What are the best universities in the nation, and why?

Thumbnail Image
Date
2016-12-01
Authors
Finn, Taylor
Major Professor
Advisor
Committee Member
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Authors
Research Projects
Organizational Units
Journal Issue
Is Version Of
Versions
Series
Series
Honors Projects and Posters
University Honors Program

The Honors project is potentially the most valuable component of an Honors education. Typically Honors students choose to do their projects in their area of study, but some will pick a topic of interest unrelated to their major.

The Honors Program requires that the project be presented at a poster presentation event. Poster presentations are held each semester. Most students present during their senior year, but may do so earlier if their honors project has been completed.

This site presents project descriptions and selected posters for Honors projects completed since the Fall 2015 semester.

Department
Abstract

This project is an economists approach to ranking universities in the United States. The goal of this research was twofold. First, I aimed to assign a market based quality measure to 950 universities. This was accomplished by using NACE data from 2013 to calculate a weighted average of salaries for each university. This is what graduates should receive on average after graduation. We then used PayScale data from 2013 to find out what graduates from each university actually made. The difference between what they should receive and actually receive equals the quality value. Second, I analyzed how specific university attributes affect the institution’s quality value. Using IPEDS we gathered data on both student attributes, and institutional attributes. We measured student attributes by looking at ACT scores, GPA and class rank. Some variables used to measure institution quality included, student enrollment, money spent on research, and diversity. In addition to controlling for student quality, I also controlled for location. The first result from this project is a list of 950 universities in the nation ranked by their market value. Second, we now have a better idea as to what university qualities lead to higher starting salaries for graduates.

Comments
Description
Keywords
Citation
DOI
Source
Copyright