Buckeyes Best Big Green: New Times Higher Ed Rankings Provide Some Surprises

Graduate School
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<p>So what will it be for next fall .. Columbia University or the higher ranked University of Toronto? Duke (#24) or U. of Hong Kong (#21)? Dartmouth (#99) or Ohio State (#66)?</p>

<p>Today the London-based Times Higher Education released its new World University Rankings, citing a revised methodology that claims to put "less importance on reputation and heritage than in previous years and gives more weight to hard measures of excellence in all three core elements of a university's mission—research, teaching, and knowledge transfer."</p>

<p>See Top</a> 200 - The Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2010-2011</p>

<p>Not only does this roster include worldwide options that won't be familiar to many Americans but also it offers some results that U.S. News rank-watchers may find surprising.</p>

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<p>USNews and THE measure different things. One tries to measure the quality of undergraduate programs (though influenced by graduate programs) while the other focuses mainly on research output and quality. Thus the huge research powerhouses such as Cornell, Toronto, Michigan would rank high. I would assume students who are smart enough to get into Columbia and Dartmouth would be smart enough to find out what this ranking ranks before choosing Ohio State for undergrad.</p>

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<p>From yesterday’s * Chronicle of Higher Ed*:</p>

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<p>The Chronicle article is a lot longer and includes some critiques of these rankings. Here’s the link: [url=<a href="http://chronicle.com/article/Times-Higher-Education/124455/?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en]'Times"&gt;http://chronicle.com/article/Times-Higher-Education/124455/?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en]'Times&lt;/a&gt; Higher Education’ Releases New Rankings, but Will They Appease Skeptics? - International - The Chronicle of Higher Education<a href=“I%20%5Bi%5Dthink%5B/i%5D%20non-subscribers%20can%20read%20it.”>/url</a></p>

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<p>IvyPBear,</p>

<p>I hear what you’re saying about Columbia and Dartmouth versus Ohio State and at the same time I think it’s interesting to see this re-ranking. I don’t know much about OSU but as the THE ranking shows, I’d bet you can get a very good undergrad education there.</p>

<p>It is fun to compare schools we know on this list. For example, it’s difficult to imagine UC Santa Cruz being ranked next to U of Sourthern Cal. Most people with an understanding of both schools would rank USC much higher. USC is an amazing place and worthy of a higher rank IMO. Am I underestimating UCSC? Maybe so.</p>

<p>I’m happy to see UCLA so highly ranked as my daughter just started her freshmen year in Westwood! :)</p>

<p>But back to your comparison… um, ranking or no ranking, I’ll take Columbia please!</p>

<p>Best,
Wheaty</p>

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<p>I don’t understand their methodology: Brown, for example, has a teaching score of 59.7, its worst category, whereas Harvard has a teaching score of 99.7. Dartmouth does even worse, with a teaching score of 44.7. Is Harvard really twice as good as Dartmouth at teaching its students? I doubt Harvard is even twice as good as Arizona State, let alone Dartmouth with its small-college student-focused ideology, at teaching its students. I’d be tempted to say that the TEACHING at Dartmouth is likely to be as good, if not better than at Harvard, because the goal of the university is to be a more liberal-arts college, rather than a high-powered research university. This ranking seems absurd to me.</p>

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<p>No body said the teaching is undergraduate teaching.</p>

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<p>Enough with the rankings…please…</p>

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<p>chsowlflax17–If you go here [Robust</a>, transparent and yours: The most exact & relevant world rankings yet devised](<a href=“World University Rankings 2010-11 methodology | Times Higher Education (THE)”>World University Rankings 2010-11 methodology | Times Higher Education (THE)) and scroll down the page, you’ll get to “Weighting scheme for ranking scores” and, below that, “Teaching — the learning environment.” </p>

