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The College Bubble
The mass extinction of colleges
Dr. Jay Maron


College strength

The measures of the strength of a college are:

Large endowment/student
Low average tuition
High student choice rank
High SAT average score

The plot shows these measures for American and Canadian colleges. Colleges that are in peril of failing are to the upper left, and are in small red font.

MIT is the most dominant college for student choice and SAT score. Student choice rankings come from parchment.com.

The following plot shows the dominant STEM colleges.

Student choice rankings are not well correlated with the USNews rankings.


Colleges


Caltech and MIT

Caltech
MIT
Juilliard
Manhattan School of Music

Core requirements:

                         Caltech  MIT  U. Chicago  CUNY  Harvard  Juilliard  MSM

Biology                     *      *       *        *       *
Lab                         *      *       *        *       *
Mathematics                 *      *       *        *       *
Calculus                    *      *       *
Chemistry                   *      *
Multivariable Calculus      *      *
Mechanics (with Calculus)   *      *
Electromag (with Calculus)  *      *
Sports                      *      *
Differential equations      *
Quantum Mechanics           *
Thermodynamics              *

Administrators

         Teachers     Administrators   Administrators
        per student    per student      per teacher

Public     .064           .073             1.14
Private    .07            .102             1.46
Data from the "Delta Cost Project".

Budgets

Numbers indicate fraction of the budget.

                        Teachers  Admins  Aid  Students  Operating

University of California  .38      .30    .14
Santa Clara University    .26      .25    .16    .018      .17
University of Montana     .48      .13    .09
Caltech expenses:
Teaching    42%
Research    40%
Admin       13%
Auxiliary    5%
Caltech revenue:
Grants    56%
Endowment 17%
Gifts      8%
Tuition    6%
Other     13%

City University of New York, Borough of Manhattan Community College
                         #     M$    k$ per   Frac of    Frac classes
                                     person   spending   taught
Students               26606     -      -
Full time teachers       534   48.2   90.3     .43         .488
Part time teachers      1054   21.2   20.1     .19         .512
Full time non-teachers   703   42.4   60.3     .38         .0
Total                  28897  111.8     -     1.00        1.00


Students / Teachers            =  16.8
Students / Full time teachers  =  49.8
Course cost                    =  265 $/credit
In state tuition               = 5169 $
Out of state tuition           = 9969 $
Classes offered per semester   = 5300

U.C. Berkeley research budget

         Millions of $

Federal       370
Non-profit    115.3
State         108
Industry       63.3
U.C.           17.3
Total         673.9
Data for 2015-16

World universities

Harvard        1    Cornell       21    U. Queensland    52    Erasmus U. Rot.  82
MIT            2    U.Col. London 22    McGill           53    Monash U.        84
UC Berkeley    3    UCSF          23    U. Munich        53    Kyoto U.         86
Stanford       4    UCSB          24    U. Manchester    56    U. Paris-Sud     88
Oxford         5    Northwestern  25    EPF Lausanne     58    U. Barcelona     90
Cambridge      6    Wisconsin     26    Tsinghua         59    U. New S. Wales  90
Caltech        7    Swiss Tech    27    King's College   61    U. Groningen     93
UCLA           8    UNC           28    U. Copenhagen    61    Mayo Clinic      94
Columbia       9    Minnesota     29    Tech U. Munich   64    Fudan U.         96
Chicago       10    Texas         30    U. Hong Kong     64    Ghent U.         97
U. Wash       11    U. Tokyo      31    Humbolt Berlin   68    Lund U.          97
Johns Hopkins 12    U. Brit Colum 33    Utrecht U.       69    U. Freiburg      99
Princeton     13    Heidelberg U. 37    Karolinska Inst. 72    U. Helsinki     101
U. Penn       14    U. Eidenburgh 37    Nanyang Tech     74    U. Glasgow      102
Yale          14    U. Melbourne  40    U. Bristol       74    VU U. Amsterdam 102
Toronto       16    Peking U.     41    Leiden U.        77    U. Geneva       104
Michigan      17    KU Leuven     42    U. Zurich        77    Seoul Nat. U.   105
Imperial Col. 18    N. U. Singap. 49    U. Amsterdam     79    U. Alberta      106
UCSD          19    Curie U.      49    Australian Nat U 80    Zhejiang U.     106
Duke          20    U. Sydney     51    Free U. Berlin   81    U Paris Diderot 109
U.S. News

