Executive Summary
UNIVERSITY OF RHODE ISLAND
OFFICE OF INFORMATION SERVICES
UNIVERSITY LIBRARY
15 LIPPITT ROAD
KINGSTON, RI 02881-2011
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
PEER INSTITUTION ANALYSIS
February 27, 2004
In November, 2003 the Commissioner of Higher Education requested that the University, College and Community College each select 10 peer institutions. The Commissioner further stipulated that seven of the institutions must be similar to URI and three institutions be ones that we aspire to be like.
A large data set was assembled with several key variables and a series of formal statistical analyses were done to determine which institutions were similar to the University. The details of that process and statistical analyses are listed on the following pages of this document. The approach resulted in the selection of the following institutions that will be used to make future comparisons to URI.
Peers - Similar to URI:
1. JAMES MADISON UNIVERSITY
2. UNIVERSITY OF NEW HAMPSHIRE
3. UNIVERSITY OF VERMONT
4. UNIVERSITY OF WYOMING
5. NORTH DAKOTA STATE UNIVERSITY
6. MONTANA STATE UNIVERSITY-BOZEMAN
7. UNIVERSITY OF MAINE
Peers - Aspire to be like:
8. UNIVERSITY OF CONNECTICUT
9. UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE
10. UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA
Details regarding the selection process, statistics and conclusions are provided in the following material.
PEER INSTITUTION ANALYSIS
February 27, 2004
SPECIFICATIONS PER COMMISSIONER WARNER: AUBURN UNIVERSITY MAIN CAMPUS BOSTON UNIVERSITY
1. Select 10 peers that will be used to make comparisons. The type of questions or comparisons will be based on the Board of Governors/OHE Goals and Objectives listed in the RI Higher Education strategic plan.
2. Seven of the institutions must be similar to URI and we have been instructed to select three institutions that we aspire to be like.
THE PROCESS:
We started with 600 institutions with at least Carnegie Classifications of Doctoral Intensive, Doctoral Extensive and a small set of institutions that are classified as Masters Degree granting 1 and 2.
Next we ensured that the list included all the institutions that URI, OHE, NCES, NCHEMS had listed as peers for the University of Rhode Island.
We narrowed the list of institutions further by identifying institutions that had listings of online data in the "Common Dataset Exchange" and with IPEDS. This helped to secure a significant amount of academic and financial data for each institution.
We focused on approximately 25 key variables that are included in the data set. These included things such as total enrollment, percent of out-of-state freshman, percent of out-of-state undergraduates, academic performance variables (SAT and high school rank), institution budget, State allocation, tuition, fees, etc.
The list was narrowed to 39 institutions, based on consideration of data and proximity of the institutions. We made an effort to retain private institutions that had somewhat similar academic data to URI. Recently we removed Northeastern and SUNY-Stoneybrook from the data set because there were some critical variables with missing data for those two institutions. It required approximately one month to locate missing data values that were needed to run the cluster analysis.
The following 37 institutions are currently in the listing of peers and these are the institutions that were put through a series of Cluster Analyses (using 4 different cluster analysis techniques) in SAS.
INSTITUTIONS IN DATA SET (37):
CLARK UNIVERSITY
COLORADO STATE UNIVERSITY
IDAHO STATE UNIVERSITY
KEENE STATE COLLEGE
NEW YORK UNIVERSITY
OKLAHOMA STATE UNIVERSITY-MAIN CAMPUS
PURDUE UNIVERSITY-MAIN CAMPUS
UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA
UNIVERSITY OF CONNECTICUT
UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE
UNIVERSITY OF MAINE
UNIVERSITY OF NEVADA-RENO
UNIVERSITY OF PORTLAND
UNIVERSITY OF VERMONT
UNIVERSITY OF WYOMING
UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND-BALTIMORE COUNTY
SUNY AT ALBANY
NEW MEXICO STATE UNIVERSITY-MAIN CAMPUS
CLEMSON UNIVERSITY
FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY
JAMES MADISON UNIVERSITY
MONTANA STATE UNIVERSITY-BOZEMAN
NORTH DAKOTA STATE UNIVERSITY
OREGON STATE UNIVERSITY
RUTGERS UNIVERSITY-NEW BRUNSWICK
UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO AT BOULDER
UNIVERSITY OF DAYTON
UNIVERSITY OF HARTFORD
UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS-AMHERST
UNIVERSITY OF NEW HAMPSHIRE-MAIN CAMPUS
UNIVERSITY OF RHODE ISLAND
UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA-MAIN CAMPUS
WASHINGTON STATE UNIVERSITY
NORTH CAROLINA STATE UNIVERSITY - RALEIGH
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH CAROLINA AT COLUMBIA
OLD DOMINION UNIVERSITY
TOTAL VARIABLES COLLECTED FOR EACH INSTITUTION:
CARNEGIE CLASSIFICATION
IPEDS UNIT ID
INSTITUTION NAME
PUBLIC / PRIVITE
ENDOWMENT
STATE BUDGET APPROPRIATION
TOTAL OPERATING BUDGET FY 2002
COST OF INSTRUCTION
ANNUAL RESEARCH FUNDING
CPI BY GEOG AREA
CITY
STATE
URI OHE OR NCHEMS - PAST PEERS
OUT-OF-STATE FRESHMAN
OUT-OF-STATE UNDERGRAD
TOTAL UNDERGRAD ENROLLMENT
TOTAL GRADUATE ENROLLMENT
TOTAL ENROLLMENT
BACHELOR'S DEGREE
MASTERS DEGREE
DOCTORAL DEGREE
FIRST PROFESSIONAL DEGREES/CERT.
