Since 2003, the Tigers have tumbled down U.S. News & World Report’s college rankings. But that didn’t stop 5,620 freshmen from enrolling in 2009.

Elise Catchings

By Jennifer Gordon

September 17, 2009 | 12:00 a.m. CST

Like a freshman who celebrated too many Thirsty Thursdays and hit the snooze too many times the next morning, MU’s grades are slipping. The dip has nothing to do with student binging, though. In fact, on first glance, MU’s scores look like a healthy B average. In reality, 73, 86, 85, 88, 91, 96 and 102 are more than MU’s collegiate rankings from the past seven years, they’re markers of MU’s descent into the middle-ranks of the U.S. News & World Report’s America’s Best Colleges list.

Each year, U.S. News & World Report releases its list for prospective students who want to compare schools. For the past seven years, MU has fallen a little further in the undergraduate rankings. This year, the school dropped to No. 102 in spite of its $1 billion-plus For All We Call Mizzou campaign drive. U.S. News started the list in 1983, but MU has only been ranked since 2003.

HOW MU FARED 2004-2010 MU only started to appear on the U.S. News & World …

Breakdown of New Hires Despite the hiring freeze implemented last November, MU was able to …

A study of US News’ methodology and reasons for MU’s drop this year points to financial and faculty resources as prime culprits, followed by lackluster scores in graduation rate performance and student selectivity, four of the seven broad criteria the magazine studies.

In the 2010 edition of the list, the 102 ranking put MU tied for eighth among Big 12 schools. (For a full breakdown, see chart). And whether it’s right to compare schools, these scores matter. The college rankings bring about 500,000 visitors to the U.S. News Web site per month. The newsweekly’s America’s Best Colleges edition also sells 50 percent more copies on the newsstand than any of its other issues. Studies from the National Bureau of Economic Research show that moving up a ranking on the U.S. News list gives a school a better yield — the percentage of admitted students who actually enroll — and better standardized test scores of new students.

Like anything else, when it’s good, the U.S. News ranking is a bragging right. In fact, it’s the first publication mentioned on the MU Pride Points Web site: “MU is highly ranked in quality and value by U.S. News & World Report, The Fiske Guide to Colleges, Barron’s Best Buys in College Education and numerous other college guides.” MU competes in the national universities list, which includes Harvard and Princeton, this year’s top schools. It’s the largest category with 262 listed schools. But, despite MU’s touting, U.S. News only gives numbered rankings to 138 universities — the rest are listed alphabetically as tier III and IV schools — which means MU hasn’t cracked the top half of those ranked schools.

“The university’s main goal for prospective students is that they have the information that truly reflects what is available to them at MU,” says Christian Basi, associate director of the MU News Bureau. Basi declined Vox’s request to speak with MU Chancellor Brady Deaton.

U.S. News won’t claim to be the end-all of college searching. “Rankings are not meant to provide the level of information to choose one school or another,” says Robert Morse, editor of America’s Best Colleges 2010. “It puts schools into a quantitative system, but it doesn’t measure everything.” Still, the issue’s popularity speaks for itself.

But high school students in Columbia don’t typically consider the publication a collegiate bible, says Pam Massey, a guidance counselor at Hickman High School and a college parent. “Our students look more at the campus and how it works for them than what a book says.”

Sarah Smith, a sophomore at MU, said she used rankings when choosing. Smith initially wanted to attend Purdue because its engineering program was ranked, while MU’s was not. Ultimately, she changed her mind. “I visited and that influenced my decision more than any kind of list,” Smith says. “(Purdue) was a lot of money, and I didn’t really see anything there that (MU) didn’t have.”

Colin Gardner, a senior at Columbia Independent School, says ranking isn’t really a issue. “I think (my parents) would prefer that I go to a school with a rigorous curriculum where I can challenge myself.” His mother agrees. The right program is more important than the rankings, she says.

In part, Basi and Morse have a point: MU certainly doesn’t need the help of a list to attract students. After all, at eight slots higher in the ranking last year, MU attracted the largest freshmen class in its history ­­— 5,812.

