Each year, the Times of London produces a rankings guide to the world’s best universities.
This year’s guide has just been released, and the U.K. universities of Oxford and Cambridge top the rankings. American universities remain on top, but are losing ground to Asia and Europe.
Those results speak to the rankings guide’s credibility: It is pretty good, but not perfect.
As the Wall Street Journal explains, the guide fails to consider China’s use of universities as “journal churning” factories. Producing as many research papers as possible, Chinese universities know they can boost their research value score in comparison to other institutions. The research papers don’t need to be useful; they just need to tick a box “one more article.” The Times report also overweighs academics (and thus liberals) when assessing colleges. It would be more accurate were the Times to use high-societal achievers such as Pulitzer Prize winners, CEOs, or economists to judge how good universities actually are.
And were these considerations included, the U.S. would retain an unchallenged position as the world’s top center for value-assessed research and education. That’s because whether it be medical developments, private sector innovation, or impact-based philosophy and history, no other nation comes close to America’s knowledge factory. That includes Oxford and Cambridge universities.
Money tells a big part of the tale here. After all, high-end research is rarely cheap.
But considering Oxford University’s 2015-2016 research budget was $700 million, were it a U.S. university, it would be only 23rd on the nation’s research budget list. Even worse, Cambridge University’s $491 million a year would put it in 38th place!
Still, there is one thing that Oxford and Cambridge do better than top U.S. universities: cost-control in other areas. Consider undergraduate tuition.
First off, a quick caveat: U.K. students have their annual tuition capped by the government at $12,041 a year, so it’s not fair to contrast those fees with private sector U.S. colleges. That said, if we consider overseas students at Oxford or Cambridge (who do not receive U.K. government subsidies), the rates become comparative. This year, an overseas student at Oxford or Cambridge will pay a maximum tuition of $31,109 or $38,054 (excluding medicine) respectively. While those rates might seem high, they are nothing compared to the U.S.
Trawl through the websites of U.S. Ivy League schools, and you’ll find annual tuition fees at Brown come in at $52,213, Dartmouth at $51,468, Yale at $51,400, Princeton at $47,140, and Harvard at $44,990.
Why so much higher?
In part, it’s due to the higher salaries of professors. But it’s also a consequence of vastly expensive expenditures U.S. colleges make beyond teaching. American colleges spend big in areas such as student accommodations, lecture halls, social facilities, and administration. To be sure, these facilities are far superior to those in Britain, but they carry a heavy cost in the form of tuition outlays. The consequence is that too little of each student’s fees is actually spent on education. More problematic, this pricing system means that those from low to middle income backgrounds require government subsidies in order to study. And sadly, thanks to our acceptance that this price inflation is the norm, Americans are accepting its perpetuity.
As I’ve argued, we need a different approach. We should work to reduce tuition costs by bold federal grant reform and in staffing structure changes. Most of all, we must remind ourselves that the key to a good education is not luxury, but good teaching.
Until reform comes, however, I thoroughly recommend American students look abroad for their undergraduate study. For one, consider my alma mater, King’s College London’s War Studies department. Studying for a B.A. in War Studies will only cost you $22,231 a year, and in return, you’ll learn the ways of spycraft, diplomacy, and statecraft. You’ll get to learn from Alessio Patalano and Andrew Lambert!
