MU ranks 88th on U.S. best colleges list
MU dropped one spot from its ranking on last year's list.
Published Sept. 1, 2006
With the arrival of the U.S. News & World Report's America's Best College's 2007 list, the rivalry between MU and the University of Kansas has stepped off of the playing field and into the classroom.
MU is now tied with KU for the 88th spot on the list. MU dropped one place in the annual rankings since last year, and KU moved up six places.
Princeton University tops the list this year, followed by Harvard and Yale universities.
Among schools in the Big 12, MU attained the sixth highest ranking. The University of Texas finished first in the conference, but only 47th nationally. Texas A&M, Colorado, Iowa State and Baylor also finished higher than MU.
The list serves to grade the schools in the quality of education they provide to students based on 15 categories related to academic excellence. These categories vary from class size and freshman retention rates to alumni donations and student-to-faculty ratios. Some categories, such as freshman retention rate, are based on averages from the last four years' data.
Despite moving down in the rankings, MU spokesman Christian Basi took little stock in the report.
"We don't promote college rankings that appear in national publications," Basi said. "The rankings tend to change each year because of a change in the categories and the way they are calculated from year to year."
Robert Morse, director of data research at U.S. News & World Report, said U.S. News has changed its criteria once in the past seven years.
"Using an arbitrary formula and sniffing the wind for what looks good at the time is not representative of what U.S. News does," Morse said.
Basi said MU is only concerned with its own performance.
"Our goals are to provide a world-class education for our students, support our researchers, spread knowledge throughout the state of Missouri through our extension programs and maintain our ability to be an economic engine for the state," he said.
Missouri Students Association President John Andersen said he does not agree with the No. 88 ranking.
"You don't ever want to see a drop, but it isn't a significant drop," Andersen said. "I don't put much weight into the ranking."
Andersen said that if incoming students were to measure the professors and their publishing and research and the fact that MU is one of 31 members of the Association of American Universities, MU would be ranked higher in their mind.
"If there's one school I want to be ahead of, it's KU," Andersen said.
On the other side of the rivalry, KU spokesman Todd Cohen said it was more important for the school to be on the list than where it actually ranked.
"Some of the recent good news is just starting to show up in the rankings," Cohen said.
He said the school plans to keep the momentum going into the future.
"We are making a lot of investments in technology, increasing faculty and making our international programs better," Cohen said.
Despite the academic success, Cohen said, "most students probably care more about the basketball score."
U.S. News & World Report has published the America's Best Colleges list every year since 1987.