Bacon's Rebellion

For the Best Value in Higher Ed, Try Virginia

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by

James A. Bacon
in

There are many things wrong with higher education today, and Bacon’s Rebellion will continue to bird-dog the colleges and universities here in the commonwealth. As much criticism as I dish out, it’s only fair to give praise when praise is due. Virginia public institutions, for all their warts, fare very well in the Princeton Review’s 100 Best Value Colleges for 2011.

The Princeton Review, which publishes in conjunction with USA Today,  highlights 50 private and 50 public four-year institutions “that provide high-quality academics at a reasonable price, either by controlling costs or offsetting them with stellar financial packages.”

The University of Virginia ranks No. 1 among public institutions and William & Mary makes No. 7. James Madison and Virginia Tech also make the list of best value publics, although no rank is given. Among private institutions, the University of Richmond makes the cut. If you’re looking for an affordable, quality education at a public university, you can’t do better than the Old Dominion.

— JAB

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7 responses to “For the Best Value in Higher Ed, Try Virginia”

  1. Groveton Avatar
    Groveton

    It’s only a good value if it’s accessible. Tell me what percentage of in-state applicants are accepted as undergraduates to these “good value” public universities and we’ll have more of the whole story.

    My suspicion is that the “good value” (relative to other public universities) has remained strong. However, the accessibility has decreased.

    I believe that there is a growing education gap. I believe that UVA, for example, accepted a higher percentage of in-state applicants 30 years ago than it does today.

  2. larryg Avatar
    larryg

    I found this Headline pretty shocking:

    Student-Loan Debt Surpasses Credit Cards

    Americans owe some $826.5 billion in revolving credit, according to June 2010 figures from the Federal Reserve. (Most of revolving credit is credit-card debt.) Student loans outstanding today — both federal and private — total some $829.785 billion,

    http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2010/08/09/student-loan-debt-surpasses-credit-cards/

    ” The average college student is now more than $20000 in debt at graduation. …”

    http://goo.gl/u3YBm

    back in the day….. you got good grades in HS hoping for a full or partial scholarship… you had a fund you saved up in..by working part time jobs…. you went two years to a community college… and/or you got a part-time job to pay for your college… the goal – to not have to borrow money – a real ‘no no’.

    that would be even more important if you were enrolled in a non-STEM course of study and would have to find a job after college.

    Now days.. people go into hock up to their eyeballs – as they matriculate in courses of study for which there is no strong demand for in the workplace.

    what has happened to people now days. I think they must be putting stupid pills in the bottled water or something.

  3. larryg Avatar
    larryg

    I found this Headline pretty shocking:

    Student-Loan Debt Surpasses Credit Cards

    Americans owe some $826.5 billion in revolving credit, according to June 2010 figures from the Federal Reserve. (Most of revolving credit is credit-card debt.) Student loans outstanding today — both federal and private — total some $829.785 billion,

    blogs[dot]wsj.com/economics/2010/08/09/student-loan-debt-surpasses-credit-cards/

    ” The average college student is now more than $20000 in debt at graduation. …”

    [goo.gl/u3YBm]

    back in the day….. you got good grades in HS hoping for a full or partial scholarship… you had a fund you saved up in..by working part time jobs…. you went two years to a community college… and/or you got a part-time job to pay for your college… the goal – to not have to borrow money – a real ‘no no’.

    that would be even more important if you were enrolled in a non-STEM course of study and would have to find a job after college.

    Now days.. people go into hock up to their eyeballs – as they matriculate in courses of study for which there is no strong demand for in the workplace.

    what has happened to people now days. I think they must be putting stupid pills in the bottled water or something.

  4. tod Avatar
    tod

    Groveton, please visit:

    http://research.schev.edu/enrollment/B8_Report_new.asp
    and
    http://research.schev.edu/enrollment/B8a_Report.ASP

    Unfortunately, the second report does not break out rates by domicile status.

    If you want to look at the state-level data by locality, you can also use:
    http://research.schev.edu/enrollment/b8_admissions_locality.asp
    We’ll likely be expanding this last report to break down by institution with the implementation of the new website.

  5. Groveton Avatar
    Groveton

    Tod:

    Wow. Very good information. 90+% of the applicants from Wise County are accepted as first time freshmen at some public university while only 60+% of those from Fairfax County are accepted?

    Let me predict the counter-argument …

    Is there any place where the average SAT scores by locality (accepted and rejected) are stored?

  6. Groveton Avatar
    Groveton

    Tod:

    Am I doing something wrong or does the data for …

    http://research.schev.edu/enrollment/B8a_Report.ASP

    stop at the year 2000?

  7. tod Avatar
    tod

    Groveton, no, you are not wrong. The data collection that report was based on ended in 2000 as a concession to the institutions reduce reporting burden. It was replaced with a simpler, aggregated report in 2004, which is the first link.

    As for test scores by locality, no, those would only be possible for enrolled students and we would have to use some work to ensure cell sizes were large enough to avoid possibly compromising student information.

    As for Wise vs. Fairfax, let me just suggest that there are intervening activities. The first is that most of the students from Wise go to UVa-Wise, which not does have standards comparable to its parent institution. The second is that the Restructuring Act of 2005 requires four-year institutions to increase enrollment of students from historically under-represented populations – that included cities/counties in the bottom quintile of enrollment as a percentage of population in four-year public institutions.

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