College Comparison XXII: USNWR Peer Assessment Ratings

College Search & Selection
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<p>In order to assist some in their college search process, I have prepared a series of threads that will compare colleges on a variety of measurements. In making these comparisons, I have created three broad groups (private national universities, public national universities and liberal arts colleges) and provide comparisons involving 117 colleges (national universities ranked in the USNWR Top 75 and LACs ranked in the USNWR Top 40). </p>

<p>Following is a comparison of USNWR PEER ASSESSMENT RATINGS. This is by far my least favorite element of the USNWR rankings. I think that the rankings are fraudulent and that their almost complete lack of movement over several decades perpetuates a fa</p>

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I think that the rankings are fraudulent and that their almost complete lack of movement over several decades perpetuates a fa</p>

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<p>I wonder what Pomona and Haverford’s overall rankings would be if the peer assessment was not factored in.</p>

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<p>Oh come on. This is disingenuous. You say you think the rankings are a fraud and this is the least favorite criteria (peer review), then you proceed to make a list of peer reviewed schools? Talking out of both sides of your mouth. Peer review is nothing more than the elite schools praising each other, much like boards of directors of companies approving the outrageous compensation packages for executives, because they themselves are executives at other companies…a self perpetuating club of peer review elitists. Did you really think Harvard, Princeton and Yale would be at the bottom of peer review rankings? </p>

<p>Oddly, the professors at many of the lower ranking peer reviewed schools are themselves Harvard, Princeton and Yale graduates. So are the HPY’s of the world suggesting the quality of professors that they themselves produce are less worthy? Of course not. Its all about maintaining images of prestige. </p>

<p>I would suggest that the peer review criteria are the least likely to change. They label a certain school as “one star, two stars or three stars” and its like a tatoo on their forehead. Nothing changes. Forever. Meanwhile the HPY’s of the world remain at the top. </p>

<p>Rankings are insidious. But our society is so obsessed with prestige and credentialism there seems to be a never ending demand for rankings, as if that makes you a better person or not. Its so wrong. </p>

<p>College admissions are often very quirky. Harvard passes on kids with 4.0 uw gpa’s and 1590 SAT’s every year. (To their credit). So those kids aren’t somehow less worthy and lowly because they end up at Tufts or Colgate…or god forbid a school with only a 3.2 peer review rating…I mean really! People pick schools for a variety of reasons and we should celebrate the fact we have 2,000 schools to choose from and that means just about anyone and everyone who wants a college education can get one. </p>

<p>I am just as praiseworthy (giving) of those students at third and fourth tier schools as I am for those who got into Princeton, because it benefits society to have people go to college, whether they had a 900 SAT or a 1600 SAT. Whether its on a basketball scholarship or full ride academic merit scholarship or just there on student loans. </p>

<p>I use these rankings for curiosity purposes and reserve judgment (to myself) about many schools…both at the top and the bottom, and often for comic relief. But I get the biggest laugh from people who get obsessed with these rankings and granular to the point of “counting grains of sand on the beach” as if it matters in some huge manner. They respond that employers and society will judge you by where you went to school. I counter, “and that matters only if you LET people judge you by where you went to school.” Otherwise, it says more about the employer/person making that judgment than it does about you or your school. If you want to work for an employer that puts superficial tags on people because they went an Ivy, or only hire people if they went to an Ivy (or other elite school), then that is up to you. I say, “no thank you, very much.” </p>

<p>If you went to an Ivy or top ranked peer review school, congratulations and best of luck to you. If you went to Bucknell or Hamilton, I say exactly the same thing. Or UMaryland. </p>

<p>And I am not suggesting a college education is “one size fits all” or some level of boring parity. I am only suggesting to keep these rankings, from whatever criteria, in perspective. </p>

<p>Hawkette doesnt make up the rankings. She just reports them from the criteria gleaned from open source materials and public information. </p>

<p>I am saying that one of the best ways to put rankings where they belong…is to ignore them for the most part and not keep referring to them.</p>

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<p>What percentage does this count?</p>

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<p>Hawkette – Before I begin ranting about PA and potentially take this thread off track, thanks for the data you post. It’s very helpful for people looking to compare colleges, and it’s good to see things posted other than opinions.</p>

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You honestly think it’s academics filling out the reports? LOL.</p>

<p>PA assessment is worthless. Garbage in, garbage out.</p>

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<p>Compared to IBclass06’s assessment, everything else is indeed “worthless.” I am eagerly anticipating the IBclass06 News & World Report. When is the release date again? And can I get an autographed copy?</p>

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<p>Peer Assessment is actually one of the very best indicators of college quality. You can show statistically that Peer Assessment can be very accurately predicted (95%) by hard statistics. US News drops the highest and lowest peer assessment rankings so outliers are excluded. The collective judgement of higher ed professionals captures just about all the important features of a college. Stop whining about Peer Assessment. There is scientific proof that it is almost completely predictable by hard data.</p>

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<p>The irony of the OP’s elitism is that, by all indications, she didn’t seem to have received an elite education herself.</p>

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<p>Self-righteousness is not much more appealing than elitism.</p>

<p>FWIW, very few if any people are saying that an elite education makes you a “better person,” but only that it provides better (access to) opportunities.</p>

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<p>I am afraid your clear and lucid argument will fall upon deaf ears, especially of those whose schools don’t receive (read: deserve) high PAs.</p>