<p>There, you will note that nowhere does the survey seem to ask anyone, “So did you like your professors and do you feel that they were good teachers?” Instead, some of the evaluation criteria listed include staff/student ratio (which can certainly have some effect on quality but definitely doesn’t tell the whole story) and “the ratio of PhD to bachelor’s degrees awarded by each institution.” (THE rationale = “We believe that institutions with a high density of research students are more knowledge-intensive, and that the presence of an active postgraduate community is a marker of a research-led teaching environment valued by undergraduates and postgraduates alike.”)</p>

<p>Arguably, of course, many undergrads feel the opposite … that the teaching is better on a campus where they are not playing second-fiddle to grad students.</p>

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<p>There was already a thread on this topic…it can now be found here:
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/graduate-school/999037-2010-11-thes-ranking-out.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/graduate-school/999037-2010-11-thes-ranking-out.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>Sally this ranking does not indicate undergrad quality - it is a UNIVERSITY ranking. I would hope OSU would crush Dartmouth in a ranking where a school is awarded for “the ratio of PhD to bachelor’s degrees awarded by each institution.”</p>

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<p>Still, I was tickled to see my alma mater, Stony Brook, above Dartmouth et al. And the highest of the SUNY’s. </p>

<p>When I attended it was less than ten years old, but very progressive, and I am quite fond of the education I received there that got me into an Ivy grad school I did not attend.</p>

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<p>I like WSJ’s Best Schools Ranking - even though it’s more for recruiting!!</p>

<p>The Ohio State University (overall #12)</p>

<p>Business/Economics #2
Accounting #10
Engineering #13</p>

<p>Source: [Rankings</a> by Major - WSJ.com](<a href=“School Rankings by College Major – Job Recruiter Top Picks - WSJ”>School Rankings by College Major – Job Recruiter Top Picks - WSJ)</p>

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<p>I think most of the major academic rankings (both for undergrad or research-centric) around the world are all pretty consistent when it comes to tOSU, Ohio State is ranked #56, #59, #66 on USNWR, ARWU and TIMES, respectively.</p>

<p>In addition, since the arrival of the former Johnson & Johson Vice-CEO Christina Poon as the dean to lead The Ohio State Fischer College of Business, the Business School’s reputation has improved drastically in the last few years. </p>

<p>Christina Poon’s Story:</p>

<p>"Once ranked the 17th most powerful woman in the world, Christine Poon has ditched retirement plans to run Ohio State’s business school </p>

<p>She consistently earned her way onto the Forbes magazine list of 100 Most Powerful Women, heralded with the likes of Hillary Clinton and Sandra Day O’Connor-and at one point, well above Oprah and Queen Elizabeth II.</p>

<p>and more…"</p>

<p>Source: [Star</a> Power: Christine Poon | Capital Style](<a href=“http://www.capital-style.com/live/content/issue/stories/2010/05/trendsetter-christine-poon.html]Star”>http://www.capital-style.com/live/content/issue/stories/2010/05/trendsetter-christine-poon.html)</p>

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<p>The Ohio State University. Under Gordon Gee, this place is going to really take off. Did you guys see the plans for the new campus development? It aims to make OSU one of the premier research institutes in the world:</p>

<p>[Sasaki</a> & Ohio State](<a href=“http://www.sasaki.com/osu/]Sasaki”>http://www.sasaki.com/osu/)</p>

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<p>Based upon the criteria, larger universities have an advantage and smaller universities and colleges are disadvantaged. I have no doubt that the number of citations and volume of research at Ohio State are greater than at Dartmouth.</p>

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<p>Duke is actually # 17 in the US (#18 in North America) according to THES. Columbia is # 13. </p>

<p>Discrepancies apart, I believe THES reflects pretty accurately international perceptions about the relative quality of US universities. Top publics like Berkeley, UCLA or Michigan are indeed perceived overseas to rank higher than the likes of Vanderbilt, Emory, Northwest, WUSTL, Notre Dame Rice, Brown , Dartmouth, or Georgetown. </p>