Controversy usually surrounds ranking systems, particularly among schools that don’t fare as well on the list. Outspoken critics of the system such as Yale Dean of Admissions Jeffrey Brenzel claim that U.S. News & World Report’s process oversimplifies a college’s services. But the statistics U.S. News uses say more about a school than whether it beats Harvard on the list (Yale, at third, did not). Breaking down the U.S. News score, readers can compare universities in the same category. For MU, the sub-scores reflect the school’s weaknesses in a national light.

Measuring Up

Before the schools for America’s Best Colleges are evaluated, they are divided into four categories based on an institution’s mission statement: national universities, liberal arts colleges, universities-master’s and baccalaureate colleges. The qualifications for each category are straight forward: in a baccalaureate college, fewer than half of the awarded degrees are in a liberal arts field; liberal arts colleges must have at least half of the awarded degrees in a liberal arts area; universities-master’s have master’s programs but few, if any, doctoral programs; and national universities offer a full range of graduate and doctoral options.

Once a school is on the list, U.S. News analysts look at 16 qualifications based on its Common Data Set from the prior year. Those qualifications are then grouped into seven categories (See chart). The information for the categories is taken as a weight percentage so that the final score, like the ACT standardized test, is a composite score.

Lost Profit

The first section, financial resources, is a measure of a school’s financial status per student. It makes up 10 percent of the total score. This category doesn’t lend much weight in the rankings, which should be good news for MU, because it scored 142 of 262 in that sub-score. But the category points to a bigger issue — the budget.

Financial resources were a problem for MU long before 102 ever meant more than a Disney sequel. The 2001 recession hit Missouri’s economy hard with Rawling Sports Co., Sunbeam, Farmland Industries Inc. and General Mills closing plants in Licking, Neosho, Kansas City and Hazelwood, respectively. In 2002, Missouri lost more jobs than California, a state that has notoriously struggled with its budget.

This was bad news for higher education funding, which receives about 11 percent of Missouri’s total revenue. Missouri’s state appropriations, which have never been strong according to Frank Schmidt, a biochemistry professor and former chair of the MU Faculty Council, started to fall. As a member of the Faculty Council, Schmidt met with Chancellor Brady Deaton to discuss faculty concerns and plan policy for the university and witnessed the change in state money. He sees the evidence of it in MU’s current ranking.

“I think that the major issue in the U.S. News & World Report is the financial issue,” Schmidt says. “We haven’t suffered as badly in all rankings because not all rankings put that much emphasis on financial resources.” Schmidt believes the U.S. News ranking points to a serious problem. “The university’s going to have to come up with a different relationship to the state. Otherwise, we’ll end up a backwater state.”

MU’s state appropriations dropped by 12.2 percent in the 2002 fiscal year as a result of the recession. The next year, state funding increased slightly by 2.6 percent, but the trend didn’t last. In the 2004 fiscal year, it fell again — by 3.2 percent.

Although state appropriations started to go up during the 2004-2005 academic year, they still haven’t reached the 2001 fiscal year level when adjusting for inflation. According to MU’s 2009 budget report, MU has lost $337 million in state appropriations over the eight-year period.

“The state has not lived up to its responsibilities,” Schmidt says. Improvement has been too gradual to keep up with the demands of the campus. Without a more drastic turn around, Schmidt says, “I think there’s a real danger that we’ll have a university that doesn’t meet the needs of its students.”

For now, the university’s budget is buoyed by outside support. Even in the midst of a recession, MU not only reached its $1-billion goal for For All We Call Mizzou, but surpassed it by $300,000. MU’s alumni donations sub-score, boosted by the campaign’s success, was 66th in the U.S. News rankings this year compared to a low of 176 in 2006. Alumni donations make up 5 percent of the score. The campaign money helped where state appropriations and tuition fees ran out: $79 million of the fund went to 86 new faculty positions, $210 million to scholarships and $233 million to research grants.

Of course, MU is not unique in budget troubles. Private universities aren’t faring well in the future either because a good portion of funds are tied into the stock market. The recession has hurt endowment revenues, Morse says.

