GAINESVILLE — When U.S. News and World Report ranked the University of Florida in ninth place among the nation’s top public universities, tied with the University of California-Irving and UC-San Diego, UF and its leadership celebrated.
Then, the work continued.
“What came quickly after that, within days, was our Board of Trustees urging us to continue the momentum and movement up in the rankings,” UF President Kent Fuchs said.
Now, UF is looking to make its way into the top five.
Since 2013, when the state Legislature and Governor Rick Scott designated UF a pre-eminent university, the school has worked to become a top 10 public university. Exactly how that is measured has never been quite clear.
There are many media rankings — The New York Times’ College Access Index, Kiplinger’s Best College Values, Forbes’ Top Colleges, to name a few — but UF heralds the one by U.S. News & World Report as showing its earlier goal has been reached. It earned the No. 9 spot in September 2017, pushing past its No. 14 ranking in 2016.
“Now that UF has achieved top 10 status, top five status is clearly the next logical step,” Bill Heavener, chairman of the Board of Trustees, said in an email. “We should celebrate our success, but we can’t rest on our laurels.”
Becoming a top five university means leaping past half of UF’s top 10 peers. The UC-Berkeley ranked first in the U.S. News list for 2017.
“I really, firmly believe that the greatest asset of higher education in the United States, in contrast to, say, other nations and other levels of education, is indeed how competitive universities are in each other,” Fuchs said. “Not in a bad sense — I want every university to be successful, and I’m genuine about that. We really do compete for faculty, nationwide, for faculty, for students, and we compete for federal grants and even publications,” Fuchs said.
But the goals UF leaders are setting aim at more than beating the competition, Fuchs said. They’re designed to make UF a better school, period.
“The real objective is for us to be better and more effective,” he said.
Different media lists weigh metrics differently. The U.S. News rankings have been criticized for putting too much emphasis on endowment, alumni giving and selectivity, and not enough on the diversity of the student body. Editors at the news magazine argue much more focus is placed on graduation rates and how many freshmen return to continue their studies, and that economic diversity — based on Pell grants — is part of the mix.
Carol Christ, chancellor of UC-Berkeley, was quoted by Politico last year saying the extent to which U.S. News motivates schools to pick wealthier students is “mind-boggling.”
Reed College, a well-regarded private college in Portland, Oregon, has gone so far as deciding not to complete surveys and data sheets for U.S. News. Still, it is ranked 82nd among liberal arts colleges.
“At Reed, we said we are a distinctive school in that our mission is to prepare students for jobs that require kind of a high degree of creativity, intellectual attainment,” said Colin Diver, former Reed president. “One of the measures that we use is the percentage of our graduates who go on to get a Ph.D.”
“That’s not to say rankings have no value,” he said. “If you’re a school like Reed that has a fairly precisely defined mission ... a ranking system like U.S. News is just not very useful.”
It’s not uncommon for a public flagship university to use its rank as a top university as its distinguishing factor from other public flagship universities, said Diver, who now teaches part-time at Boston University.
“It takes a certain amount of chutzpah to set a quantitative goal and say we intend to be in the top five,” Diver said.
Fuchs said he and Provost Joe Glover have set the following goals to become a top five public university:
• Raise alumni giving to 16 percent from 12 percent;
• Increase the six-year graduation rate to 91 percent from 87 percent; and,
• Grow the faculty by 500 members.
While he doesn’t have a timeline of when UF will make it into the top five, Fuchs said the Board of Trustees has urged him to grow the faculty by 500 in two years. That requires hiring about 800 to 1,000 to compensate for those who leave the university because of retirement or resignation.
“That’s a heavy load, to find the best faculty in the nation and recruit them here,” Fuchs said.
Juan Gilbert, UF’s Banks pre-eminence chair in engineering, was one of the university’s hires while working toward the top 10 ranking. He was hired in 2014 and said the campaign to top 10 attracted him to the university.
“It was definitely part of the recruitment effort,” Gilbert said.
“Being at the University of Florida brings a certain level of credibility,” he added. It helps him recruit top students for his department.
Becoming a top five public university, Gilbert said is “a big goal,” but achievable.
Florida Senate President Joe Negron, who has prioritized funding state universities, says better universities give the state itself better stature in the country.
“This isn’t about bragging rights,” Negron said. If Florida has top-tier universities, businesses and graduates will be attracted to moving to the state, he said.
According to a 2017 National Education Association report, the Florida government came in 37th in primary education spending per student in 2016. In 2014, the report says, Florida spent the second-lowest amount of money per capita for higher education, ahead only of Nevada.
Negron said his priority is improving state universities even as funding for primary education is low.
“I think we can do both things at once,” Negron said.
Fuchs said that to grow the faculty by 500 members, Gainesville and the surrounding area need to be places those top faculty want to move to.
“They really care a lot about their own environment that they’ll live and work in,” Fuchs said, adding that employees want good schools for their children and good opportunities for their partners.
UF completed a strategic plan in 2016 that could shape the university for the next half century. Two of its four primary initiatives are aimed off campus — at helping Gainesville become a “New American City” that shines with better sustainability, equity, health and education; and strengthening neighborhoods that surround the campus and the downtown district.
It’s important to keep those at the university invested in the university, Fuchs said.
“It’s the people that have been here for a number of years who are really responsible for this past rise in ranking,” Fuchs said.
And rankings don’t necessarily reflect the university’s atmosphere and morale, which, Fuchs said, is “absolutely critical.”
Fuchs said the university had a history of being a “place that cares about its students and employees.”
“We just have to double-down on that,” he said.