<p>Just in case any of you terps out there weren't already aware, for 2009 UMCP is still ranked number 37 in the WORLD! The ARWU is the most respected and “the most widely used annual ranking of the world’s research universities.”(The Economist)</p>
<p>So be proud of your school :)</p>
<p><a href="http://www.arwu.org/ARWU2009.jsp%5B/url%5D">http://www.arwu.org/ARWU2009.jsp</a></p>
<p>Not to burst any bubbles, but another highly respected source of rankings, the Times Higher Education Supplement, puts Maryland at 122nd place in the World. As the Economist notes, the Shanghai ranking focused on excellence of research and is weighted heavily toward the natural sciences. There are many other valid methodologies for ranking universities. Maryland does well in many surveys and many departments and schools are clearly excellent. But there often seems to be a bit of an inferiority complex at Maryland that leads to way too much attention being focused on rankings. 37 is good and 122 is probably viewed as bad. But the Chinese ratings produce some results that appear to be very odd, if not outright bizarre. The Times Higher Education Supplement is also not without flaws, but the rankings generally appear to better resemble reality. </p>
<p>The Economist (Mar. 25, 2010) had this to say: </p>
<p>“Harvard consistently tops a league table produced by Shanghais Jiao Tong University. First published in 2003, this rates institutions according to the excellence of the research they produce.
In the most recent Shanghai table Europe fares remarkably poorly. It is certainly striking that from all of Europe only Oxford and Cambridge feature in the top 20. In the top 50 entries, Europe has only ten places (but 32 in the top 100). By contrast, fully 17 of the top 20 are American.
But many question the Jiao Tong rankings methodology, which appears to favour those specialising in natural sciences over those with other merits. In any case, what research excellence actually means for most students is unclear. Catching a distant glimpse of a star professor is not the same as being taught by him. And the best researchers are not necessarily the best teachers. For many, the quality of teaching is what matters. Measuring it is far harder.
So in 2004 a rival appeared. It was compiled jointly by the Times Higher Education Supplement, a British periodical, and Quacquarelli Symonds, a provider of guides to higher education. This gave the main weight to outsiders viewschiefly of other academics and of employers that recruit graduates. It included the staff-student ratio as a measure of teaching quality. Harvard still gained the top spot, but the number of British universities in the top 20 rose to twice that of the Jiao Tong rankings.”</p>
<p>Yeah, I honestly don’t know what to make of the rankings. I think loc gives a fairly unbiased assessment of it. UMD also makes a fuss about being #8 in Kiplinger’s “best value” list of public colleges. But it is certainly not the #8 public college overall, and almost all public colleges are good deals for in-state students.</p>
<p>However, I believe MD has many caring, brilliant professors. In some of the most highly regarded majors here, the professors are certainly not “distant research stars.” Engineering and natural science professors tend to care quite a lot about their undergrad students, if my friends in those majors can be believed.</p>
<p>MD is in somewhat of a unique, difficult place. It has many star programs - comp sci, for instance, electrical engineering, etc. It is clearly a cut above many, if not most, flagships. Yet it has not quite made it into that echelon of flagships which it seeks so much to emulate and which it consistently lists as its “peer institutions” - Berkeley, UCLA, UMich, UNC-Chapel Hill, etc. Sorry, MD, but not quite…not quite. It reminds me very much of how Northwestern, WUStL, Duke, etc. are considered a step below Harvard, Yale, Princeton. The education is probably just as good, but it doesn’t change the fact that they’re not thought of in the same way. I don’t think there’s an inferiority complex at MD per se, but certainly they seek to measure their progress in prestige relative to their competition via quantitative means, the most accessible of which is rankings, and certainly they are deeply concerned with not just the quality of education but also the prestige that goes along with it, and cognizant of the fact that while a lot of the state’s brightest students end up at MD, surely others head elsewhere, esp. to W&M, UVa, UNC-Chapel Hill, and other well-known East Coast publics. (LOL - that last sentence was long…but juicy).</p>
<p>In good news, MD has risen 1 spot on USNWR (the most well-known and respected ranking of US universities) every year for over a decade, moving from an unglamorous #30 spot in the top public universities in the nation list to a respectable #18. Hopefully as MD goes forward it will continue to move up in the ranks :). Will its “peer rating” (an important part of many lists, as loc pointed out) ever compare to Harvard’s? Maybe not. But maybe that’s not a good reflection of the quality of the education and the return to the dollar, anyway. And I do believe one day it will compare to its Virginia (UVa, W&M) and North Carolina (UNC-Chapel Hill) neighbors. Esp. with the budget crisis in CA right now, I predict that many of the UCs which are currently taking up a lot of spots in the Top 20 publics will start to suffer as MD hopefully continues to improve. However the Chancellor of the USM system, Brit Kirwan, recently authored a letter which he sent to the university community expressing deep concern over the level of funding MD will receive in the next 2 yrs, and the chance that we will lose many talented faculty and staff if furloughs continue and lack of merit pay and cost of living increases persist. There is a tough road ahead for all public unis.</p>
<p>Go Terps…hang in there…slow and steady wins the race.</p>