September 1, 1997

UCSC named 25th best campus among national public universities

Ranking appears in U.S. News & World Report's 1998 "best colleges" issue

By Jim Burns

In its 1998 assessment of colleges and universities, U.S. News & World Report names UC Santa Cruz one of the 25 best public campuses in the country. The ranking appears in the magazine's 11th annual "America's Best Colleges" issue, on the newsstands beginning August 25.

Four campuses, including UCSC, tied for 25th in the popular survey's list of the top national public universities; the other three are Indiana University-Bloomington, the University of Delaware, and the University of Hawaii. The University of Virginia tops the list of national public universities, followed by UCSC's sister campus, UC Berkeley, which was named second in the nation for quality.

"This high ranking marks another milestone in the rise of UC Santa Cruz as one of this country's leading universities," says M.R.C. Greenwood, UCSC chancellor. "This national recognition of the achievement of UCSC's faculty, students, and alumni reflects the increasing public appreciation for the academic distinction that characterizes the UC Santa Cruz campus."

In developing its 1998 rankings, U.S. News distributed detailed questionnaires to 1,400 four-year schools earlier this year; 95 percent of the surveys were returned. Criteria by which the schools were judged include academic reputation (provided by presidents, provosts, and admissions deans at each school), retention rate, faculty resources, student selectivity, financial resources, value added (a measurement of the school's role in the academic success of it students), and alumni-giving rate.

To provide meaningful comparisons, the magazine placed colleges and universities into one of four categories: national universities (the category in which UCSC was placed), national liberal arts colleges, regional universities, and regional liberal arts colleges.

UCSC has also scored well in a number of recent national surveys measuring commitment to instruction and quality of research activities:

• In a comprehensive analysis of more than 200 top universities, UCSC was ranked 15th in the nation among public campuses in the overall quality of its research productivity. The study was detailed in a book published earlier this year, The Rise of American Research Universities: Elites and Challengers in the Postwar Era.

• In the 1996 survey conducted by U.S. News, UCSC was ranked 13th among U.S. universities for its commitment to undergraduate teaching.

• A National Research Council survey the same year ranked two of UCSC's doctoral programs--astronomy and astrophysics and linguistics--in the top 10 programs nationwide. Two other programs--earth sciences and biochemistry/molecular biology--placed in the survey's top quartile.

• In several assessments measuring the average number of times a published paper is cited by researchers, the Philadelphia-based Institute for Scientific Information has judged research findings by UCSC faculty to be among the most highly regarded in the country.

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