Mathematics skill of 15-year-olds

            6     5     4     3     2     1     0

Singapore 19.0  21.0  22.0  17.5  12.2   6.1   2.2
Taiwan    18.0  19.2  19.7  17.1  13.1   8.3   4.5
Hong Kong 12.3  21.4  26.1  19.7  12.0   5.9   2.6
S. Korea  12.1  18.8  23.9  21.4  14.7   6.4   2.7
Japan      7.6  16.0  23.7  24.7  16.9   7.9   3.2
Lichten.   7.4  17.4  23.2  22.7  15.2  10.6   3.5
Switz.     6.8  14.6  23.9  24.5  17.8   8.9   3.6
Belgium    6.1  13.4  20.6  22.4  18.4  12.0   7.0
Poland     5.0  11.7  21.3  25.5  22.1  11.1   3.3
Germany    4.7  12.8  21.7  23.7  19.4  12.2   5.5
Canada     4.3  12.1  22.4  26.4  21.0  10.2   3.6
Finland    3.5  11.7  23.2  28.8  20.5   8.9   3.3
France     3.1   9.8  18.9  23.8  22.1  13.6   8.7
UK         2.9   9.0  18.4  24.8  23.2  14.0   7.8
Italy      2.2   7.8  16.7  24.6  24.1  16.1   8.5
USA        2.2   6.6  15.8  23.3  26.3  17.9   8.0
Hungary    2.1   7.1  14.4  23.0  25.3  18.2   9.9
Brazil     0      .7   2.9   8.9  20.4  31.9  35.2
Mexico     0      .6   3.7  13.1  27.8  31.9  22.8
Argentina  0      .3   1.8   9.2  22.2  31.6  34.9
Columns indicate level of mathematical proficiency, 6 being highest.
Data for 15-year-old students on the PISA mathematics literacy scale.

Academic contests


Competitions
         Physics        Math    Putnam math  Science   Science talent    Siemens
         Olympiad     Olympiad    winners    Olympiad  search finalists  Competition
         winners (%)  team (%)     (%)       winners

Asian      81            72         50          50          64             61
White      19            28         50          50          36             39
Other      <1            <1         <1           0           0              0
Data

SAT

          Math  Read  Write  Total   Math, % in range   Total score, change
                                         750-800          from 2005-2016

Asian      598   525   531   1654         14                  +54
White      534   529   513   1576          2                   -6
Am. Indian 482   481   460   1423                             -27
Hispanic   457   448   438   1343          1                  -28
Black      428   431   418   1277           .5                -14
Average    511
Data. Data

SAT bias

Bias at elite universities:

           SAT     ACT

Asian      -140    -3.4
White         0     0
Hispanic   +130    +0.3
Black      +310    +3.8
Wall Street Journal article on SAT bias.

The bias is larger than the difference in score. For example, Asians outscore Blacks on average by 377 points, and Harvard favors Blacks over Asians by 450 points.

The Asian American Coalition for Education has filed a complaint with the Department of Education requesting that they investigate Harvard admissions.

A group of individuals is running for Harvard's Board of Overseers with the platform of making Harvard admissions more fair. The candidates are Ralph Nader, Ron Unz, Stephen Hsu, Stuart Taylor, and Lee Cheng. Article

One of the few schools with race-blind admissions is Caltech, and it is reflected by the fact that they have the best SAT scores.


Degrees and SATs
         Batchelor  Master  PhD  SAT   SAT   SAT    Mean tax    Frac paying  Public education $
            (%)      (%)    (%)  math  read  write  per person  zero tax     spent per student
                                                     (k$)        (%)          (k$)
Asian         51.0   20.4   6.4   598   525  531      50         35.5         11.5
White         32.6   11.5   3.1   534   529  513      35         37.6         10.8
Hispanic      13.3    3.9   1.0   457   448  438      18         52.0         11.0
Black         19.8    6.2   1.3   428   431  418      17         50.7         11.4
Native Indian 14.8    5.0   1.4   482   481  460
Indian        70
S. Korean     53
Chinese       51
Filipino      47
Japanese      46
Vietnamese    26
SAT data      Public education spending data      Income data
University demographics
         Asian  White  Hispanic  Black  International

Caltech    44    28       6       1        9
MIT        30    34      15      10
U. Chicago 17.0  42.8     9.0     4.5      9.7
Princeton  20    46       9       6       11
Penn       19.7  44.7    10.3     7.1     11.3
Columbia   17.1  38.1    12.8     7.2
Cornell    16
Harvard    17
Dartmouth  14
Brown      12
Numbers are percentages.
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