Forbes Newest Top Colleges not the best news for AU

However you slice and dice it, AU is not in the top 100 or even 200 or even 300 of the Forbes' list of public and private colleges and universities. Out of 600 schools listed, we're #433rd. All our competitors in the area did better. George Washington, with the highest tuition, was 429th, 4 slots ahead of us. University of Maryland at College Park was 387th, George Mason at 338th, and Georgetown is 106th.

We also aren't in the list of the 100 top value colleges. University of Mary Washington is (and they're on Tuition Exchange!), at 58. Virginia Tech is 53, College of William and Mary is 33, VMI is 21, UVA is 19, and "Canoe U" (as my West Point father calls it) in Annapolis is 6.

The methodology was pretty interesting in how they balanced different factors. 25% is based on student satisfaction with courses, 25% on post-graduation employment success (based on listings of alumni in the 2008 edition of Who's Who in America and salaries of alumni from PayScale.com) and 20% to debt after four years. The remaining 30% was from the four year graduation rate (16.67%) and student and faculty nationally competitive awards (students at 8.33% and faculty at 5%). Their comment on awards was interesting, but I wonder how quantifiable it really is.

We have modestly demoted nationally competitive academic
awards as a feature in this year's index (from an overall weight of 16.67% to
13.33%). We have kept the portion of this variable related to student receipt of
nationally competitive awards like the Rhodes and Marshall scholarships the same
as in 2008 (8.33% in the total ranking). We have reduced the component relating
to faculty scholarly recognition (e.g., Nobel prizes) from 8.33% to 5%. We
believe having eminent faculty add to a campus's luster, but in some respects
this component has aspects of being an input into the process rather than an
outcome (e.g., a university can buy Nobel laureates), something we are trying to
avoid.

Also, frankly in discussions with students and parents, often the other
factors cited above (quality of instruction, postgraduate success, graduation
rates, etc.) are mentioned, but rarely do they talk about the competitive award
factor as a determinant of college decisions. For the typical student, it is
vastly more important that they feel rewarded by the classes that they actually
take than that there are eminent scholars in their midst who are generally
inaccessible to undergraduates.

Let's see what our own PR folks make of this. At least we're still a top Career Center!

World of an Intern (Music Video) and eBay auction

"Just a video us interns put together in the last couple of weeks here at Crispin Porter + Bogusky. " I think it's great. Wish our interns would come up with something like this. It's a tad cutting but basically positive without being obviously "rah rah."


They also had an eBay auction which raised over $17,000 FOR their 38 interns. That's an interesting way to budget for them!

Rob SanGeorge quotes in Baltimore Sun on Pesticides in Chesapeake

Career Advisor by day, Rob SanGeorge dons a super hero costume off hours and as director of the Pesticides and the Chesapeake Bay Watershed Project, was the go to person for the media when it came to a new report on pesticide pollution causing things like intersexed fish. In the article, which came out Friday, reports,

"There's no smoking gun," SanGeorge says, acknowledging the lack of conclusive research showing that toxic chemicals in the bay and its tributaries are harming fish and wildlife and bay grasses. But he points to studies suggesting problems and "enormous data gaps" that need to be filled.