To Be a “Best Value,” Charge Higher Tuition

In addition to the better-known college rankings from U.S. News & World Report, the magazine also publishes a listing of “Best Value” colleges. The listing seems helpful enough, with the goal of highlighting colleges which are a good value for students and their families. However, this list rewards colleges for charging higher tuition and being more selective, factors that are not necessarily associated with true educational effectiveness.

U.S. News uses dubious methodology to calculate its Best Value list (a more detailed explanation can be found here). Before I get into the rankings components, there are two serious flaws with the methodology. First, colleges are only eligible to be on the list if they are approximately in the top half of the overall rankings. Since we already know that the rankings better measure prestige than educational effectiveness, the best value list must be taken with a shaker of salt right away. Additionally, for public colleges, U.S. News uses the cost of attendance for out-of-state students, despite the fact that the vast majority of students come from in-state. It is true that relatively more students at elite public universities (like the University of Wisconsin-Madison) come from out of state, but even here over 70% of freshmen come from Wisconsin or Minnesota. This decision inflates the cost of attending public institutions and thus shoves them farther down the list

The rankings components are as follows:

(1) “Ratio of quality to price”—60%. This is the score on the U.S. News ranking (their measure of quality) divided by the net price of attendance, which is the cost of attendance less need-based financial aid. It is similar to what I did in the Washington Monthly rankings to calculate the cost-adjusted graduation rate measure. This measure has some merits, but suffers from the flaws of a prestige-based numerator and a net price of attendance that is biased toward private institutions.

(2) The percentage of undergraduates receiving need-based grants—25%. This measure rewards colleges with lots of Pell Grant recipients (which is just fine) as well as colleges with large endowments or high posted tuition which can offer lots of grants (which isn’t related to the actual price a student pays). If every student with a household income of under one million dollars received a $5 need-based grant, a college would look good on this measure…this measure can be gamed.

(3) Average discount—15%. This is the average amount of need-based grants divided by the net price of attendance. This certainly rewards colleges with high posted tuition and lots of financial aid.

Once again, I don’t focus on the actual rankings, but I will say that the top of the list is dominated by elite private colleges with massive endowments. Daniel Luzer of Washington Monthly (with whom I’ve had the pleasure of working over the past six months) has a good take on the top of the Best Value list. He notes that although these well-endowed institutions do provide a lot of financial aid to needy students, they don’t educate too many of these students.

I am glad that the 800-pound gorilla in the college rankings game is thinking about whether a college is a good value to students, but their methodological choices mean that colleges which are really educating students in a cost-effective manner are not being rewarded.

Author: Robert

I am an a professor at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville who studies higher education finance, accountability policies and practices, and student financial aid. All opinions expressed here are my own. View all posts by Robert