A closer look at recently released institutional rankings

As you are probably aware, I track institutional rankings pretty closely. There has been a couple of significant rankings released in the last couple of weeks that paint Pitt is a pretty good light. I’ll take a closer look at these below.

National Merit and Achievement Award winners numbers for ’07 were released earlier this week. These are two nationwide high school academic competitions run by the same organization, the later competition being specifically for African-American students. The total of National Merit and National Achievement scholars is a measure of undergraduate excellence used in the The Center’s annual study, “The Top American Research Universities”. [http://mup.asu.edu/]

Here are Pitt’s trend numbers over the last couple of years (*2006 does not include numbers of National Achievement winners, simply because I haven’t had time to track them down).

Year: total winners
2007: 30
2006: 14*
2005: 21
2004: 23
2003: 13
2002: 7
2001: 13

National Merit and Achievement finalists are selected on a regional/state-by-state basis, it is worth comparing to other PA institutions.

National Merit, National Achievement; Total
(Numbers in parenthesis indicated the number of scholarships provided to National Merit finalists through individual university funds.)

1. Penn: 115, 30; 145 total
2. CMU: 31, 1; 32 total
3. PITT: 20 (3), 10; 30 total
4. Swarthmore: 20, 5; 25 total
5. PSU: 15 (5), 0; 15 total
6. Bucknell: 8 (6), 0; 8 total
7. Haverford 5, 1; 6 total
8. Bryn Mawr: 5, 0; 5 total
8. Lehigh: 5 (4), 0; 5 total
10. Grove City: 4, 0; 4 total
11. Dickinson College: 3 (3), 0; 3 total
11. Drexel: 2, 1; 3 total
11. Franklin & Marshall: 3 (3), 0; 3 total
12. Lafayette: 2, 0; 2 total
13. Allegheny College: 0, 1; 1 total
13. Geneva: 1, 0; 1 total
13. Muhlenberg: 0, 1; 1 total

Next, onto something I think is fairly impressive. The number of Peace Corps volunteers that is produced per institution. The Peace Corp press release (seen here: http://www.peacecorps.gov/multimedia/pdf/stats/schools2008.pdf) breaks all schools down into 3 categories: large (over 15,000 undergrads), medium between (5,001 & 15000), and small (less than 5000). Pitt, with 17,246 undergrads, finishes 13th among all “big” schools. However, some well known, prestigious institutions fall into the medium category (UVA, Georgetown, Penn, Yale). Among all schools, only 14 in the nation produced more Peace Corp volunteers than Pitt. Pitt's graduate school also ranked 10th among all graduate schools for most alumni that serve as Peace Corps volunteers. Considering Pitt's size compared to some other “big” schools on that list, it speaks volumes for the character of our students.

Here is a Top 30 ranking of the top overall Peace Corp producers among universities of all sizes.
1. Washington 113
2. Wisconsin 99
3. Colorado 94
4. UNC 81
5. Michigan St 80
6. Michigan 80
7. Texas 78
8. Cal-Berkley 75
9. Virginia 72
10. Minnesota 71
11. Oregon 67
12. George Washington 66
13. Boston University 60
14. Colorado St 57
15. PITT 54
16. Indiana 53
16. James Madison 53
16. Western Washington Univ 53
19. Cornell 52
20. Illinois 51
20. William & Mary 51
22. Florida 50
22. UC-Santa Cruz 50
24. Cal-Santa Barbara 48
25. Arizona St. 46
25. UC-San Diego 46
27. Penn State 45
27. UC-Davis 45
28. American 45
30. Purdue 44
30. UCLA 44


Finally, the National Institute of Health (NIH) released their updated figures for funding among institutions for fiscal year 2006. NIH no longer releases ranking lists as they have done previously, citing the difficulty in tracking awards to across multiple investigators/departments and the development of web based analysis and downloadable data (available here) that allows you to generate your own reports. Since 1997, Pitt has been ranked in the top 10 of all institutions. This is incredibly impressive, considering these awards are based on a highly competitive peer review system in which the grants that are submitted for review are in competition with those from other institutions in the same subject area. In addition, over the last several years, funding levels have stalled which has in actuality lead to a decrease in available NIH funding at a time when applications for research grants has doubled.

