputation" score of 3.1 out of 5.0 possible points in the latest rankings, up enough from last year's score of 3.0 to catapult the school back into the second tier of American institutions.
The move has generated surprisingly little reaction on campus, a fact noted by Provost Elizabeth Capaldi.
"I am interested that there has been little reaction to UB's move up to the second tier, while there was great distress last year about the move from tier two to tier three," she stated in an e-mail. "Maybe we are more knowledgeable than last year about the U.S. News rankings and what they can tell us."
Last year, administrators raised concerns about the method of rating schools utilized by U.S. News, noting specifically that the magazine's formula calculation changes every year.
"Since we're not really big fans of the procedure to begin with, it's one of those things we're always happy to do better than worse," said Dennis Black, vice president for Student Affairs. Black classified the rankings as one of the "formula-driven review books that use math to quantify quality."
Capaldi and Black both consider the rankings - and others of its ilk - an inaccurate method of gauging a university's true ability to serve its students. Black pointed out that students frequently complain about being reduced to little more than numbers in a giant university, and noted that the U.S. News report did exactly that to educational systems across the nation.
The provost contends the ranking calculation tends to favor private schools over public universities.
"U.S. News also over-rates expenditures per student [higher at private universities, which are also more expensive, but not necessarily better], selectivity in admissions [which discriminates against public universities], and reputation rankings, which are flawed and change very, very slowly," stated Capaldi.
While Black said that UB is improving in the areas that the U.S. News and other companies measure for their rankings, "we don't [make changes] at all to make the U.S. News happy."
Student Association President Christian Oliver said that in his experience, "not much has changed," whether the university was ranked tier two or tier three.
"I believe they actually have increased standards for incoming freshmen," he added.
The U.S. News report backs up Oliver's observation. In 1999, UB's acceptance rate was 72 percent, but has dropped to 68 percent in the current listings.
In the latest U.S. News college rankings, UB is listed as the 77th best engineering program/department and the 71st best business program.