Missouri’s budget still looks better than some other states, such as California and Washington, whose budgets are running up billion-dollar deficits. The impact on higher education on the West Coast has made MU’s hiring and wage freeze look like chump change. The University of California system cut freshmen enrollment this year by 2,300 students. The Washington state legislature trimmed its higher-education funding by 10.6 percent and bumped tuition up 14 percent to make up the loss. Even with the extra tuition money, however, Washington State University had to shut down its entire theater department.

MU has tried the tuition-raising approach. Tuition rates shot up 14.8 percent for residents in the 2003 fiscal year. The next year, rates went up 19.8 percent, going from $194.60 to $209.20 per credit hour. Since then, student fees and tuition replaced state funds as the largest contributors to MU’s operating revenue. The rate for 2009 was $245.60 for residents and $615.30 for nonresidents.

The gap between nonresident and resident fees has remained at roughly the same proportion, with nonresidents paying about two-and-a-half times more per credit hour than residents. The tuition spike for both groups ended in 2007, when the state legislature passed a law that tied tuition increases to the Consumer Price Index. This left one easy option to get more money: tax a bigger student body for student fees.

The More the Merrier

More tuition and fees mean more revenue for the operating budget. Jim Spain, vice provost for undergraduate studies, says that during the past few years MU has been able to cover the gap in state appropriations and meet university needs through enrollment.

Student selectivity rate ­— a sub-category of the U.S. News report that includes acceptance rate, percent of students who were in the top 10 percent of their high school class, percentage of students who were in the top 25 percent of their high school class, critical reading and math portions of the SAT and composite ACT scores ­— makes up 15 percent of the overall U.S. News score. In the 2007 edition, when MU was 88, MU’s student selectivity rate was 101 out of the 262 schools. This year it was 135, even though the average ACT score of the incoming class has been increasing from 2006 to 2008. While the selectivity rate keeps the university from slashing programs, it’s hurting the school’s standing.

With 23,659 undergraduates, campus enrollment for the 2009-2010 school year is at an all-time high. Freshmen retention rates are also increasing. The 2006 freshmen retention rate was 84.6 percent, 0.1 percent higher than the previous class’ retention rate. So far, retention rates are not on the rise nationally. MU’s 2007 freshmen class’ retention rate was 85.4 percent. The national average was 76.5 percent.

Total graduation and retention rates make up 20 percent of the U.S. News score. This year MU scored a 99 out of 262. The students are not only coming in droves, they’re staying. For all of MU’s struggles, it’s still more affordable than a private school, especially for residents.

The number of MU students who graduate, compared to how many were predicted to graduate within six years, is still low in the U.S. News rankings (a score of 129), but if freshmen retention rates are at all a preview of the 2006 and 2007 classes’ graduation rates, that number could be trending up.

Then there’s the hiring freeze UM System President Gary Forsee implemented last November. And the wage freeze. Record enrollment means the need for more faculty, but with salaries low even before the recession, complications come into play.

In January, there were 117 open faculty positions. Exceptions were made for endowment or grant positions, and department heads could also file a petition to get around the freeze, which made new hires difficult, but it didn’t stop MU from bringing on more staff to help with class sizes and enrollment. For the 2009-2010 school year, MU was able to hire 29 new tenure or tenure-track faculty, 29 nontenure faculty and 10 instructors.

Most of the new faculty and part-time help this year went to general education courses, Spain says. In some instances, high-demand courses that were typically offered only in the fall semester were added to the spring schedule. But, this year’s solution to balancing class size and staff doesn’t get at the bigger issue — faculty pay.

U.S. News takes class size, student-to-faculty ratio and faculty compensation into consideration with its faculty resources category. Also included in the category, which has 20 percent weight in the composite score, are the percent of faculty that is full-time and the percent that has terminal degrees. MU’s sub-score was 119. Considering MU’s faculty is relatively low-paid compared to other universities, 119 out of 262 isn’t too shabby.