<p>As for the emphasis on graduate measures (in British English “postgraduate”), it reflects a deep cultural difference between Americans and Europeans. In Europe, the common wisdom is that the strongest a university is in postgraduate research, the better it will be for undergraduates as well.</p>

<p>For example, a high ratio of PhD students to undergraduate students, which, in the view of many American High Schoolers and parents, would be a negative, actually boosts a university’s THES ranking in the ** teaching ** category. Likewise, universities also get extra points in the teaching ranking by awarding a high number of PhDs per year. That is explicitly made in the following quote from the [teaching section](<a href=“World University Rankings 2010-11 methodology | Times Higher Education (THE)”>World University Rankings 2010-11 methodology | Times Higher Education (THE)) in the methodology page:</p>

<p>"* The teaching category also examines the ratio of PhD to bachelor’s degrees awarded by each institution. We believe that institutions with a high density of research students are more knowledge-intensive, and that the presence of an active postgraduate community is a marker of a research-led teaching environment valued by undergraduates and postgraduates alike.*</p>

<p>[…]</p>

<p>* The teaching category also uses data on the number of PhDs awarded by an institution, scaled against its size as measured by the number of academic staff.</p>

<p>As well as giving a sense of how committed an institution is to nurturing the next generation of academics, a high proportion of postgraduate research students also suggests teaching at the highest level that is attractive to graduates and good at developing them. *"</p>

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<p>Another interesting point is that, unlike USN&WR and indeed unlike UK ** domestic rankings <a href=“e.g.%20league%20tables%20from%20the%20Guardian,%20the%20Times,%20and%20the%20Independent”>/b</a>, THES does ** not ** take into account selectivity/exclusivity or any other measure of quality of the undergraduate student body such as e.g. the average UCAS entry tariff and the percentage of students graduating with high hono(u)rs used in the British national rankings, or the median SAT scores, acceptance rate, or graduation rates used by USN&WR. </p>

<p>Before anyone criticizes THES for ignoring the aforementioned factors, it should be stressed that using selectivity as a criterion in international rankings would be problematic because of the differences in university admissions criteria in different countries. In some countries like the US and the UK, university admission is selective with selectivity varying though across different institutions (ranging from “ultra selective” to “not selective” at all). In other countries like Germany on the other hand, with the exception of a few courses like medicine, university admission is actually open to any student who graduates from a certain type of secondary school (Gymnasium) with a certain school leaving certificate (Abitur) issued based on the performance in a set of state exams. That is also the case BTW in France’s general university system and most of the continental European countries, although the elite "grandes </p>

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<p>Friends don’t let friends go to Ohio State.</p>

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<p>People go to Ohio State when they get rejected from Michigan</p>

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<p>My son just started at UMASS-Amherst. No doubt, the best college town in American and best food. (google to see rankings), and having lived in the area, I can agree. </p>

<p>But on move-in day the students were greeted with this hit job on the front page from the Boston Globe:</p>

<p>[At</a> UMass, top rung remains out of reach - The Boston Globe](<a href=“http://www.boston.com/news/education/higher/articles/2010/09/05/at_umass_top_rung_remains_out_of_reach/]At”>http://www.boston.com/news/education/higher/articles/2010/09/05/at_umass_top_rung_remains_out_of_reach/)</p>

<p>He chose UMASS over his home state’s UCONN, which gets props in the above. (I can’t think of a more boring place than Storrs.)</p>

<p>But the Globe had to eat a little crow with this ranking which puts UMASS ahead of Dartmouth, NYU, Virginia, and Emory among others. UCONN didn’t even make the list, although they buried the article:</p>

<p>[UMass</a> is ranked among world’s best - The Boston Globe](<a href=“http://www.boston.com/news/education/higher/articles/2010/09/17/umass_is_ranked_among_worlds_best/]UMass”>http://www.boston.com/news/education/higher/articles/2010/09/17/umass_is_ranked_among_worlds_best/)</p>