Abstract
Academic selectivity plays a dominant role in the public's understanding of what constitutes institutional excellence or quality in undergraduate education. In this study, we analyzed two independent data sets to estimate the net effect of three measures of college selectivity on dimensions of documented good practices in undergraduate education. With statistical controls in place for important confounding influences, an institution's median student SAT/ACT score, a nearly identical proxy for that score, and the Barron's Selectivity Score explained from less than 0.1% to 20% of the between-institution variance and from less than 0.1% to 2.7% of the total variance in good practices. The implications of these findings for what constitutes quality in undergraduate education, college choice decisions, and the validity of national college rankings are discussed.
Highlights
The academic “selectivity” of a college or university’s undergraduate student body has been perhaps the most common single criterion by which the public, as well as many scholars, make inferences about the “quality” of the undergraduate education one receives (e.g., Bowen & Bok, 1998; Pascarella & Terenzini, 1991; Rumberger & Thomas, 1993; Thomas, 2003)
Column 2 shows the percentages of between-institution variance in good practices explained by college selectivity when differences in average student precollege characteristics among institutions were taken into account
We conducted analysis of two independent data sets to estimate the net effect of three measures of college selectivity on dimensions of documented good practices in undergraduate education
Summary
The academic “selectivity” of a college or university’s undergraduate student body has been perhaps the most common single criterion by which the public, as well as many scholars, make inferences about the “quality” of the undergraduate education one receives (e.g., Bowen & Bok, 1998; Pascarella & Terenzini, 1991; Rumberger & Thomas, 1993; Thomas, 2003). Measures of an institution’s academic selectivity, such as average student SAT/ACT scores, are not just a convenient and obtainable proxy for college quality They play a dominant, if perhaps unintended, role in more elaborate and public attempts to identify the nation’s “best” colleges and universities. (Average SAT/ACT equivalent score was obtained from the 2002 report America’s Top Research Universities, Lombardi, Craig, Capaldi, & Carter, 2002.) For all practical purposes, the USNWR ranking of “best” colleges can be largely reproduced by knowing the average SAT/ACT scores of the enrolled students. Beyond this index, the other so-called “quality” indices make little incremental contribution to the USNWR rankings
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