Faculty saw a 7.1 percent increase in pay from the 2007 to 2008 fiscal years, but the increase didn’t help MU’s standing in faculty pay among other public universities. In a study conducted by the American Association of University Professors this spring, MU was ranked 33 out of 34. KU is more than just a smidge ahead in that poll — they’re in the top 10 for best-paid faculty.

Due to the economy, faculty members have to take extra precautions to secure their futures. Now, faculty have to contribute one percent of their salaries to their retirement and pension funds if they make less than $50,000. If they make more than $50,000, faculty have to pay one percent of the initial $50,000, plus two percent on any wages on top of that. The faculty council tried to spare the first group because it thought the contribution would put a strain on those faculty. In an e-mail, current chair and biochemistry associate professor Leona Rubin said: “Decision makers need to be reminded what it feels like to live on $50,000 minus taxes, SS (Social Security) and health insurance before they consider tapping into this group again.”

Although faculty resources were hurt this year, the current problem is nothing like what it will be in the future if things continue this way. Roughly a third of MU’s current faculty is older than 55.

“If our salaries are not competitive, we will not be able to attract new, young faculty that are needed to teach the next generation and bring the research component of the university to the next higher level,” Rubin says.

Flash Forward

The only subjective part of the U.S. News evaluation is the peer assessment, a system of surveys sent out to the provost and admissions office from each of the universities that asks them to rate their schools on a scale from one to five. For a national university, the peer assessment gives the most weight (25 percent of the overall score), a fact that should have helped MU’s standing this year because MU’s peer assessment score is, at 68, the second-highest U.S. News sub-score.

“It’s ironic that the peer assessment has held strong while other parts have gotten weaker,” Morse says.

Other universities aren’t the only ones who continue to hold MU in high esteem. Despite the financial difficulties straining the staff, the university continues to draw a more high-achieving class than the year before. Last year, the average ACT for first-time college students was 25.5. This year, it was 25.6, the highest in eight years. The state’s average is 21.6, and the national average is 21.1.

College rankings do matter to some high school students, says Paige Reed, another guidance counselor at Hickman. “The kids who look at the lists are the ones who want to put the very best school on their graduate school applications, the same kids who are looking at Ivy Leagues,” she says.

According to Reed, students who look to public universities and state schools such as MU tend to go where the scholarship money is. But Reed stresses that tuition rates aren’t everything. Even if MU maintains a flat tuition rate, many students will still go out of state.

“Some schools have better funding.” Reed says. “Scholarships will make it better to go to an out-of-state school.”

Whether MU can continue to draw students to its campus comes down to funding. So far, it has avoided the pitfalls of other budget-strapped universities. Enrollment numbers are still up, and students are enrolling with higher test scores than ever.

But the budget situation is like the story of the farmer and his mule, Schmidt says. The farmer cuts back 10 percent of the mule’s food, but the mule performs just as well. So, the farmer cuts 10 percent more. The mule keeps working hard. The farmer keeps cutting back, until all of a sudden, he’s left with a dead mule.

Original article: http://www.voxmagazine.com/stories/2009/09/17/seven-year-slide/

Get ready for your close-up; a freshly-installed flash will catch you if you run the red.

By Jennifer Gordon

September 10, 2009 | 12:00 a.m. CST

With 16 red-light cameras being installed during the next few months at intersections around Columbia, consider the consequences before you decide to hit the gas on a yellow.

Lights, camera … ticket!

After the light changes from green to red, the camera takes a video and four pictures of the incident: one of your car before you pass through the intersection, one after, one of your face and one of your license plate. Your speed, the date, the time and how many seconds passed after the light changed will also be recorded.

However, these cameras aren’t foolproof. If the snapshot is of poor quality or the driver’s gender doesn’t match the gender of the registered owner, you might be off the hook.

Review the roll

Gatso USA, the company Columbia works with, first reviews the pictures to make sure that a law was actually broken. Then, the film goes to the police. All of the information, including the date for arraignment at the Municipal Court and an online code to watch a video of the incident, is mailed to the vehicle owner’s home. If you receive the ticket but weren’t the driver, know that the vehicle owner can file an affidavit or a sworn statement of fact witnessed by a notary or a public commissioner.

