U.S. News ranking changes impact Iowa university placements

IOWA CITY — On U.S. News & World Report’s list of “2024 Best Colleges” — which involved “the most significant methodological change in the rankings’ history” following widespread criticism of its wealth- and prestige-favoring metrics — Iowa’s public universities experienced meaningful movement, both up and down the charts.

The University of Iowa — which had made gains from No. 88 to No. 83 last year among “national universities” with a full range of undergraduate, master’s, and doctoral degrees — fell to No. 93 on the new list that used the revised metrics and weights.

That’s the lowest UI ranking in at least a decade and more than 20 spots below its ranking a decade ago in 2013, when it came in at No. 72. Among just public universities nationally, UI slipped from No. 35 last year to No. 47 on the new list made public Monday — which also marked its lowest placement in a decade and nearly 20 spots below its No. 29 public-university spot in 2013.

“We’re always happy to be recognized for what we do and who we are,” UI President Barbara Wilson said in a statement on the new rankings, which used up to 19 measures of academic quality to assess 439 institutions for its “national universities” category — including 227 public and 208 private schools.

“Boiling all of that down to a single ranking is tricky though,” Wilson said. “When such a ranking changes dramatically from one year to the next, we have to remind people that formulas can be altered by an outside organization, but we are still the same exceptional research-intensive, comprehensively strong, Big Ten university that we were last year.”

Iowa State University appeared to benefit from the changes, watching its national ranking improve 12 spots form No. 127 to No. 115. And although the University of Northern Iowa isn’t ranked in the national category, its regional ranking among 167 universities in the Midwest also climbed from No. 17 to No. 11.

New metrics consider graduates’ debt load, success

Among its biggest methodology changes this year is U.S. News’ heightened emphasis on graduation rates and social mobility — a metric that assesses how well schools serve economically disadvantaged students by calculating graduation rates of Pell-awarded and first-generation students.

“More than 50 percent of an institution’s rank now comprises varying outcome measures related to success in enrolling and graduating students from all backgrounds with manageable debt and postgraduate success,” according to U.S. News officials.

Additionally, the rankings cut five factors with “growing logistical issues,” including class size, faculty with terminal degrees, high school class standing, alumni giving, and the proportion of graduates who borrow federal loans.

“The significant changes in this year’s methodology are part of the ongoing evolution to make sure our rankings capture what is most important for students as they compare colleges and select the school that is right for them,” U.S. News Executive Chairman and CEO Eric Gertler said in a statement.

The publication in recent months faced a wave of criticism from esteemed universities — led by boycotts from Yale and Harvard law schools, Harvard Medical School, and the likes of Stanford, Georgetown, Columbia, and the University of California, Berkeley. Among their concerns was the hefty reliance on reputation and a questionnaire, along with the emphasis on standardized test scores and other metrics that made it harder to admit a diverse student body and still perform well in the rankings.

Despite the rankings’ many changes this year, U.S. News did not adjust the weight of one metric given strong consideration year after year — “peer assessment,” which accounts for 20 percent of a national university’s score.

All three of Iowa’s public universities have continued to participate in the U.S. News rankings by providing the requested and required data — including for the publication’s rankings of graduate schools, hospitals, and children’s hospitals.

But UI President Wilson said the big methodology changes can be “misleading.”

“If you look at the U.S. News best colleges list, it looks like somehow we have really fallen,” she said. “That’s why it’s important for us to focus on our core values as an institution, rather than get too entangled in rankings.”

Among those core values is accessibility — a value central to all three of Iowa’s public universities, which operate by a “regent admission index” that promises admission to any Iowa-based applicant that achieves a certain “RAI” score based on things like grade-point average, test scores, and classes taken.

“If you look at the top 100 schools on the U.S. News list that accept more than 85 percent of applicants, Iowa is right there at the top,” Wilson said. “If you look at the top 100 schools on the list with the lowest tuition and fees, Iowa is right there near the top.”

The University of Iowa in fall 2021 — the most recent data available through the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System — admitted 86 percent of its 22,434 applicants, among the highest in the Big Ten and above many of its peers, as identified by the Board of Regents.

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, one of UI’s regent-assigned peers, admitted 20 percent of its 50,729 applicants that year. University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign admitted 60 percent of its applicants.

All but three of Iowa’s peer institutions saw their rankings improve under the new metrics, including North Carolina, which climbed from No. 29 to No. 22 nationally and Illinois, which jumped from No. 41 to No. 35.

Iowa’s highest-ranked peer is the University of Michigan, which improved from No. 25 to No. 21. Its peer that made the biggest jump this year was Michigan State University, arriving at No. 60 from No. 77 — even with its high acceptance rate of 83 percent.

And UI — despite some drops — still ranked No. 5 in the nation in the writing disciplines, down from its No. 2 spot last year. Its undergraduate nursing programs ranked No. 4 in the nation.

Vanessa Miller covers higher education for The Gazette.

Comments: (319) 339-3158; vanessa.miller@thegazette.com