U.S. News School Rankings

[jimdahl]

UND is holding pretty constant in tier 3 of National Universities, where it's been for many years. While all such rankings are rather arbitrary and showing up in tier 3 doesn't exactly beat a path to UND's door, it's nice to see UND does stack up relatively well against our regional and athletics peers. There may also be some hints that UND is outgrowing the NCC, by this measurement anyway.

Other schools of interest (culled manually, omissions unintentional):

WCHA

#32 UW

#66 UMN

#90 DU

#33 CC (liberal arts)

NCC

3rd tier USD

Recent NCC

3rd tier SDSU

4th tier NDSU

4th tier UNC

[ScottM]

Princeton Review also has UND in the top-357, again.

Link

[Fedorov]

I don't mind making bold statements and getting flamed, but I will preface this with facts that I have been an undergrad and grad student at UND, I was a TA for 4 1/2 years, and I am from ND. I think if UND wants to be a more scholarly school, it needs to stop catering to ND people. I think the admission standards being raised is a good thing, and it shouldn't be easy for any ND person to get into UND. The professors are too leniant on students that make up excuses for things. It really doesn't matter how hard one worked in high school or what grades they got. I cannot believe how some people leave messages about how they expect a make-up exam to be approved, done exactly when they want it done, and then thank the professor or TA as if it is going to happen just because the student said so. Obviously this may be going on at other universities, but UND needs to decide what they really want to do. They can get high enrollment numbers by allowing everyone in, or they can try to become a better school. A college degree is something that you should have to earn, not have given to you. I would be happy to discuss any of this, but I will probably ignore most flames.

[Fedorov]

Princeton Review also has UND in the top-357, again.

Link

To give more support to my above claim, I love how UND is rated as having Professors that are hard to find. I have been to a big university and I know what it is like to not have the professors around. However, everyone here thinks they should have professors go out of their way for them and always be there for them.

[jimdahl]

I think if UND wants to be a more scholarly school, it needs to stop catering to ND people.  I think the admission standards being raised is a good thing, and it shouldn't be easy for any ND person to get into UND.

...

Obviously this may be going on at other universities, but UND needs to decide what they really want to do.  They can get high enrollment numbers by allowing everyone in, or they can try to become a better school.

I'm pretty much with you. Though I think the number of campuses in the NDSUS is a tad high for such a small state, it provides some flexibility to UND. Those other campuses are targeted to ensure that all North Dakotans get access to higher education which gives UND some breathing room to trade off accessibility for excellence.

UND has always done a great job of being a regional alternative to the non-TC Minnesota campuses, but has also done a good job of recruiting nationwide (20.3% of student body from outside ND/MN as of 2003-04.

While UND's mission is definitely to serve North Dakota, it may best accomplish that by bringing in outside people/ideas/money and then focusing on applying those resources to educate local undergraduates and professionals.

The professors are too leniant on students that make up excuses for things.

Some of this is probably cultural or insitutional and shifts as the quality of students shift. Part of it is getting great faculty. The good news is that UND has been working very hard to bring faculty salaries up: as a percent compared to peers and as actual dollars.

[Smoggy]

To give more support to my above claim, I love how UND is rated as having Professors that are hard to find. I have been to a big university and I know what it is like to not have the professors around. However, everyone here thinks they should have professors go out of their way for them and always be there for them.

I think this all depends on the department. I've heard many a horror story about the communications department and how the professors aren't there during their office hours. Sometimes they haven't even shown to scheduled meetings and offered no apology. I personally had a pretty easy time finding my math professors, they just were normally busy with other students.