Iowa universities eye change in campuses they consider ‘peers’

IOWA CITY — For the first time in decades, all three of Iowa’s public universities want to update the peer institutions with which they compare themselves to “more closely align” with their campuses.

For the University of Iowa, that means swapping out two from its list of 10; Iowa State University wants to replace seven of its 10; and the University of Northern Iowa wants its updated list to have six different schools.

“The proposed list includes four institutions in the current UNI peers list and six new institutions that more closely align with the metrics that distinguish UNI and make the institution stand apart from other regional comprehensive institutions in the country,” a request going next week before the Board of Regents states.

All six of the peers UNI wants removed from its list are either ranked higher regionally or nationally by the U.S. News & World Report — unlike UNI, which isn’t ranked nationally but is ranked No. 17 in the Midwest. Four of UNI’s proposed new peers rank lower than UNI on U.S. News’ 2023 list.

Where all of ISU’s current peer institutions sit far above the Ames campus in the U.S. News rankings — like the University of Wisconsin’s No. 38 national placement to ISU’s No. 127 — five of its seven proposed peers rank below ISU nationally.

And the UI, sitting below all but one of its current peers in the rankings, wants to swap out two of its highest ranked peers — the University of California-Los Angeles, ranked No. 1 among public universities nationally, and the University of Texas, ranked No. 10 among public institutions — with Michigan State University and the University of Utah.

MSU’s No. 31 ranking among publics is closer to the UI’s No. 35 placement, and Utah’s No. 48 ranking is lower.

The changes also more closely mirror the peer institutions’ perceptions of UI, ISU and UNI.

Where four of UI’s current 10 peer institutions also consider the Iowa City campus a peer — according to data reported to the U.S. Department of Education and compiled by The Chronicle of Higher Education — both schools the UI wants to add to its list also identify Iowa as a peer.

Three of ISU’s current peers consider it reciprocally, whereas six of its seven proposed new peers list ISU among the peers they report. And while three of UNI’s current 10 peers reciprocate, four of the new six they want to add to the list do.

ISU left the AAU

The regents established a group of peers for its universities in the 1980s and uses them when setting tuition and benchmarking graduation and retention rates, class sizes and faculty and salary compensation, for example.

The UI’s list of peers — which includes six Big Ten campuses, along with UCLA and the universities of North Carolina, Texas and Arizona — has remained the same. ISU’s was updated just once since being set in 1986.

In 2016, ISU replaced the University of Arizona with Penn State after a peer assessment identified Arizona as an “outlier.”

“Its total enrollment includes only 5 percent in engineering compared to ISU’s 26.1 percent and 2.6 percent in agriculture compared to ISU’s 11.3 percent,” according to a 2016 change request. “Penn State University is a land-grant university that is also an AAU member and has similar programs to ISU.”

Penn State now is among the peers ISU wants to replace.

ISU President Wendy Wintersteen in April announced the university was leaving the prestigious Association of American Universities 64 years after joining. ISU said AAU had begun to favor campuses that have medical schools and medical research funding.

While all of ISU’s current peers are AAU members except North Carolina State University — one of the three campuses ISU wants to keep on its list — only one of its seven proposed new additions are in the invitation-only AAU group.

While most of ISU’s current peers have associated health care or hospital operations, only three of its proposed new seven do.

“A variety of institutions and indicators were reviewed and considered, including enrollment, mix of academic programs, research expenditures, endowment, tuition, admissions selectivity and graduation rates,” ISU officials explained in board documents. “In the recommended update, all the proposed peers are land-grant and Carnegie Classification Very High Research (R1) institutions.”

UNI overhaul

UNI’s peer group is the only among the three to have gone through an extensive overhaul, approved in 2015 when regents agreed to replace all but one of its peers.

A UNI committee then had developed the new peers using an analysis that evaluated student characteristics like in-state vs. out-of-state and testing scores; institutional characteristics like selectivity and tuition rates; and faculty characteristics like number and student-to-faculty ratio.

UNI’s new proposed peers include campuses like Indiana State University and the University of Wisconsin’s Whitewater and Eau Claire campuses.

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