Texas State Ranked 12th Among Top Western Universities
By: Exsar Arguello
Texas State was ranked 12th among public universities in the western region of the United States by U.S. News & World Report.
The university is the only Texas institution in the top 15. The universities on the list were ranked based on factors unrelated to academia such as tuition costs, student-to-faculty ratios and freshman retention rates.
Michael Heintze, associate vice president for enrollment management, said he has “mixed feelings” about how university ranking systems work.
“Ranking systems can mislead families and students (in) some respects on what a university truly has to offer,” Heintze said.
Choosing a university involves more than looking at rankings, he said.
Dan Brown, dean of University College, said no list of rankings is completely “accurate or perfect.”
“This is a good list since most ranking systems like this are usually over-represented with private schools, so it’s good to see where we rank with our public peers,” Brown said.
Heintze said U.S. News has received criticism in the past for its ranking system and is known as the “academic beauty contest” due to close rankings of higher institutions like Harvard and Yale.
“When you have different schools that are all very close in terms of quality to each other, someone has to be first and someone has to be last,” Heintze said. “I think it does a disservice to those institutions that are very closely ranked.”
Heintze said those in charge of ranking universities do not consider different institutions working with “inner-city” students who are socially and economically challenged.
The work done by inner-city institutions is critical in helping students become successful once they graduate, Heintze said. The contributions of these institutions are not necessarily “less important” than those of Ivy League schools.
“I think that’s the part the public misses about the significance of higher education,” Heintze said.
Brown’s focus at the university is the Personalized Academic & Career Exploration (P.A.C.E.) program. P.A.C.E. was established to help freshmen adjust to college life and achieve success at the university level.
Brown said no other university has a program as comprehensive as P.A.C.E. Other universities have taken notice and are starting to implement their own programs for freshmen.
“For a school our size, I think we are doing something pretty admirable,” Brown said.
Catarina Dominguez, a P.A.C.E. career counselor, works with freshmen during their first year at the university.
The faculty-to-students ratio helps Bobcats feel more inclined to stay connected to their professors and different programs on campus, Dominguez said.
High rankings show what universities are doing to appear more marketable to those students looking to apply, she said.
However, graduating from a university with high rankings does not guarantee a job, Dominguez said.
“Looking at it just on the career perspective, I think a lot of times what is most important is what the students do while they are in school, like networking and getting good grades,” Dominguez said.
Brown said ranking systems help universities in some aspects, but personal stories and memories made are important. Rankings do not reflect what happens in classrooms and around campus.
Exsar Arguello is a news reporter for the University Star where this story originally published. It is reprinted here through a news partnership between the University Star and Corridor News.
