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Forbes Top Colleges Rankings Penalizes Northeastern Co-op Program

Posted by Samantha Coren on Fri, Aug 05, 2011
  
  
  

By Sam Coren
StudentAdvisor.com Staff

northeastern university reviewsThe following editorial reflects the opinions of the author and not all of those at StudentAdvisor.com.

As StudentAdvisor's Content Manager I have my eyes glued to everything happening in the world of college news. So when I got word of Forbes's latest Top 200 Colleges list I couldn't help but to go find out which schools they consider to be the best in America. At the top of their list for the second year in a row was Williams College, a small private liberal arts school in western Massachusetts. Despite its steep sticker price, Forbes notes that Williams boasts one of the highest four-year graduation rates in the country, a slew of Rhodes and Marshall scholarship recipients and an alumni base of high-earning professionals. 

While it's hard for anyone to disagree that this college is an exceptional place to earn a your degree (just check out our student reviews on Williams College if you're skeptical), I couldn't help but be utterly disappointed with where my alma mater ranked on the Forbes list. But it wasn't a feeling of buyers' remorse that came over me when I saw Northeastern University sitting in the #534 spot. It was a feeling of complete disgust that their ranking methodology penalized Northeastern for having a world-renowned co-op program.

If you're not familiar with what a co-op program is, it's an official internship program organized by the school so that students can alternate periods of full-time work experience with a traditional classroom education. Because Northeastern students can elect to take up to 3 of these 6-month internships during their college career, the majority of Huskies graduate in five years, not four.

Since someone at Forbes decided that 17.5% of a school's ranking should be based on four-year graduation rates, Northeastern tanked on the list. This is a crushing blow for a school that has transformed itself from a little known commuter school for engineers into a powerhouse research institution that's shifting the higher education paradigm.

So if you're the parent of a college-bound student who's now second guessing Northeastern's worth based off this new list I encourage you to reconsider your opinion. Do yourself a favor and check out the Northeastern reviews on StudentAdvisor from real students and learn more about how the school's co-op program has changed our lives.

And as for Forbes? We're Northeastern. We're no stranger to being the underdog.

Photo:  wallyg

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Comments

I'd like to see where Forbes got their cost numbers from. Some of the state schools seem extremely high. JMU in Virginia they have at $33,000 and my niece just graduated from JMU 2 yrs ago paying $14,000.
Posted @ Friday, August 05, 2011 11:49 AM by David
We should also note that NEU's co-op program had another indirect hit on their ranking. The student to faculty ratio... the numbers were run off the staff and total students, which makes sense as far as most schools go. But this doesn't account for the number of students that are away on co-op for each semester, and thus makes it appear as though there are more students in the classroom at any given time than there really ought to be in many cases. Not sure if this also plays a role in the attendance record or not, or if those numbers are based on actual enrolled and class attendance. What is better is that Forbes tried to defend this result for NEU saying it cant change its methodology to accommodate schools that operate differently... but at that rate, they should have left NEU out since it isn't a normal four-year college.
Posted @ Friday, August 05, 2011 6:26 PM by April
You certainly can't blame Northeastern's miserable showing just on grad rates. It also was penalized for its unaffordability. The school only meets 59% of the typical student's financial need which is awful. And it only meets the full need of 18% of its students. Here is the link to the dreary figures:  
http://www.collegedata.com/cs/data/college/college_pg03_tmpl.jhtml?schoolId=456 
 
Here's a post that I wrote about high cost/high debt schools on the East Coast: 
 
http://www.thecollegesolution.com/the-real-cost-of-attending-an-expensive-east-coast-university/ 
 
Lynn O'Shaughnessy
Posted @ Monday, August 08, 2011 11:35 AM by Lynn O'Shaughnessy
@Lynn - I'm not disagreeing with you on the tuition cost or financial aid. Honestly, I wouldn't have gone to the school if my parents weren't amazingly good about saving for college.  
 
However what's not super well publicized about Northeastern is that it has a good track record for awarding VERY generous scholarships for academic "over-achievers." While the Ivies and other prestigious colleges (say BU and NYU) may be solid options for drawing these types of students, Northeastern is willing to toss you a pretty penny if you're willing to choose team Husky. A friend of mine was a Torch scholar from rural Maine and would not have gone to college if it wasn't for Northeastern's program: <a>http://www.northeastern.edu/torch/  
 
Many of my friends who were accepted into the Honors program paid only a hair more than they would if they were to go to UMass-Amherst. Even as a transfer student, they offered me some scholarship money which helped ease the tuition burden - most transfer students aren't given a dime at other schools.  
 
- Sam
Posted @ Monday, August 08, 2011 11:48 AM by Samantha Coren
One additional point the coop program jobs can help in offset your tuition costs and you will get better experience then apart time retail or pizza shop.
Posted @ Wednesday, August 24, 2011 1:17 PM by Mike O'Brien
Mike, While I don't want to digress from the discussion regarding faulty basic data collection and analysis, it has to be said that NEU gets a little ahead of itself when they say that co-op jobs "offset" the cost of tuition. Most students are not living at home during co-op and are paying for room & board somewhere. If you're lucky enough to save $3 to $4K out of one co-op term, that's hardly a dent in the $120K+ total tuition bill...Not to mention student loans balloon out when you roll in the cost of funding living expenses while attending college in Boston. While it's not impossible to offset costs, it's still not a very large light at the end of the tunnel for most students.
Posted @ Wednesday, August 31, 2011 10:05 AM by Amanda
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