Two tallies tout Rice as fourth best-value university

By Josh Rutenberg     1/15/09 6:00pm

Rice was ranked fourth last week on both the Princeton Review and Kiplinger's Personal Finance magazine's lists of best value private schools for 2009, falling from the number one position it held on last year's Princeton Review and improving by one spot on Kiplinger's list. The lists compiled data from private campuses across the country. Schools were ranked on the basis of academic quality, student opinion and financial aid packages. Other consistently high-ranked institutions include Princeton, Harvard and Yale universities.

Princeton Review ranked Rice as first in 2007 and 2008 on its "America's Best Value Colleges" list. Kiplinger's ranking of Rice as a best value college has remained fairly consistent over the past three years, fluctuating from fourth in 2007 to fifth in 2008.

"We tend to bounce a little from year to year, but we have a strong track record of being within the top five schools," Vice President for Finance Kathy Collins said.

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She attributed Rice's fall from first to fourth to the sweeping changes Harvard, Princeton and Yale made to their financial aid policy last year. Harvard began limiting tuition to 10 percent of a student's family's income. None of these schools require students to take out loans as part of financial aid packages. However, Collins says she is not worried about the change in rankings.

"Look at the company we're in," Collins said. "Rice makes a point of wanting to be affordable and be a high quality place, so it's great to have that affirmation. And it's great publicity to be right up there with really top schools."

With the recession looming overhead, families are sure to pay close attention to the tuition rates of major universities, an area where Rice has consistently outperformed its competition.

The rankings reflected changes made in December 2007 for the 2008-'09 academic year, including the increased no-loan threshold from $30,000 to $60,000.

Vice President for Enrollment Chris Munoz said Rice has continued to make accommodating undergraduate financial need its number one priority by raising the no-loan threshold this month from $60,000 to $80,000 and lowering the loan cap to $10,000 for students matriculating in 2009.

Student indebtedness upon graduation is also a factor in value rankings, and on average Rice students graduate with a debt of $15,876, a few thousand dollars below its peer institutions, according to Princeton Review.

Rather than focusing solely on cost of tuition, the Princeton Review and Kiplinger's also place heavy emphasis on the academic quality of each college. Collins said she believes Rice's tuition $6,000 below its peer institutions, the quality of Rice's applicant pool, and Rice's selectivity contributed to Rice's high rankings. With a student-faculty ratio at five to one, a freshman class with high SAT scores ranging from 1330-1510 on a 1600 sclae, and selectivity rates that hover around 25 percent, Rice maintains a competitive edge over other colleges when it comes to academic quality, Collins said.

Both Collins and Munoz view the 2009 applicant pool as particularly strong, attributing some of the pull to being consistently recognized as a best value school.

"Despite the challenges we faced, we've earned this recognition," Munoz said. "There are a lot of positive opportunities for us. We're going to have more applicants than space, and that speaks to the resiliency of Rice and its growing reputation."

Some students were worried about the long-term effects of the change.

"I think as Rice changes what it's trying to be as an institution - it's become sort of a research-oriented institution - and raises tuition and raises enrollment, it's going to have to deal with the fact that it's no longer a value college," Baker College senior Aurelia Chaudhury said. "We may well be rising in the other rankings, but we've got to take some hits as we change our priorities about money and where we get it from."

Brown College senior Paul Tucker said he thought that Rice could regain its standing, however.

"On a whole, it's a good thing that Rice is retaining its relative value in the college marketplace," Tucker said. "Although from the inside, I would say that Rice is getting increasingly more expensive for students. If Rice is going to move up in the rankings and is going to try to attract really qualified candidates from the northeast, we're going to have to be a relative value to those schools.

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