Wesleyan University: An “Elite” Institution?
During their final year of high school, students across the country begin applying to colleges. The college application process varies from student to student; some go on college tours, some research their options online, some follow in their families’ footsteps as a legacy, and some decide that college is just not the right option for them. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, around 20.4 million students were expected to attend American colleges and universities in 2017. With some 5,300 colleges and universities across the United States, the decision about which college is the “right fit” may be a difficult one. Some students search for a school that has Greek Life and huge parties, but others may look for something else, perhaps an “elite” university. But, what does that word – elite – incorporate and imply? Can a big party school be considered as “elite” as, say, Harvard? Wesleyan University describes itself as a “diverse, energetic liberal arts community where critical thinking and practical idealism go hand in hand.”[1] In a Forbes profile, Wesleyan is immediately associated with being one of the “Little Ivies,” described as “a group of highly selective, academically rigorous liberal arts schools.”[2] In many contexts, Wesleyan is thought to be an elite, well-regarded school in the United States, but is that true? Is Wesleyan University really an “elite” university?
“Elite” is oftentimes associated with words such as “prestigious,” “best” and “exclusive.” More officially, elite is defined as “representing the most choice or select; best.”[3] “Elitism,” or the consciousness of being or belonging to an elite, is often used as an insult or a synonym for “snobbery,” which complicates the definition of elite. During my own personal college process, this word was thrown around often; I quickly deduced that many of my friends and family members seemed to value whether or not a school was regarded as “elite.” When I would answer the frequent question, “what college are you attending next year?”, my answer of “Wesleyan University” was met with various responses that indicated their knowledge and opinion of the college; the range of responses included blank stares, confusion with Wellesley, and the rare comment of, “Oh wow, good for you.” During my job search processes, I sensed the impacts of “eliteness,” specifically that of Wesleyan, when I realized I was competing with students from Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. I began to wonder how colleges could even be compared, and how college reputations are built. How can you measure prestige? One popular phenomenon that distinguishes schools is online college rankings; many websites participate in annual rankings such as Forbes, U.S. News & World Report, and Times Higher Education. There are many different types of college rankings lists, based on various qualifications including Overall Top Colleges, Best Value, Public vs. Private, Liberal Arts, and region or location. Some rankings are more specific or niche rankings, such as best alumni network, best college for veterans, and even a category for “Birkenstock-Wearing, Tree-Hugging, Clove-Smoking Vegetarian” colleges (where Wesleyan was ranked #1).
The yearly college rankings tend to be well-respected and widely discussed and circulated; oftentimes they are used during students’ college searches to try to find their perfect school, but how are these rankings produced? This year, Wesleyan was ranked 43rd for U.S. Rankings 2020 in Times Higher Education. Their overall methodology, according to their website, is carefully explained and focused on four key areas: 30% resources, 20% engagement, 40% outcomes, and 10% environment. The Wall Street Journal/Times Higher Education college ranking mainly utilizes the survey answers of over 200,000 current students. In fact, I was recently sent a survey by The Times Higher Education (THE) US College Rankings to fill out and provide data for their next rankings. With around 15 questions, the survey asked about topics ranging from opportunities for social engagement to whether the university is worth the tuition. The student was asked to rate the questions on a scale of 1 to 10, with questions like, “Do you think your college provides an environment where you feel surrounded by exceptional students who INSPIRE and MOTIVATE you?” and “To what extent does your college or university provide opportunities for COLLABORATIVE LEARNING? Examples of collaborative learning include group assignments, fieldwork that involves working with other students, or presenting your work to your classmates.” The survey is a useful tool, but Savage and Burrows argue that it is a dying tool, and they push readers to “recognize its historicity.”[4] It is important to analyze how the survey is presented; for example, this survey did not leave a place for the student to add a comment or an explanation, which means that they will use inferential statistics to generalize the results.
This year, Wesleyan was ranked as #17 in National Liberal Arts colleges for U.S. News & World Report – a website that uses a more statistical (but not necessarily more reliable) method than THE. Their methodology is based on “widely accepted indicators of excellence,” but they do acknowledge that the data they are presenting shouldn’t necessarily be taken as a hard, proven fact. “The host of intangibles that make up the college experience can't be measured by a series of data points.”[5] The ranking system is well thought out, however, and they use a formula that “uses exclusively statistical quantitative and qualitative measures that education experts have proposed as reliable indicators of academic quality.”[6] The formula is a bit more complex than the one Times Higher Education uses: 22.5% graduation and retention rates, 22.5% undergraduate academic reputation, 20% faculty resources, 12.5% student selectivity, 10% financial resources, 7.5% graduation rate performance, and 5% alumni giving rate.
