Yikes! Forbes ranks Penn State as the 408th best in the nation

[johnmpsu]

My god… 408th? How in heck does anyone try to explain that? What have they been ranked in previous Forbes ratings? I’ve never heard of a Forbes top 500 list but.

I also recently saw a list of schools with top donations for the athletic departments the other day and PSU was ranked #25… and supposedly they have the largest alumni base. I think the total was around $350m.

Clearly money isn’t coming in for a reason and a 408 ranking in anything doesn’t help.

Baron and his cabal really torpedoed this once wonderful school in so many areas.

Money not coming in? We'll here's one possible reason. When you divorce yourself from half your base you are bound to lose contributions. I know my contributions stopped and friends of mine too. Maybe time to reconsider this crazy position. Consevative students, parents, and alumni have money too. PSU might want to welcome them.

Penn State Deletes Tweet Welcoming Conservative Students After Outcry

Today we discussed the formal censuring of a conservative student at Georgetown for his criticism of Black Lives Matter as an organization and his objections to a recent ruling by the Supreme Court…

www.google.com

 

[DELion]

I

Money not coming in? We'll here's one possible reason. When you divorce yourself from half your base you are bound to lose contributions. I know my contributions stopped and friends of mine too. Maybe time to reconsider this crazy position. Consevative students, parents, and alumni have money too. PSU might want to welcome them.

Penn State Deletes Tweet Welcoming Conservative Students After Outcry

Today we discussed the formal censuring of a conservative student at Georgetown for his criticism of Black Lives Matter as an organization and his objections to a recent ruling by the Supreme Court…

www.google.com

I discontinued all donations to PSU after the Board decided to embrace ESG in selecting investments for the University's endowment. Such callous disregard for half their donor base is blatant mismanagement. They don't care. Furthering the left wing agenda is all that matters. It disgusts me to see how far a once well- managed institution has fallen. They will never receive one more cent from me.

 

[bison13]

Probably not, but I wouldn’t hire someone with an Ivy undergrad degree over 90% of PA state school degrees.

How many DEI employees do we have? How many people working in the department of Empathy, Awareness, and Compassion? How many majors in these types of things? All of this stuff adds cost but I don't think it leads to better careers.

I know this is going on at all major universities these days and I certainly want students to be treated fairly. But it seems that the focus is on this things more than things like science, technology, and business. If my kid wants to be a chemist I want them to go to a school that focuses on that, not on the politically correct stuff.

I don’t work at the college level, but at the county level for public education in Maryland I would absolutely agree with the Ivy League versus state school hiring. We have hired a few people in my time who were from Ivy League schools and there’s not one of them that I would write a good letter of recommendation for if they were to try and move on. Nearly everyone of them is in efficient or incapable mentally of doing the tasks that they are asked and we’re not talking about quantum physics, we’re talking about human resources or teaching English or working with curriculum. Every one of them is a serial complainer. The kids we hire from small state schools always have more resiliency a better work ethic and can handle all the pressure of dealing with parents and students.

Like everyone else, we’ve also added a DEI department, and for some reason their pay scale is higher than others with similar educational standards and work responsibility. Plus the other funny thing about that department is that within three months of being hired, I know of three different supervisors who immediately moved from diverse neighborhoods to the whitest, most elite neighborhood in the county. One of them also immediately enrolled their child in a private school.

 

[Nittany18]

Should’ve made it 409th.

 

[joeaubie21]

Crm made a great case for putting him on ignore which was done long ago.

 

[91Joe95]

Joe Paterno would be rolling over in his grave over what the leadership has done to the university.

 

[PSUJim85]

Behind PA schools like Juniata and the University of Scranton (but we did beat Susquehanna and Ursinus!).

Penn ranked 8th, Pitt ranked 235, Grove City at 225.

Forbes America's Top Colleges List 2025 - Best US Universities Ranked

Search the Forbes 2024-2025 list of America's Top Colleges, ranking the best universities in the US based on student academic, career and financial success.

www.forbes.com

GO woke and everything sucks

 

[LongJakk]

Freeze tuition for a few years and lobby hard for more state funding. There must be a lot of admin and faculty bloat and PSU continues to build, build, build.

 

[heckmans]

The other side of the coin...more CEOs than Harvard and 52nd rated

https://www.inc.com/aleanna-siacon/this-school-produces-more-ceos-than-harvard.html?fbclid=iwar3ru0br9ypc7lmnwd29cg8qvusnzrpdshoxba3ym_7bxtuehasziiq3enk#:~:text=2%20on%20its%20list%20of,Article%20continues%20after%20video

 

[voltz99]

GO woke and everything sucks

Which of the first 407 are not woke?

 

[RCS-PSU70]

We moved up 200 spots on the Wall Street Journal rankings that just came out. So drop on Forbes' list is clearly disturbing, but take these ratings with a big grain of salt.

 

[Obliviax]

We moved up 200 spots on the Wall Street Journal rankings that just came out. So drop on Forbes' list is clearly disturbing, but take these ratings with a big grain of salt.

Agreed....but this list is different. It is a list that looks at the performance of those entering as first year students based on money. Basically, how much you spent versus how much you got. Value. They also added awards like Nobel Prizes and such.

Obviously, those graduating from Ivy League schools are going to get the best paying jobs and that is reflected.

As such, the crappy rating they gave to PSU is due to the cost of the degree versus the value gotten out.

 

[heckmans]

Agreed....but this list is different. It is a list that looks at the performance of those entering as first year students based on money. Basically, how much you spent versus how much you got. Value. They also added awards like Nobel Prizes and such.

Obviously, those graduating from Ivy League schools are going to get the best paying jobs and that is reflected.

As such, the crappy rating they gave to PSU is due to the cost of the degree versus the value gotten out.

This is a good point. So this rating is not a rating of academics, per se. It is Forbes applying some calculation of ROI...so, it would be something like... if PSU provides a 30% better education that Juniata, but costs 50% more, Juniata would be higher on the list.

 

[Obliviax]

This is a good point. So this rating is not a rating of academics, per se. It is Forbes applying some calculation of ROI...so, it would be something like... if PSU provides a 30% better education that Juniata, but costs 50% more, Juniata would be higher on the list.

yeah...there were some intangibles. One could easily argue that PSU provides much more in terms of experience that may help a kid in later years. My little school really focused on the three Rs in my major as they didn't have the resources. Contrast that to my brother who attended four years of high end athletics (at PSU) plus even had a class for wine tasting.

 

[DrJC]

Behind PA schools like Juniata and the University of Scranton (but we did beat Susquehanna and Ursinus!).

Penn ranked 8th, Pitt ranked 235, Grove City at 225.

Forbes America's Top Colleges List 2025 - Best US Universities Ranked

Search the Forbes 2024-2025 list of America's Top Colleges, ranking the best universities in the US based on student academic, career and financial success.

www.forbes.com

This is very sad to hear and I do not know why. NYU was way down the list as was Johns Hopkins. I must question their rating system. However, when Spanier was here, we were rated around 40th. What the hell has happened?

 

[Obliviax]

This is very sad to hear and I do not know why. NYU was way down the list as was Johns Hopkins. I must question their rating system. However, when Spanier was here, we were rated around 40th. What the hell has happened?

this rating system is different. it measures, for the most part, the cost of the degree versus the reward (income and major awards). It doesn't measure education and it is also tempered by the cost of that education. Most of the others simply measure the quality of education regardless of cost or income.