Austin College: A Great Place to Work

When I visited Austin College last fall, I was really impressed by this little gem of a campus north of Dallas, Texas. The students I met were enthralled with the place, and I sat next to a very dapper professor of Spanish at lunch, who, despite my grilling, could not find a single bad thing to say about his experience as an instructor.
Well, the Chronicle of Higher Education came out the other day with its survey of the “best colleges to work for,” which asked professors and administrators how they perceived their institution. Colleges were rated on such things as faculty-administration relations, collaborative governance, quality of health insurance, relationships with department chairs or supervisors, and a whole host of other criteria.
Austin College came out in the top five in many of the criteria, including:

  • Healthy Faculty – Administration Relations
  • Collaborative Governance
  • Professional / Career Development Program
  • Teaching Environment
  • Compensation and Benefits
  • Work-Life Balance
  • Confidence in Senior Leadership
  • Internal Communications
  • Connection to Institution and Pride
  • Physical Workspace Conditions
  • Housing Assistance Program
  • Perception and Confidence in Fair Treatment
  • Respect and Appreciation
  • Policies, Resources, and Efficiency
  • Career Development, Research, and Scholarship
  • Engagement Index

No other college appears so frequently in this report.
It is notable that the only Ivy League institution to appear in the top 5 on any measure of employee satisfaction is Cornell, which pops up in several categories. Stanford does well in many categories, and other top tier schools include Duke and Emory. Among large state universities, the University of Kansas does particularly well, and the University of Michigan and George Mason University appear within the top five in a few categories.
I find this index helpful in highlighting college where professors and administrators are happy with the institutions they work for, because this index is also a measure of the pride these adults take in delivering educational services to their students. If the grown ups are happy, it would seem more likely that the students are equally happy.
That certainly seemed to be the case at Austin College. And judging from the Chronicle‘s survey, the Spanish professor I sat next to at lunch was not merely blowing smoke. He really did like working there.
Mark Montgomery
College Counselor

Duke University Administrator Blasts the Rankings Game

Today’s issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education features a commentary by John F. Burness, a former administrator at Duke, Cornell, and the University of Illinois. Burness critiques the rankings created by US News & World Report–and by newcomer, Forbes. While the rankings titillate and sell oodles of magazines, they do little to shed light on the differences among colleges.
While the article is password protected, I will offer a short snippet here that identifies what I think are his most salient criticisms of the US News ratings:

The undergraduate magazine rankings, in contrast, give considerable weight to perception and tend to be based on annual assessments, as if undergraduate-program innovations or tweakings manifest significant change in two semesters. But if the objective is to sell magazines, manifesting change is important. U.S. News has artfully—in the guise of improving the veracity of its rankings—made one or more changes in its methodology every few years, which enables it to argue that there is some shift in the quality of institutions that the new methodology has captured. The cynic in me says that the changing of the methodology is more a strategy for getting different results in the rankings, which helps the publication sell more copies. If the rankings stayed constant, why buy the magazines?
Moreover, the precision that U.S. News purports its methodologies reveal is, on the face of it, rather silly. If you look at the top 10 institutions, you will see that some of them are separated by small fractions of a percent. In the Olympics, those fractions make a difference, but it’s hard to understand how in the real-life breadth of activities of a university, they make any difference at all to a student. I have talked with many people at U.S. News who share my skepticism and, in some cases, are embarrassed by the magazine’s rankings. But they recognize that the rankings are a significant moneymaker. (The magazine has created separate rankings of graduate and professional programs, as well as research hospitals, not to mention books based on the rankings.)

I admit that I do sometimes use the rankings in my research of colleges, primarily because parents often ask me how this or that college is ranked in this or that category.
But I never let the rankings dictate which colleges I may (or may not) recommend for a particular student. For each student, there may be any number of great colleges that will amply fill their needs and aspirations.
First I get to know those needs and aspirations. Then I recommend colleges that will best suit the individual student.
Mark Montgomery
Independent College Counselor
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