Rice drops to fifth on Kiplinger's best values list

By Joyce Yao     3/27/08 7:00pm

Rice University was ranked fifth on the list of "Best Values in Private Colleges" in the April 2008 Kiplinger's Personal Finance magazine. Rice is preceded by California Institute Technology, Yale University, Princeton University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology in order of the rankings, followed by Harvard University, Dartmouth College, Duke University and Emory University. Kiplinger's publishes a ranking of the best value colleges and universities every two years, in which academic quality and affordability are measured, with the latter counting for a third of the ranking total. Its 2006 report ranked Rice fourth on the list of best value colleges.

Vice President for Finance Kathy Collins said this fall in rank can be attributed to the increase in value among the preceding four universities.

"I think part of it is that Princeton and maybe MIT moved up, and it was during this time that Princeton was more aggressive on financial aid in terms of eliminating loans," Collins said. "The areas we differ from Princeton [on Kiplinger's] are selectivity, graduation rates and debt."

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However, she said it is not unusual for universities to move around among the top ranks.

"We've been in the top five for the last five times [in Kiplinger's] rankings," Collins said. "With rankings, there's always going to be movement from year to year. The most important thing is to stay in that top group."

Kiplinger's reviews colleges and universities based on their student-faculty ratios, student SAT scores and graduation rates, as well as tuition and the amount of aid given to students.

Despite the change in Rice's ranking, Collins said she thinks Rice will still have a very strong applicant pool in the future.

"I think it's important to pay attention to rankings, but I think Rice needs to be concerned about the total scope of activities in terms of the quality of students we recruit and the quality of the faculty that are here," Collins said.

She also said the rankings are subjective and depend on the weight that Kiplinger's assigns each measured variable.

"I think it's impressive that we're in the top five, because the schools above us have much larger endowments," Collins said.

Collins said Rice recently made important changes to its student financial aid. In January, Rice doubled its no-loan threshold so students with family incomes of up to $60,000 will not have to take out loans. Since students typically receive need-based aid through work-study, student loans and grants, Collins said this move will increase the grant that would otherwise be a loan.

"It will increase our financial aid costs, and it may also attract more students at that income level," Collins said.

However, she said student financial services do not focus on rankings.

"Their job is to help students on their financial aid, do analyses for those eligible for need-based aid . and help students get information about loans," she said.

Will Rice College sophomore Varun Kumar said he was surprised upon hearing about Rice's value ranking.

"Five years ago I would have understood why we were ranked so high up, but with recent tuition hikes I'm frankly very surprised that we're still in the top five," Kumar said.

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