Can you afford the risk?

You can use the Web site and login information on your citation to pay the $120 ticket online, or you can pay in person at the City Traffic Violations Bureau at Sixth Street and Broadway. You must pay within 15 days of the citation, or the price goes up $15. Marks on your permanent record only occur if an officer, not a camera, catches you. If you think you deserve a smaller fine, go to the arraignment to argue your case in Municipal Court. The judge then determines your fine, which can range from $1-500.

original article: http://www.voxmagazine.com/stories/2009/09/10/say-cheese/

Original post: http://www.fcinnercircle.com/fc_inner_circle/2009/09/shout-for-glee-.html

As a kid, the only orange juice I would drink was   Sunny Delight. It’s still my favorite juice, which is why I was so excited when I heard about the SunnyD Book Spree. The program, sponsored by Sunny Delight Beverages Co., in partnership with the   Kids In Need Foundation, wants to raise $300,000 for teachers across the country to use for their classroom supplies.

According to the Kids In Need Foundation, teachers end up spending more than $550 of their own money each year on items they need for their students. To help cut these costs, the Kids In Need Foundation provides free supplies to low-income schools nationwide. Starting on August 17, for every valid SunnyD UPC code (found on all of their products) mailed into its offices, Sunny Delight will donate 10 cents to the Kids In Need Foundation. Classes can also send 20 UPC codes to receive 20 free books for their homeroom.

For more information, check out   http://www.kidsinneed.net/. The SunnyD Book Spree ends on November 14. Drink up!

-Jen Gordon, health intern

Sometimes I just crave McDonald’s fries. When they’re done right—not too squishy, not too crispy, not too salty, not too cold—there is nothing more enjoyable. Then I found this   NPR story that helps explain why many of us long for a stop at the drive thru. David Kessler’s book The End of Overeating explores how the combination of fat, sugar, salt and advertising for fast food chains fuels our cravings. Kessler writes that the specific ingredients in fast food can also lead to overeating if you do break down and go for that cheeseburger. Now at least I know there’s a scientific reason behind it!

You can also listen to an interview with the author here:
Download 20090513_fa_03

-Jen, health intern

The American Heart Association says that 1 in 3 women die from heart disease. 1 in 3.  This month, they’re aiming to lower that statistic with the Go Red BetterU campaign, which aims to get women heart-healthier with small lifestyle changes. The campaign runs 12 weeks and provides online tools such as ticker-friendly recipes and daily reminders to exercise. I know I’ll need that extra motivation so I don’t let the “it’s been a long day” excuse once again keep me from the treadmill.

For more information or to get signed up, you can visit   GoRedForWomen.org

-Jen, health intern

Sleep On It

Ever lay awake at night mulling over a problem? Relax—you don’t need to have it all sorted out before bed time. A   new study suggests that a deep snooze can help you come up with a solution. Researchers at University of San Diego’s medical school found that REM (rapid eye movement) sleep aids in problem solving by creating new links between unrelated ideas within the brain. Just remember: next time you’re up worrying about something, roll over and turn off the lights. Time may resolve most problems, but a good night’s sleep does wonders too.

-Jen, health intern

]]> http://jjepiphany.wordpress.com/2009/08/05/fc-inner-circle-06-11-09/feed/ 0 jjgordon http://jjepiphany.wordpress.com/2009/08/05/fc-inner-circle-07-08-09/ http://jjepiphany.wordpress.com/2009/08/05/fc-inner-circle-07-08-09/#comments Wed, 05 Aug 2009 20:03:49 +0000 jjgordon http://jjepiphany.wordpress.com/?p=226 ]]> Aloha!

Surely this is the worst part of being at the mercy of your own mind, especially when that mind lists toward the despondent at the first sign of gray: the fact that there is no way out of the reality of being you, a person who is forever noticing the grime on the bricks, the flaws in the friends — the sadness that runs under the skin of things, like blood, beginning as a trickle and ending up as a hemorrhage, staining everything. It is a sadness that noone seems to want to talk about in public, at cocktail-party sorts of places, not even in this Age of Indiscretion.