In a recent press release (http://mac10.umc.pitt.edu/u/FMPro?-db=ustory&-lay=a&-format=d.html&storyid=7904&-Find), Pitt tabulates its standing by combining all NIH funding for itself and its affiliates which consists of associated institutions in the geographical area (such as Magee and the Pittsburgh Tissue Engineering Institute). It is very hard to combine this on my own to check for accuracy, as I do not have easily access or time to identify all the possible affiliates for other universities. Pitt released the following rankings for total overall money for institution+affiliates:
1. Harvard
2. Johns Hopkins
3. University of Pennsylvania
4. Cal-San Francisco
5. PITT ($447 million)
6. UCLA
7. Duke
8. Michigan
9. Washington University

This is highly impressive. Pitt also mentions that for total number of awarded grants (each having a separate peer review process), Pitt trails only Harvard, John Hopkins, and Penn. This is likewise highly impressive as it is an indication of Pitt’s overall competitiveness in the health, medicine and biosciences fields. I ran some numbers on my own from the NIH data. It does not include affiliated institutions (and so reflects more closely the rankings data released previously by NIH).

School ($ in millions)
1. Johns Hopkins ($598)
2. Penn ($455)
3. U Washington ($449)
4. UCSF ($434)
5. Duke ($431)
6. Michigan ($396)
7. UCLA ($388)
8. Washington Univ (St. Louis) ($378)
9. PITT ($377)
10. Yale ($338)

Running the numbers again, I tried to combine campuses together. For example, I combined Baylor University and Baylor University College of Medicine which were listed separately. Interestingly, Pitt has two separate listings: University of Pittsburgh and University of Pittsburgh – Pittsburgh. I have no idea what the difference is between these two listing (if there even is a real difference or just data a data entry quirk), but combining them increases Pitt’s research total (without affiliates) to $390,950,510. However, trying to combined campuses together gets into some institutional issues that I don’t have answers for. Specifically, which University of Texas Heath Centers would be considered part of the Univ. of Texas in Austin that most are familiar with? I didn’t combined distinct branches like UTEP with UT-Austin. Like the different universities in the Cal system, they both have very distinct university cultures and identities. However, to what degree do UT Health Science Centers in Dallas, Houston, Tyler, San Antonio, Galveston, and the MD Anderson Cancer Center fit into the culture of the flagship in Austin, to another “branch” campus in the UT system, or should they remain independent (as UCSF is clearly an independent graduate-only university in the Cal system). I don’t have an answer to that, so for now, they remain listed separately as they are typically seen in most rankings. I think part of it gets into the “geographical” requirement for affiliates listed in Pitt’s press release. However, you can start to see the difficulty in deciding what to, and what not to merge in some situations. Anyway, here are rankings with combined campuses (that seemed to make sense to me (not including affiliates).

1. John Hopkins ($598)
2. Penn ($455)
3. U. Washington ($449)
4. UCSF ($434)
5. Duke ($431)
6. Michigan ($396)
7. PITT ($391)
8. UCLA ($388)
9. Washington ($378)
10. Washington U (St. Louis) ($378)

Here, Pitt is 7th. It’s pretty clear, no matter how you massage the numbers, Pitt is in the top 10 of NIH funding. What is really striking is how Harvard goes from #31 with separated campuses ranking, to 13th with combined campuses, to number 1 when affiliates are included. My impression is that, knowing the reputation and size of Harvard research in the health sciences, that including affiliate institutions are probably a legitimate way to go, and thus the #6 ranking for Pitt included in the university press release is probably very legitimate.