Monmouth jumps, Rider stumbles in U.S. News rankings

And how much sleep do college administrators lose waiting for the newest ones to come out?

Randy Bergmann
Asbury Park Press

New Jersey is blessed with some excellent colleges and universities. And public or private, big or small, they all have one thing in common: They want college rankings to accurately reflect what they believe to be their special qualities. Rankings matter, but some rankings matter more than others. Perhaps none matter more than U.S. News' Best Colleges, which released its much anticipated 2018 rankings today.

Among New Jersey colleges, the biggest gainers from the 2017 U.S News rankings were Monmouth University, which moved from 38th to 28th among the 195 schools in the Best Regional Universities North category, and Stockton University, which improved from 51st to 41st in the same category.

Rider University and Ramapo College had the sharpest drops.  Rider, whose financial troubles forced it to put its Westminster Choir College up for sale, eliminate several courses and continue its faculty wage freeze, fell from 23rd to 34th in the Regional Universities North category. Ramapo fell from 37th to 27th in the same category.

Princeton University held onto its No. 1 ranking in the National Universities category, ahead of Harvard, University of Chicago and Yale, and the College of New Jersey dropped one spot, from third to fourth, in the Best Regional Universities division. Two New Jersey colleges, Seton Hall and Rowan University, were moved into the National Universities category for the first time, and finished 124th and 171st, respectively.

Two other New Jersey schools in the National category, which includes 310 universities, fell in the rankings -- NJIT (135 to 140) and Montclair State (176 to 187). 

Only three other New Jersey colleges had increases or decreases of more than two places in the rankings -- Georgian Court and College of Saint Elizabeth, which fell from 122 to 137 in the Regional North division, and Kean University, which was 137 in the same division after previously being unranked.

While the number of magazines, websites and other organizations rating colleges has proliferated in recent years, most college administrators surveyed by The Press agreed that U.S. News'  Best Colleges and Princeton Review's Best 382 Colleges seemed to have the greatest impact.

“One publication we regard as most important is U.S. News, because it is the originator, the first to try to quantify college quality, and it is still very well regarded by our market,” said Robert D. McCaig, vice president for enrollment management at Monmouth University. “Increasingly, however, our market is looking closely at the Princeton Review’s Best 382 Colleges guide. While U.S. News is strictly quantitative, Princeton Review brings in qualitative information that seems to resonate with families.”

But almost all of the administrators agreed that relying on just one or two rankings wasn’t enough to get an accurate reading of a college’s worth or suitability for individual students. The criteria used can differ widely, as evidenced by the variety of rankings accorded many New Jersey colleges and universities in charts on this page. The only college or university to have consistent ratings across the board and over time is Princeton University, which rarely falls out of the top five nationally. In 2017, U.S. News ranked it No. 1.

Woodrow Wilson Hall at Monmouth  University.

“While Princeton appreciates being ranked highly in a wide range of surveys, we focus on our research and teaching mission,” said Daniel Day, the university’s assistant vice president for communications. “We know that many prospective parents and students find the rankings to be useful tools, yet none of them can fully capture the distinctive nature of any institution.”

RELATED: Do rankings matter to college administrators? You bet

True, and no one is suggesting that rankings are the be-all and end-all. But clearly they matter. College marketing departments are quick to send out press releases any time any of more than a dozen ranking entities project them in a favorable light. Most colleges in New Jersey can come up with at least one set of rankings worth boasting about. They also are likely to find others that they wish few prospective parents and their college-bound teens will never see.

The rankings several New Jersey schools cited to bolster their credentials included Washington Monthly College Guide and Rankings, The Times/Wall Street Journal Higher Education Rankings, College Choice,  PayScale.com’s College ROI Report on Best Value CollegesKiplinger’s Personal Finance Magazine and Colleges of Distinction.

Georgian Court, for instance, pointed to its placement in Washington Monthly magazine's Best Bang for the Buck Colleges. It was ranked 49th among Northeast schools, putting it in the top 15 percent of the 385 regional colleges and universities listed as Best Bangs for the Buck 

Rankings are particularly important to New Jersey schools that have experienced sharp enrollment declines in recent years — a group that includes most of the state’s smaller private universities, including Georgian Court, Centenary UniversityThe College of Saint Elizabeth, Drew University and Rider University. The number of college-age students has been in decline. That, coupled with rising college costs and stagnant incomes for many middle-class families, has taken a toll on enrollment and colleges' financial health. As a result, the competition for students has become even more intense, elevating the importance of rankings.

Good rankings are of even greater concern to New Jersey schools drawing on similar sets of prospective students, such as Rider and Monmouth University, and the smaller state-supported schools, such as College of New Jersey, Ramapo College and Stockton University. 

Because the various rankings for colleges can vary so widely, it's difficult to choose one on the basis of just one or two alone. Rider University, for instance,was ranked in the top 12 percent of U.S. News’ Best Regional Universities North group in 2017, behind only College of New Jersey and a notch behind Rowan University, but ahead of Ramapo College, Monmouth University, Seton Hall, Stockton University and 12 other four-year colleges in the state. It also is one of just nine New Jersey colleges listed among the Princeton Review’s 382 Best Colleges for 2017.

Alexander Hall at Princeton University.

But Rider, which in the 2018 rankings now trails Monmouth University, lags behind many other colleges it was ahead of in the U.S. News and Princeton Review rankings when the criterion is heavily weighted toward affordability. 

There are a host of considerations that come into play when trying to decide which college to attend: Cost. Access to financial aid. Location. School size. Strengths in various disciplines. It can get confusing, and the various criteria used by some ranking organizations, and the multiplicity of the organizations themselves, can make it even more so.

U.S. News' criteria include graduation and retention rates,  academic reputation, student selectivity, faculty resources and compensation, financial aid, alumni giving, class size and expenditure per student. 

Niche, for instance, which uses feedback from students and families as factors in its ratings, gives letter grades to institutions on 12 factors — academics, diversity, athletics, professors, dorms, student life, value, campus, party scene, locations, campus food and safety. 

College Choice's metrics include graduation rate, institutional reputation, student-to-faculty ratio, endowment size, tuition costs, average student indebtedness after graduation and graduates' expected early career salary.

While conceding the importance of college rankings, Jose Cardona, vice president for media relations at Rowan University, puts them into perspective.

"Rankings in general are helpful for students and parents, but it’s just one data point that they use in their overall decision about attending an institution," he said. "We, as a university, pay attention to all the rankings, but the only way to make a significant impact in any of them is for the university to embrace real change. Nibbling around the edges doesn’t get you too far. With that said, not every institution has the same mission or challenges so it’s a bit unfair to try to compare every institution head to head."

For Brielle Bryan, a junior marketing major from Freehold, rankings aren't deal breakers.

"College rankings matter to a certain extent. There are a lot of factors that go into deciding where a student will attend college. A student's financial situation, home life, and high school education can all play a role," she said. "I think that a college's rankings help the students who are accepted to multiple schools and can't decide which one is the best to attend. In that sense, and I hate to say a cliche, I think that a college's ranking are like the icing on the cake —- a school can have many layers but it's the icing or the ratings that makes it look so appealing."

Randy Bergmann is editorial page editor of the Asbury Park Press.