http://www.fsunews.com/story/news/2016/10/03/state-university-series-top-25-initiative/91504762/
"The State of the University Series will examine a different issue or group of people every week throughout the fall semester. Though some of these topics stem from national or worldwide issues, they all impact the Florida State University community in one way or another. The Top 25 Initiative is one of the most well-known programs working to advance the university’s status – but how does it benefit students?
38th Public School in the nation: This number represents the current official ranking of Florida State University, an institution that has been on a continuous upswing in creating student success environments, resulting in an increased ranking by US News and World Report, a move up from its former spot at 43rd.
Although this climb of five spots, which is the most of any public institution on the list, has granted some upward mobility in standings, university administrators express that there is still more that needs to be done as far as managing the improvement of university-wide metrics that are analyzed and compared to other institutions when creating the ranking lists.
Within the next five years, the top 25 is the goal.
The Florida State University has taken up the Top 25 Initiative with the intent to remedy limitations in the lack of funding, presenting a case to the Board of Governors to allow for a 70 million dollar recurring fund. This fund would work to finance key improvement areas, which include increasing faculty hires, retaining faculty, increasing the graduate programs and post-doctoral research scholars, improving upon student success by recruiting more high-achieving students, supporting an increasingly diverse population, financing STEM programs and increasing the financial resource rank.
One of the main aims of the Top 25 Initiative is to ensure that performance measures do not outpace the current pool of resources, meaning that there is an effort to guarantee that Florida State is equipped with suitable funding to allow for the finest student experience and quality of resources. Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs Sally McRorie explains that in order to move up in the rankings and eventually occupy space within the top 25, the first step is to receive funding and allocate these funds to address the metrics that will offer students the best success package at FSU.
Other universities within the top 25, according to McRorie, all receive a much hardier funding package, granting them the ability to invest in university programs and faculty maintenance that allow for better numbers with the measures that schools are assessed on when graded and ordered. Even with that, FSU still continues to outpace other universities in student-oriented outcomes.
“The top 25 universities in the US News & World Report are all much better funded, their resources are all much better than ours, but we do much better than them on our student performance outcomes,” McRorie says. “We have chosen to invest our preeminence money in practices that really help our students stay in school, graduate and get good jobs.”
John Thrasher, the president of Florida State University, expresses that achieving the top 25 standing is not an easy feat, one that will require the assistance of local and legislative funding efforts to allow Florida State to finance improvement efforts.
“It is a hard thing, first of all, and it’s probably going to take a lot of money,” Thrasher says. “We know what the metrics are and we are working on that. We are one of the two preeminent universities in the state of Florida, us and UF, and we’ve met all of 12 metrics established by the legislature last year.”
Thrasher continues by explaining that FSU’s preeminence status, which is a reward to universities that are eligible for increased funding to order to become nationally prominent, allowed for an additional 25 million dollars of financial support. This additional funding has since been applied to the key improvement metrics to improve student experience and work towards the parameters set to move FSU into the top 25.
These rankings reported by U.S. News & World Report are determined by a host of data, distinguishing the perceived prestige of a university by compiling statistics revolving around performance. Feedback about the perception and reputation of the university is also taken into consideration, with those evaluations coming from other peer institutions and assessments completed by high school guidance counselors.
Thrasher continues the point about the role that guidance counselors play in the logistics of ranking determination, explaining that, “counselors in high schools evaluate universities and that’s one metric that we have really worked on.”
Nathan Molina, who serves as the current SGA Student Body President, explains that the discrepancy in those evaluation lies in the misunderstanding of Florida State as a brand, and a failure to recognize its merit as a high-standing research institution. He explains that the counselors that are tasked with completing the assessments often have little to no recognition of Florida State and don’t have a clear understanding of the diversity of prospects that are offered at FSU.
In order to answer to the lack of repute amongst FSU and the guidance counselors filling in the evaluations, Molina, as well as an Ad Hoc committee that specialized in a student-led sector of the top 25, formulated a letter campaign to realign the perception of FSU as one that is in conjunction with it’s goals as an upstanding university.
As far as the increase and retention of faculty, Thrasher explains that it is a crucial component to the success of the upward mobility within rankings.
“Student-to-faculty ratio is something that I’ve been working on,” Thrasher says. “We’re not going to increase the number of students we have at Florida State probably for another couple years, but what we want to increase is the number of faculty.”
FSU currently holds a student-to-faculty ratio that is 25:1, one that is considered high for a public institution. This generates into a national public rank of 178th amongst other public schools. McRorie explains that the top 25 metric would be an average of 17 students per professor, acknowledging that a main objective is to hire and retain new facility.
“That is one of the most important things we can do so that we can have smaller class sizes and offer more of the courses that student want,” McRorie says.
The lack of financial reserve in the resource pool can be linked to the economic damage from the 2009 recession. The recession created the conditions for the lack of sufficient funding and drop in faculty numbers, making it so that universities that have generally been under-resourced lost even more in terms of faculty retention and dollars for programming.
The money hasn’t come back since the Great Recession and tuition hasn’t increased, thereby leaving a gap in the budget that exemplifies why funding towards the top 25 initiative is so vital for enhancement efforts.
“We lost a lot of faculty during the recession, so we’re trying to build that number back up,” Thrasher says.
The motivation for the adoption of the Top 25 Initiative is also a question as to what impact students will be undergoing. With money being funneled into improving metrics like the student to faculty ratio or the graduation rate, the incentive to be ranked with the Top 25 is to make FSU degrees more valuable.
“When our rankings go up,” McRorie explains, “the value of the degree from the institution goes up. That’s for students that are currently here, those who have graduated recently and those who have graduated a long time ago.”
Molina agrees, explaining that Top 25 status says more to an employer, a colleague, a sponsor or an observer than a lower ranking would.
“As all of those measures improve, so does the student experience, so does the passion, energy, investment of our students, faculty and community in this educational process,” Molina says. “The numbers reflect a much more complex system or lifestyle that is Florida State University.
Thrasher furthers the point about the added value of a Florida State degree, explaining that the Top 25 Initiative is more than just a number or a ranking – it is an opportunity to continue the culture of excellence, with the adage of making the perception of the university match the value.
“If we get into the Top 25, it’s not just a number,” Thrasher says. “Your degree goes up in value. The recognition you get for being a Top 25 Public University will be significant and I think it helps encourage the best students to come as well as offers the opportunity to advance in whatever area you want to advance in by having that diploma from a Top 25 university.”
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