SAU ranked top Midwest university

by: Sam Bailey
Staff Writer

St. Ambrose University was ranked 50^th in the 2006 U.S. News and World Report ranking of the top midwestern universities with master's degree programs.

Ambrose was the highest private Iowa university on the list, and the second highest Iowa institution.

This ranking joins SAU’s previous designation as a "Best in the Midwest" school by The Princeton Review, another educational ranking service. St. Ambrose was tied with three other schools in the ranking, including the University of Wisconsin at Platteville, the University of Wisconsin - Whitewater, and Grand Valley State University.

According to their website, U.S. News and World Report uses a specific methodology to rank all colleges. They first separate the institutions by specialty or mission, then they gather information in 15 categories, such as retention and graduation rates, and assign each category a specific weight based on their importance. Finally the schools are assigned a rank based on the weighted average of the indicators.

Though U.S News and World Report says their rankings are an important tool in selecting a college, SAU President Edward Rogalski disagrees.

"I’m not a big fan of rankings when it comes to colleges," Rogalski said. "They are fairly subjective, and fail to take into account several important factors."

In addition, Rogalski cites the lack of student concerns used in the rankings. He says the rankings do not adequately reflect the experiences of students, and their expectations.

"Rankings can never really be effective. Institutions are complex, and these rankings can not statistically represent all of these complexities, particularly student experiences." Rogalski said.

Other factors used in ranking the institutions are alumni giving rates, financial resources, and peer review. With peer review, heads of colleges are asked to review their rivals on many of the factors previously mentioned.

According to Rogalski, St. Ambrose has excelled in some areas, such as graduation rates and retention, while being penalized by lower financial resources than other institutions.

Some SAU students seemed unconcerned with the rankings. Senior Nick Alecsyacek, who is majoring in criminal justice, says he never even checked to see the rankings when selecting a school.

"It wasn’t that important to me. When I was deciding on where to [attend college], I looked at location and the strength of the criminal justice program," Alecsyacek said. "St. Ambrose fit the bill on both, so I couldn’t care less what [the rankings] said."

Alecsyacek was not alone. Many students say they never checked the relative rankings of universities when making a decision. Most cited the size, location, and specialties of St. Ambrose as helping to make their decision. According to Rogalski, these are just some of the factors that distinguish SAU as an educational institution.

"The quality of educational experience and our student satisfaction is very high here, and no ranking system can adequately represent that," Rogalski said. "We like to think that we 'out care’ the competition."