While Times Higher Education US College Rankings are built using surveys, the U.S. News & World Report ranking is more focused on gathered data and statistics. The two different methodologies present a relatively significant difference in Wesleyan’s rankings, but the elements of colleges and universities that they rank seem to be similar. Indicators of performance and of excellence for both rankings tend to include factors such as interaction with teachers and students, graduation and retention rates, student diversity and inclusion, academic reputation, and faculty resources. One of the only points of difference between the two was that the U.S. News Rankings included student selectivity (test scores, top of their class, and acceptance rate). One factor that stood out was “academic reputation” – how can reputation, potentially one of the most important factors of an “elite” institution – be measured and assessed? For THE, academic reputation is based off of another survey, a poll of leading scholars that finds which institutions have a reputation for excellence in teaching. The U.S. News uses an academic peer assessment survey that is given to “top academics” as well as high school counselors, but their survey focused more on schools’ academic programs, ranking from marginal to distinguished.
Wesleyan presents itself as quite an elite university, especially promoting specific statistics that relate to the above indicators of the “best” colleges. On their website, Wesleyan highlights statistics such as an 8-1 student to faculty ratio and a 16.2% acceptance rate – emphasizing their strengths in indicators like interaction between teachers and students. One of the first articles on the homepage of their website is called “Wesleyan Students Win Prestigious Consulting Competition,” evidence that a prestigious reputation is important in the ways they present themselves. In fact, Wesleyan has an entire page on their website devoted to College Rankings, naming over twenty times that they have been ranked.[7] Wesleyan University is nearly always ranked among the top thirty colleges in various college rankings, and the promotional materials and public appearance that they use support this “accomplishment” that the University is, in fact, among the best colleges in the United States. Similar to what the U.S. News & World Report described, however, rankings do not account for every individual’s college experience.
College rankings cannot and will never be able to say what is definitively the best college, in fact, they may be doing more harm than good. College administrators have become obsessed with raising their rankings in any way they can, whether that is encouraging more people to apply so the University can boast a lower percentage acceptance rate or lying in the data they report, the ranking system “inflicts widespread damage, and generates an almost endless spiral of destructive feedback loops.”[8] Wesleyan has fallen into the same trap as multiple other universities; they increase their ranking through any means possible, such as ensuring small class sizes, even at the cost of their own students education. While rankings and statistics such as faculty to student ratios tend to be seen as definite and official, they are not always what they may seem – in many cases, these statistics are simply social products, “Official statistics reflect what sociologists call organizational practices – the organization’s culture and structure shape officials’ actions, and those actions determine whatever statistics finally emerge.”[9] The universities that have historically been seen as elite and prestigious, such as Harvard and Yale, likely shaped the factors that are used to measure other universities and their prestige in rankings. Based off of the statistics and language used by Wesleyan University promotional materials, such as a low acceptance rate and a “highly selective” admissions process, an emphasis on “critical thinking” in descriptions, and claims of diversity, combined with the various different rankings, Wesleyan does tend to be seen as one of the “best” – the definition of elite. While being “elite” may be the goal, possibly even one that Wesleyan has reached, the factors such as student happiness that eliteness doesn’t measure, or that may be falsely portrayed, are of much more importance when evaluating colleges. That being said, it is likely more useful to talk to real-life students and alumni instead of basing assumptions and decisions on subjective ratings.
[1] http://www.wesleyan.edu/about/index.html
[2] https://www.forbes.com/colleges/wesleyan-university/
[3] http://www.dictionary.com/browse/elite
[4] Mike Savage and Roger Burrows, (2007). “The Coming Crisis of Empirical Sociology,” page 890.
[5] https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/how-us-news-calculated-the-rankings
[6] https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/how-us-news-calculated-the-rankings
[7] http://www.wesleyan.edu/communications/media/rankings.html
[8] Cathy O’Neil, (2016). Weapons of Math Destruction, Chapter 3
[9] Joel Best, (2001). “The Importance of Social Statistics,” page 25