GRADUATION RATE
SAT VERBAL 25%
SAT VERBAL 75%
SAT MATH 25%
SAT MATH 75%
TOP 10% HS
TOP 25% HS
TOP 50% HS
UNDERGRAD IN STATE TUITION
UNDERGRAD OUT OF STATE TUITION
MANDATORY FEES
ROOM AND BOARD FEES
FULL TIME INSTRUCTIONAL FACULTY
PART TIME INSTRUCTIONAL FACULTY
TOTAL INSTRUCTIONAL FACULTY (NCHEMS)
STUDENT FACULTY RATIO
RESULTS OF CLUSTER ANALYSIS:
Due to a limitation on the number of variables that could be included in the cluster analysis, we chose 4 key variables that were run through a "first stage" cluster analysis. All variables were normalized and SAS (Statistical Analysis System) software was used to run the cluster analysis:
CLUSTER ANALYSIS FIRST STAGE VARIABLES:
STATE BUDGET APPROPRIATION
TOTAL UNDERGRAD ENROLLMENT
TOTAL OPERATING BUDGET FY 2002
TOTAL GRADUATE ENROLLMENT
This resulted in a set of 5 broad clusters (or 7 more narrowly clusters, depending on how one views the tree diagram) of institutions with similar characteristics (based on the 4 variables analyzed).
CLUSTER ANALYSIS SECOND STAGE VARIABLES:
COMBINED MATH & VERBAL SAT AT 75 PERCENTILE
ANNUAL RESEARCH FUNDING (NORMALIZED BY NCHEMS FULL-TIME FACULTY HEADCOUNT)
OUT-OF-STATE UNDERGRADUATES (ARCH TRANSFORMATION APPLIED TO PERCENTAGE)
It was determined that the introduction of the second stage variables to the cluster analysis did not change the overall groupings and the cluster of institutions around URI was stable.
DISCRIMINATE ANALYSIS
In order to check the cluster analysis results, we completed a discriminate analysis on the 7 narrow clusters using the 4 variables (State Budget Appropriation, Total Operating Budget, Undergraduate Enrollment and Graduate Enrollment). When the University of Rhode Island was included in the discriminate analysis along with the 36 other institutions that were in 7 groups/clusters, the probability that URI fell into any one of the 7 groups is as follows:
Group 0: 0.00% Probability URI is in Group 0
|
BOSTON UNIVERSITY |
PURDUE UNIVERSITY-MAIN CAMPUS |
Group 1: 63.21% Probability URI is in Group 1
|
JAMES MADISON UNIVERSITY |
UNIVERSITY OF NEW HAMPSHIRE-MAIN CAMPUS |
Group 2: 1.38% Probability URI is in Group 2
|
UNIVERSITY OF DAYTON |
UNIVERSITY OF HARTFORD |
Group 3: 0.02% Probability URI is in Group 3
|
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH CAROLINA AT COLUMBIA |
UNIVERSITY OF CONNECTICUT |
Group 4: 7.95% Probability URI is in Group 4
|
OLD DOMINION UNIVERSITY |
Group 5: 27.1% Probability URI is in Group 5
|
SUNY AT ALBANY UNIVERSITY OF NEVADA-RENO |
NEW MEXICO STATE UNIVERSITY-MAIN CAMPUS |
Group 6: 0.35% Probability URI is in Group 6
|
OKLAHOMA STATE UNIVERSITY-MAIN CAMPUS |
UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS-AMHERST |
The discriminate analysis confirms that URI is most similar to the institutions listed above in Group 1. That is, there is a 63.21 percent chance that URI falls into Group 1, which is vastly greater than the probabilities that URI falls into any of the other groups or clusters.
CONCLUSIONS
The cluster analysis and discriminate analysis indicate that URI is consistently similar to a group of institutions. The institutions that most closely resemble URI are as follows:
|
JAMES MADISON UNIVERSITY |
UNIVERSITY OF NEW HAMPSHIRE-MAIN CAMPUS |
Consequently, we are recommending that these seven universities be selected as our new peer institutions. The following three Universities are selected as institutions that we aspire to be like:
UNIVERSITY OF CONNECTICUT
UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE
UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA
The University of Connecticut is selected based on geographic considerations, relatively higher salary structure, and generally higher ranking in national polls. The University of Delaware is selected due to their endowment funds, capital infrastructure and relatively high numbers of out-of-state students enrolled. The University of Virginia is selected for the research funding, endowment funds, and top level rankings in all national polls.