“A Journey Through Darkness” puts us in a place where the literary world and the world of medicine so often coincide: the psychiatric hospital. Underneath the monotony of her descriptions of the day-to-day life in the hospital, sits the fear that the cure for her depression may be the thing that takes away her personality, her memories and her sense of self. She writes: “the patients I saw returning from ECT acted dazed, as if an essential piece of themselves had been misplaced.”

The fear brings to mind The Bell Jar and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, but other than a passing line about Sylvia Plath, Robert Lowell and Anne Sexton, Merkin avoids the literary analogies. Maybe she avoids it because those stories end badly. Maybe she avoids it because this experience is about her. Maybe she avoids it because that’s her point, that in the modern age there are options. There is choice. There is hope.

The tension propels the story forward, and despite its lethargic tone the philosophical questioning pulls you through to the end of the sixth page. Merkin also finds in the midst of the melancholy, displays hints of humor, such as the advice Merkin received from her sister: suicide can wait, try the hospital.

Merkin’s essay is self effacing, but that’s what saves it from preachiness. She envies the anorexics at the clinic because they can blame part of their condition on society and fashion icons. She does not pretend to believe in psychotherapy or in a solution drug. She does not feign to be cured. Instead, she does what we all do. She thinks of her family and her loved ones and continues to work.

In I Was Told There’d Be Cake, a book of personal essays, Crosley examines the disenchantment that comes with experience and estranged friends’ wedding invitations. In each of the essays, Crosley examines a moment where she discovered that her perception of the world differed wildly from the reality.

Crosley covers typical events of growing up—romance, family, tyrannical bosses—but she infuses her essays with a sense of humor and eccentricity reminiscent of Anne LaMott. Take, for example, her observations on being a Jewish girl at an Evangelical Christian summer camp in her essay, “Christmas in July”: “Think of a zany romantic comedy in which a woman mistakenly swallows her engagement ring because it was cleverly tucked in her chocolate soufflé. That is how I swallowed Christianity.”

What makes Crosley’s essays more than just humorous nostalgia, is her analysis of what her mistaken perceptions said about her development of self and identity. Beyond her commentary on dining hall tradition and Native American nomenclature in “Christmas in July”, Crosley evaluates how as a child she was especially vulnerable to a manipulation of her religious beliefs. She had, for several years, a mantra: Sky, Blankey, Speech, Kim, based on her cat, her security blanket, her daily recitation of her days’ events to a stuffed audience and her arbitrarily imaginary friend, Kim. “It’s so clear to me now: the memorizing of a fake prayer, the symbolization of objects, the struggle to relate to the invisible—I needed a religion. I was lost.”

Crosley’s unexpected juxtapositions give her essays much of their staying power, from spirituality in the midst of burning maxi pads to defecation at elegant dinner parties. Crosley writes about 9/11 in “The Ursula Cookie” but she does not focus solely on the sense of terror and togetherness that came when the towers fell. It’s also an essay about a boss who hurls office supplies at your head and who has a Miranda Priestlyesque disappointment in your work.

In “The Height of Luxury”, Crosley explores the maturity on the eve of her 16th birthday. After she found out her mother was a divorcée when she met the man who would become her husband, Crosley faces the choice between kidnapping the family’s toothbrushes and leaving them in their holders.

Throughout her collection, Crosley seems to be aware of the criticism that faces the Gen-X generation, and the YouTube and Facebook generations that follow. She addresses the isolationism of a single late twenty-something in Manhattan and her disillusionment with volunteerism. She muses over the unintended sociopathic tendencies that come with playing the Oregon Trail computer game. She bemoans an inability to blame her faults on a pre-existing medical condition. But Crosley resists oversentimentalization or simplification. She writes to raise questions about her own life but she never claims to give answers to your problems. I Was Told There’d Be Cake wins you over with its humor. By the time you finish the last chapter, you’ll only want to stick around to see what Crosley does next.

Authors@ Google did an interview with Crosley last April: