Current Initiatives-Institutional Rankings

Posted on: October 10th, 2013 by jpeliss 123 Comments

Greetings from across the globe! Currently I’m in Beijing attending business meetings of The Beijing Center for Chinese Studies (TBC). As many of you know, Loyola’s Beijing Center campus is located at Beijing University of International Business and Economis (UIBE) in the Chaoyang distrtic of Beijing. Being thousands of miles from home provides an interesting perspective from which to share with you the academic initiatives currently underway at Loyola, concluding with some thoughts about institutional rankings.

• Although we began 2013 with some concerns about a drop in our enrollment, particularly at the undergraduate level, I am very grateful for the dedicated work of the Undergraduate Admission office that brought us a record 2,520 freshmen and 600 Transfers. Our continuing student numbers have leveled off, reflecting the adjustment to a smaller base of continuing students who are now graduating faster—64% within four years. This year we enrolled just under 16,000 students. And we enrolled the largest number of new graduate students in our history. New programs and new sites – at Cuneo Center in Vernon Hills, to International locations, to online degrees – are allowing us to develop more graduate programs, too. The Law School is also adapting to the changing landscape of the legal profession and is developing a plan that will stabilize JD enrollments and grow its online graduate programs, while affirming its commitment to prepare lawyers for careers in public advocacy and service that promotes and expands justice.

• At our Faculty Convocation a few weeks ago, we had present most of the 84 new faculty who joined us this fall. This brought our full-time faculty numbers at the lakeside campuses to about 700, enabling us to achieve a lower student-faculty ratio of 14:1, allowing more full-time faculty to teach our undergraduates.

• Let me share some news about rankings. In the past month we moved up in the latest U.S. News rankings to #101 among 281 national universities. That is an 18 point increase in two years. US News rankings get most of the media attention. But in another ranking of national universities by Washington Monthly we are ranked #61 for our contribution the public good in three broad categories: Social Mobility (recruiting and graduating low-income students), Research (producing cutting-edge research and PhDs), and Service (encouraging students to give back to their country). All are results of which we can be proud.

We do not manage to the US News rankings or to any other organization’s rankings of universities. Instead, we focus on our core mission—delivering the best in undergraduate and graduate and professional education. And, if in doing so, we appear in a ranking or improve in one, well, we’re grateful for the recognition.

One reason for the improvements is linked to enhancements in the learning environment, such as more faculty and increases in the percentage of classes with fewer than 20 students. Another set of reasons are outcomes, including improvements in graduation and retention rates. We will keep our focus on these quality enhancements in the educational enterprise and allow the rankings to settle where they may.

Next week, and from a perspective slightly closer to home, we’ll look at my goals for 2013-2014.

John Pelissero

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Current Initiatives-Institutional Rankings

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