Posted: 7/11/03
What is a tier one school?
Baylor University's quest to become a “tier one” school refers to annual rankings published by U.S. News & World Report.
The rankings are determined by a formula established by the magazine and have no sanction from any academic organization or accrediting agency. They are, however, highly influential in the quest to gain recognition, donors, faculty and students.
The magazine reports that its formula is “based on our non-partisan view of what matters in education.”
Baylor competes among the nation's 249 national universities with doctoral programs. These are schools that offer a full range of undergraduate majors, plus master's and Ph.D. degrees, and emphasize faculty research.
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Many other Baptist colleges and universities compete among the nation's 217 liberal arts colleges that focus almost exclusively on undergraduate education. Some compete among the 573 universities that offer a full range of undergraduate degrees and some master's degree programs but few doctoral programs.
U.S. News gathers data from each school on up to 16 indicators of academic excellence. Each factor is assigned a weight that reflects the editors' judgment about how much that measure matters.
The indicators used to capture academic quality fall into seven categories–assessment by administrators at peer institutions, retention of students, faculty resources, student selectivity, financial resources, alumni giving, and “graduation rate performance,” the difference between the proportion of students expected to graduate and the proportion who actually do.
The formula gives the greatest weight (25 percent) to the opinion of the presidents, provosts and deans of admission at peer institutions.
Based on these rankings, schools in each category are placed in tiers. In Baylor's category, each tier includes 50 schools. Those in the first tier are ranked in order. Those in the second and third tiers are not assigned specific rankings within those tiers.
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