A Columbia student’s thoughts on UPenn exaggerating their student-faculty ratio.

In a recent news article, it has been speculated that the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) has likely exaggerated their student-faculty ratio—and imaginably with the intention of bolstering the attractiveness of this metric of the university.

From 2006 to 2021, UPenn listed a 6:1 student-faculty ratio in their Common Data Set (CDS). They did the same for the 2021-2022 year—until they quietly changed it to a 7:1 ratio a month after publishing that year’s CDS. The real scandal comes with the publishing of the 2022-2023 CDS though: UPenn listed a 8:1 ratio in their CDS, but the website for their admissions department listed a staggering 4:1 ratio. Along with this, UPenn Facts listed—and still has—it as a 6:1 ratio. 

Now, anyone with morals and a dislike for sketchy practices would condemn UPenn for such actions. I would be included in this group, if I was not a student at Columbia and an elitist. As such, however, congratulations are in order! UPenn succeeded: they moved up one place to a ranking of six in the 2024 U.S. News Best Colleges ranking. I applaud UPenn for their dubious actions to improve their reputation as an institution over the last 15 and counting years. Take notes, Minouche Shafik, for this shall be your new job.

But UPenn is not without critique. Their audacious listing of a 4:1 ratio (only under the ratios of the MIT and CalTech) is spectacular, but their excuse of it being a typo is not so: on a number pad, the four is below the seven, and it would be weird to hit four instead of eight; on a QWERTY keyboard, the four is rather far away from the eight—perhaps this is the moment of realization that I just have small hands. I must commend the use of numbers and not letters, though. It would be much harder to justify writing “four” instead of “eight” accidentally. 

For any student wanting to go to a research university and not a liberal arts college, a low student-to-faculty ratio is rather trivial on their list of desired qualities; this statistic is often useless to students applying to colleges. Even if it was more important, there would be another significant consideration to arise: if a student got all buddy-buddy with their professors, how would they then have the time to party and make those valuable career connections? Why would anyone want to decimate their college experience for more time with professors?

Like Columbia, UPenn’s actions have been brought to light. However, unlike Columbia, their uncovering has been rather tame: I do not see any major news outlets publishing articles on them, nor protests for them to focus on other things rather than rankings. Michael Thaddeus did not even publish an analysis exposing them. I doubt that even the students there know about it!

If you are going to deceive and end up exposed, why not at least go big with it and make headlines? After all, as the phrase goes, any publicity is good publicity—and, when you have centuries of history to rely on, does it really matter what you do? 

UPenn’s College Hall via Wikimedia Commons