Update -2022 USNWR Rankings

Supposed to come out tomorrow.

We were 171st last year. We may have dropped a bit this year at 185th. See:

Texas Tech, which was 187th last year, apparently is 218th this year.

It appears they added 80 schools into the national university category, which probably accounts for our drop. Last year, the category had 301 schools and the bottom of the list was grouped at 230-301. This year, the bottom group is 293-381.

Here’s a complete rundown. Last year’s rankings on the left. This year’s on the right:

In Texas:
16 - Rice - 17
49 - UT - 48
59 - SMU - 64
66 - A&M - 70
78 - Baylor - 79
80 - TCU - 97
129 - UT-Dallas - 147
171 - UH - 185
187 - Texas Tech - 218

American Athletic Conference Rankings
44 - Tulane - 40
59 - SMU - 64
63 - UConn - 64
106 - Tulsa - 121
106 - Temple - 104
124 - USF - 104
147 - Cincinnati - 139
165 - UCF - 166
171 - UH - 185
194 - ECU - 228
230-301 - Memphis - 272
230-301 - Wichita State - 293-381
22 in National Liberal Arts Colleges - Navy - 17

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2020 US News rankings, yet they’re still using our 6-year graduation rate from 2017. 2018 was 6% higher, which is pretty significant, and 2019 should see a small bump on top of that. 6 year graduation rates make up 17.5% of a school’s score on USNWR. We’d probably be ranked a good bit higher if they used up to date info.

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Houston is the 4th best public school in the state (behind UT, A&M, UT-Dallas), and 5th best value school in the state (behind Rice, Baylor, A&M & TCU)

In other words, a better value than UT, UT-Dallas (and SMU).

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I don’t subcribe to their college compass, so I can’t see the 6-year rate they are using.

I do see the 4-year rate (30%) listed on the overview. That’s from the class of 2012,, which is the most recent for a 6-year rate.

However, 2014 is the most recent for a 4-year rate, and at 36% is 6% higher than what USNWR lists on the overview page.

Do you have access to their college compass? What do they list as our 6-year rate? 60% is the latest number (class of 2012). The class of 2011 graduated at 54% within 6 years.

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I don’t have access to the college compass, but they have it listed on their indicators page. They have the 6 year graduation rate at 54%. The annoying thing is that they clearly have access to more recent data, because just underneath that they have grad rates for students on Pell grants at 56% and students not on Pell grants at 62%. That has to be newer data, otherwise they couldn’t both be higher than the total graduation rate they have listed.

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US News’ classification of Navy as a liberal arts college is bizarro.

A majority of its students are engineering and science majors.

See here.

Quote: For the Naval Academy Class of 2013 and beyond, at least 65% of those graduates commissioned into the U.S. Navy must complete academic majors in science, technology, engineering, or mathematics disciplines.

Only West Point has a majority of liberal arts majors, among service academies.

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The reporters at USNWR do not know what they are talking about. They favor private schools to boot.

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Natural sciences and mathematics are liberal arts majors

Engineering is bigger there BY FAR.

It’s NOT a liberal arts college.

https://twitter.com/TheDailyCougar/status/1179508937240055809?s=19

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Looks like we jumped 9 spots to 176 this year. It’s progress, but I wish we’d climb faster.

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It will take promotional support for USNWR in some form or other to pass all those weaker schools ranked ahead of us.

The good news is that the gap between UH and Tech is widening (I believe they were something like #212 this year).

And it’s going to get even wider once the medical school has full enrollment.

I don’t think the med. school will help in this regard a lot. But in time, I’d suppose it will help our research dollars increase.

US News just put out an explanation of its ratings and noted some recent changes. It’s very interesting. I don’t like that reputation accounts for 20 percent. That’s always been a complaint with lots of people.

But a lot of these factors are within our control. And UH has improved many of these areas in the past decade or two.

But we have to remember that other schools are trying to improve their rankings, as well. The climb will get tougher as we move up–it’s just the nature of the process.

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Ive never even heard of some of those schools ahead of us. We should be top 100 on perception alone.

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I don’t think anyone here likes UT, but the fact that the UC public system has 5 schools ahead of Texas’ flagship institution should embarrass everyone in Texas. There needs to be 1) better oversight to the PUF 2) a thorough re-appraisal of our state system along with recommendations for improvement.

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Years ago I checked the publishing records of the faculty in one of the departments at one of those schools. Only two profs could have gotten tenure at UH. The college is actually a finishing school for
rich kids while the profs wear suede shoes and sweaters.and give the same lectures until retirement.

Yeah you would think that, but as many of us have posted on this site, UT would rather be a big fish in a small pond than share the wealth or glory with any other school, whether it be TAMU, UH, Tech, or other UT campuses. Heck, it must stick in their craw that Rice was ranked ahead of them. Rice better watch out; I am sure there is an investigation coming shortly.

Ultimately, the Texas government and public officials must take the lead on this and make it clear that the goal is to get UH, UT-D, Tech and UNT to top 100 status in the next 10-15 years, and they have to back up that commitment with $$$$!

I went to the site and did some “comparison shopping” with regards to my oldest, who will be going to college in a few years. One thing I noticed in comparing UH to similar schools is that our 4 year graduation rate is extremely low. Georgia Tech, Pitt, Rutgers, Maryland, Louisville, Buffalo, Etc., all public schools in large urban settings have 4 year graduation rates in the 50% range or higher. Most are in the 70% range.

If we are going to move up in ranking, we need to fix that.

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