<p>Random CC “poster assessment” (the new PA) is currently the flavor of the month.</p>

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Nice defense. It’s not just my assessment – even some of the participants quoted (including the presidents/chancellors of Wisconsin and UVM) admitted that it’s not a very useful assessment.</p>

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Why, of course you can. PM me if you want it personalized. I was thinking “To my favorite ■■■■■, with love and affection.”</p>

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<p>Nah, there’s no need to get it personalized. I will have the one and only copy. Someday it’ll be quite the collector’s item.</p>

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<p>Oh, stop it. I am starting to tear up…</p>

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<p>What is an “UVM”? Is that related to an “URM”?</p>

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<p>collegehelp…I tend to agree with you that PA is better metric than many people on this board tend to believe. It may be a statistically noisy process, but the noise will get filtered over the 2000 or so samples. You say US News “throws out the High and Low outliers”. My question is, since the ratings are on a simple integer scale of 1-5, what does this statement mean? I could see an argument for throwing out ratings of ones own institution based on conflict-of-interest. But I don’t understand throwing out “highs and lows”…the scale is too narrow. Further, any one individuals response has <em>no</em> significance to the final score since PA is reported to only two significant figures…a point that is seemed to be lost on many.</p>

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<p>This is simply not true at all. Tons of academics from tons and tons of PhD programs around the US and the world provide these ratings. It’s only in USNRW and CC (lay people who are not academics) who believe that to be a professor you had to attend HYPS. The vast majority of professors went to public universities for their PhDs, much much larger programs than HYPS.</p>

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<p>gb,
No intent to be disingenuous/hypocritical. Sorry if that was your perception. I get your point, but you have to understand the barbs that I regularly collect whenever I post against PA. </p>

<p>Anyway, PA scores are a major component in the widely-read USNWR rankings and I included PA scores in last year’s series of threads, so I decided to present them again, even if I am not a fan. Plus there are some schools where this is their major (sole?) claim to being among the national elites and so this is my effort to give them their day in the sun. LOL. I think today’s terminology for my behaviour on this is that I’m trying to display compassion for my intellectual opponents and I’m trying to act in a way that is “inclusive.” :slight_smile: </p>

<p>c’help, rogracer, & other PA supporters,
On this measurement, we disagree on its general usefulness, but I will concede that, for those interested in pursuing a career in higher education, the PA scores probably have some marginal value.</p>

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Source? I tallied the professors in my field once, and not a single one of them came from a public university. 50% came from Chicago, 13% from Penn, and others from Yale, NYU, Brown, and Johns Hopkins. Granted this is just one field, and I would not dream of extrapolating from it, but I would very much like to see a source for that claim.</p>

<p>Bluntly put, professors tend to come from a very small, select pool of universities. </p>

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That fails to explain how a professor at Berkeley would be able to accurately measure the quality of education at Samford, Andrews, or NC A&T. Even more worrisome, one has to wonder how people are able to accurately gauge the quality of education at tiny COA or Berry. </p>

<p>Although the survey instructs people to mark “don’t know” if they’re unfamiliar with a school, that raises two problems:
[ul][<em>]Surveys of participants and leaked forms strongly suggest that most participants try to measure every school.
[</em>]If people only measure the schools with which they are familiar, a very regional school like U Memphis or Winston-Salem State will have its PA be a result of less than a half dozen participants (hardly “2000 academics”).[/ul] </p>

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If that’s true, why do we need PA at all?</p>

<p>As a concluding remark, I have to question the sanity of the 40-50% of survey participants who do not feel Chicago and Columbia are distinguished.</p>

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Puh-huh-lease… people pull these rankings out of their asses.</p>

<p>Look at Pomona’s score. If I’m interpreting this correctly, a significant number of the “experts” filling out the form do not think Pomona is among the Top 20 liberal art colleges in the country. And this is based on what exactly? Do we have any information at all on why it gets ding’d here?</p>

<p>What a joke!</p>

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<p>The large sample size doesn’t make them good. </p>

<p>I think the major problem is with the qualifications of people to stick these numbers on schools. Each person should only be able to rate the 10 schools they’re most familiar with. </p>

<p>So if we take Peer Assessor X, and he gives virtually all of the top colleges rankings, can you really assume he’s spent a lot of time frankly talking to people from all of these schools about their strengths and weaknesses? No. It’s far more likely that for 90% of the colleges somebody uses preexisting prestige and maybe a couple things he’s read about the school. Therefore, 500 wrongs (PAs of a school, most of which are unbased) don’t make a right. </p>

<p>And I’d like to see this proof that it’s one of the best indicators of college quality…
The problem with these is that yes, they give students a good idea of prestige. But they also perpetuate that prestige pecking order! So while they help schools have good places on USNWR therefore attracting more applications and therefore higher quality students and therefore better endowments etc. (Well, where do you think Harvard got its endowment from–this cycle). And these endowments and better students make them better schools. </p>

<p>So yeah it signifies academic quality as a perpetual self-fulfilling prophecy, not as a fair measure.</p>

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<p>I hesitate to ask, but IBclass06, I’m under the impression that your field is Egyptology? If so, then I’m not surprised by how skewed your data is, as there just aren’t that many public schools in general that offer Egyptology for a graduate degree. The only ones I can come up with off the top of my head are UCLA, UMich, and Berkeley.</p>

<p>Not disagreeing with you here at all. Just felt I should put in a point for clarification - er, assuming you are in the field of Egyptology.</p>