<p>It's a nice thought, but....</p>
<p>How can an academic dean at (just to continue my example) school #1, where she has been for 20 years and which has no music, art, dance, or theater department, provide a "peer assessment" for a school where 15-20% of the faculty are in those departments? And, if she does, what does it MEAN?</p>
<p>Reid, I agree that my words are quite strong. I caanot hide my profound distate for the manner in which USNews disguises its process. One the one hand, they assure that about 4,100 requests are mailed and that they have a 60% return rate. Now, there are 217 LAC, why not list the number of schools that responded, or at least mention the percentage of participation? </p>
<p>Then one could look at the changes in the peer assessment over a few years. It is easy to see that the assessment does not follow any kind of logic, unless logic equates to geographical cronysm. It is not unusual to find a school regressing in every numerical category and still climb in its peer assessment. </p>
<p>But again, I recognize that many people consider the value of the peer assessment to be very important. I believe that Alexandre went as far as reranking all the schools and conclude that a ranking that follows exclusively the peer assessment LOOKS very good and seems realistic. It is for that reason that I advocate a double ranking that segregates the categories. </p>
<p>By the way, for some fun about the peer assessment, you may want to follow this link. Is the reality that far off?</p>
<p>Its salient part is an Ebay listing that states: </p>
<p>Starting bid
US $1.00
Time left: 10 days
Ends Oct-20-04 12:00:00 PDT
Start time: Oct-10-04 12:00:00 PDT
Quantity: 15 available
Item location: Cincinnati, Ohio
United States</p>
<p>You are bidding on 1 of 15 selections in a U.S. News & World Report annual peer assessment of tax law programs in American law schools. Each of the 15 winning bidders will be able to designate one of the votes on this official U.S. News ballot. This is your chance to help your favorite law school's tax program get the recognition it so richly deserves.</p>
<p>Additional notes on the subject are quite instructive:
<a href="http://www.piercelaw.edu/tfield/usnwr.htm%5B/url%5D">http://www.piercelaw.edu/tfield/usnwr.htm</a> or <a href="http://www.library.uiuc.edu/edx/rankoversy.htm%5B/url%5D">http://www.library.uiuc.edu/edx/rankoversy.htm</a>.</p>
<p>One other thing to bear in mind about the peer assessment portion of the US News rankings: they've created a new form of "college marketing" that has individual colleges sending marketing brochures, press releases, program announcements and other influencing media to their "peer group" counterparts. I have also seen an increase in the PR fluff running in the Chronicle of Higher Education which I have no doubt is directly related to schools trying to get "good press" in order to build their peer assessments.</p>
<p>You can bet your bottom dollar that certain schools are able to spend more on these sorts of activities than other, less wealthy schools can. Wealthier schools can also afford to "buy" celebrity faculty appointments which garner press that no doubt is considered by peers.</p>
<p>Mini - From what I understand, the Dean in the situation you describe might participate in a departmental review at another school if his/her degree and teaching experience were in that particular discipline.</p>
<p>Most people realize that the UNNews ranking is pure hokum. The only criteria which relate to the quality of education are faculty resources, class size, s/f ratio. and %fulltime faculty. And all of these are inter-related insofar as class size if a function of the s/f and the s/f is related to the %age of full time faculty. And that does not even address the question, does class size even matter?</p>
<p>Lets look at class size. The conventional wisdom is that smaller class size=better education. Well I do not think that is necessarily true. What makes for a better class is the manner in which the class is taught. Eample from a recent news article. The best AP class in the country, as determined by the ETS is an art history class in a suburban district which enrolls more than 200 students and 80% of the senior class. Each class section is jammed with students, more than 30 per class section. Even though the class size is the largest in the school, EVERY student received a 3+ score on the AP test. How were they able to do this? Because of the teachers!</p>
<p>Though the classroom instructor is the key determinant in the quality of education, it does not show up in any ranking criteria. Perhaps the most famous college class in the nation was Richard Feynman's frosh physics lecture class taken by most of the CalTech student body. If it was also one of the best physics class, it wasn't because of the class size, and it wasn't because of a Nobel Prize, rather it was because of the extraordinary person teaching it. That class would knock Caltech down by UNNews criteria because it was the largest class at Caltech.</p>
<p>And what about the class of 8 students where they can discuss the hidden meanings of Joyce's Ulysses for an hour? Is that necessarily a good class if 45 minutes are expended by the random musings of ill-informed students or worse yet dominated by a class loudmouth? No, the professor will determine if that small class is a good one by the quality of his instruction, the questions he poses and how well he reigns in meaningless prattle. The class can be very good or very bad depending on the instructor, something which USNews is unable to measure.</p>
<p>And how about the credentials of the faculty? Some Nobel prize winners are very good in the classroom, some aren't. Some adjuncts are very good teachers, some aren't. I am not saying that academic compedence is not important in the classroom. It is essential. However, teaching skills are very important also and some faculty just aren't very skillful in the classroom. Some of those skills come naturally and others can be learned. That is why the level of undergrad instruction is likely to be better in a LAC. Not because of class size, but because they attend to attract those academics whose prime interest is teaching, because tenure is based on skill in the classroom, and because many LAC profs spend more time in the classroom.</p>
<p>Finally by far the most important factor in education quality are the students themselves. Is it any surprise that the Harvard, Yale and Princeton produce so many very successful and competent graduates? They are blessed, year in, year out with the most talented and conscientious students in the worrld! I am far more impressed with a college like Wooster whose incoming classes are overwhelmingly good to average students, but whose institutional pedagogy produces future PhD's far in excess of what other comparable colleges produce. </p>
<p>I believe my observations are confirmed by the work of Kreuger and Dale. In a study of more than 50,000 college grads, they found that career success(measured in level of salary) was statistically correlated to the most selective college that student was accepted into but not the college that student ultimately attended. Meaning that a student accepted by Yale(in the data base) was as likely to be successful after choosing to attend Denison(also in the dbase). The conclusion, the quality of education is largely dependent on the abilities which each individual student brings to the table and the quality of the classroom experience is dependent on the quality of each individual instructor. And HYP do not have a monopoly on the good ones.</p>
<p>At some point I'd like to hijack parts of this thread into a different thread on "Fit."</p>
<p>Mini's #1 and #2 are very good illustrations about "fit" that would apply if the two schools were ranked 20 notches apart instead of tied. A student who is well "fit" at the one most likely wouldn't be so at the other. </p>
<p>Though the thought of Xiggi at Smith is... is... is... sorry, I can't type coherently anymore! :)</p>