AIRAN SCRUBY
News Editor
Pepperdine is rising again in USNews and World Report’s annual college rankings. The university has moved up one place and is now ranked No. 54 nationally in academics, but the school was also cited for rising cost, and was ranked as No. 2 in the nation for student debt. In other ranking systems, such as the Princeton Review, the university was named Most Beautiful campus for another year this month.
Though Pepperdine fared well academically in the Princeton Review’s rating system, it received its highest marks in “quality of life” measurements.
The Princeton Review also noted the high cost of living in Malibu, high tuition and high student fees at the university.
“Low faculty-student ratios, small class size, excellent facilities here and abroad, and so many other amenities that enhance the academic experience for our students, simply cost a great deal,” Paul Long, dean of admission and enrollment management, wrote in an e-mail.
According to Norm Fischer, associate vice president of Planning, Assessment and Institutional Research for the university, The average Pepperdine graduate leaves with not just a degree, but with $31,848 in debt. This number is up from $29,148 last year for a total increase of $2,700, Fischer said.
“The University does not wish to increase costs unless it has to,” Long wrote.
Fischer said he did not find the increase unusual for Pepperdine. Long said in an e-mail that tuition rates at Pepperdine are high because the school must compete with other, older schools, which can draw on larger endowments to fund university needs.
Pepperdine was founded in 1937. At the end of the 2005 fiscal year, the university’s endowment totaled $483 million, a thirteen percent increase since 2004.
Though the school rose academically by one place in the USNews and World Report rankings this year, Pepperdine has been falling since a peak at No. 48 in 2002.
Otis Baskin, a professor at the Graziadio School of Business and Management, said Pepperdine may face the consequences of falling rankings and rising debt in the coming years.
Baskin said the incoming group of college applicants is part of the largest pool ever. These applicants are part of an “echo boom, ” a larger generation that is an effect of the original baby boom generation.
The echo boomers, born between 1977 and 1997, outnumber the baby boomers and have already begun to put strain on the job market and on college campuses nationwide, the Wall Street Journal said in a Sept. 26th article.
Because of this unusually large applicant pool, universities have been able to turn many students away in recent years, Baskin said. By 2009, however, the echo boom will be nearly over, and the pool of applicants may become small once again, Baskin said. This would allow applicants to become more selective, and schools that slide in the rankings may be abandoned by many potential students.
“The market will be more competitive,” Baskin said. “You’ll have to accept lower quality students if you aren’t in the top 50 schools.”
Baskin said another factor in the rankings is the comparison drawn between schools ranked similarly.
While Pepperdine used to rank in the same range as universities like University of Texas at Austin and University of California Santa Barbara, these schools have risen in the rankings while Pepperdine has fallen, he said.
“We’re losing ground against the competition,” Baskin said.
Long said he believes students still find Pepperdine worth the extra cost.
“The value of our degree and our reputation has increased dramatically over the past several years, and what we provide to students is a very strong, very personal, high quality education, in my opinion,” Long said.
08-28-2006