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That wasn’t the field I was referring to, but for the sake of rebuttal I’ll note that ~50% of Egyptology programs are at public universities.</p>
<p>Actually, around 40%, from my count. I missed Memphis and Queens. Still, my bad. Should’ve had a closer look before I posted, as that percentage is still much higher than I’d expected.</p>
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<p>OK, take a look at the philosophy department at Harvard. About as high-brow as you can get, right? A full 50% of the full-time faculty got their PhDs at public universities. This is not unusual. It’s true that professors at elite universities tend to come from a “small, select pool of universities.” But in any given field that “small, select pool” is likely to include several top publics.</p>
<p>IBclass, 10 of Harvard’s 50 or so Economics professors earned their PhDs at public universities (two of them are Michigan alums who earned their PhDs this decade). 10 of Northwestern’s 48 Economics professors earned their PhDs at public universities. 10 of Yale’s 50 or so Economics professors earned their PhDs at public universities. 6 of Chicago’s 30 Economics professors earned their PhDs at public universities. 5 of Princeton’s 55 Economics professors earned their PhDs at public universities. That’s 40 faculty at five of the top 10 Economics departments in the nation. </p>
<p>Top Economics departments on the West Coast (Stanford and Cal in particular) have a much higher concentration of PhDs coming out of Public universities.</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>Response: You may be absolutely right. The problem is that perceived realty becomes realty. Firms seek to recruit at the higher ranked schools.Professors want to teach at the higher ranked schools. Parents want their kids to attend the best school with the highest name cache. Are these rankings correct? Not, in my opinion. However it is what it is.</p>
<p>As for peer reviews. They certainly are flawed;however, they are probably a better indication of quality than other factors used by US News and World Reports. At least deans of various schools get to review other programs. Theoretically, they should have more knowledge of programs in their field than we parents. However, as pointed out, even here, their rankings can be flawed due to the biases of the person filling out the review.</p>
<p>Getting this thread back on topic…</p>
<p>If all colleges you think deserve a top PA score of 5 (i.e. offer distinguished academic programs) and are then rated at a 5, that would imply they are not distinguished.</p>
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[quote]
their almost complete lack of movement over several decades perpetuates a fa</p>
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PA isn’t attempting to measure “quality of education”. It is measuring distinction of academic programs…</p>
<p>^^ I agree with this statement. Anyone who thinks Peer Assessment measures “quality of education” is delusional. It measures distinction of academic programs (and this includes faculty resources.)</p>
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<p>Oh, will we blessed by another round of senseless debates? The beauty of the Peer Assessment is that it can be ANYTHING people want it to be … from Collegehelp’s repeated attempts to pass his logically-circular “hard fact” compilations and voodoo weighing as “predictive hard data” to the numerous attempts by PA fans to play with the definition and meanings of the terms. We have heard it all … from measuring the quality of education to the “perception” of quality of education. Checking old threads on CC yields a treasure of contradictions by the most vocal PA supporters. </p>
<p>What is now known is that the fears of manipulation, cronyism, or plain lack of interest from the so-called 2000 “academics” was probably understated. The Peer Assessment is a horrible metric that can only be defended by its supporters when their favorite list of schools gets a small --or large-- benefit. </p>
<p>In the end, nobody will be wiser as US News will cling to its best tool to level the playing field and turn a blind eye to the numerous reports of fraud. If the PA is rendered ineffective by the quality control it should deserve, the USNews will simply move in a different direction with the same results. </p>
<p>Yawn … one more time!</p>
<p>^^^^The same goes for the so called “objective” numbers used that have also been proven to be fraudulent in some cases.</p>
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I gotta say these are the most fun threads on CC. </p>
<p>xiggi, for the record, I have never minced words about peer assessment and what it is measuring.</p>
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Goodness, that’s even worse. </p>
<p>Carnegie Mellon above UT Austin? UCD and Purdue above Minnesota? UVA above Wisconsin? </p>
<p>LOL.</p>
<p>(Not to mention that it merely sidesteps my question. How in the world do people at Davidson know what the programs at Agnes Scott are like?)</p>
<p>^ Heh, well it’s supposed to be UNDERGRADUATE… 
I didn’t buy the current rankings…what are the differences in PA for those examples? All should be rated around a 4, and I suspect that’s the case.</p>
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If they haven’t heard of them then they probably aren’t very distinguished.</p>
<p>I agree that PA scores for LACs are fuzzier to determine because the programs are less visible to academics (i.e. less publication research, etc.)*</p>
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<li>And I’ll fully admit the flaws of PA and how it relates to undergrad…but when you ask an academic to rate a programs distinction on a scale of 1-5, they are going to rate based on visible distinguishing criteria that are important to them (i.e. research publications, awards, etc.)</li>
</ul>
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UCD has very distinguished agricultural, entomology and zoology programs. Purdue has very distinguished engineering programs. Minnesota’s programs are great, but no one particular academic program offering is very distinguished.</p>
<p>Wisconsin and Texas are underrated.</p>
<p>Here’s what an LAC president said about peer assesment:
[Is</a> There Life After Rankings? - The Atlantic (November 2005)](<a href=“http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200511/shunning-college-rankings]Is”>Is There Life After Rankings? - The Atlantic)</p>
<p>I missed this discussion and am bumping with a few general impressions:</p>
<p>I wonder if the relative delta between a Peer Ranking and the USNWR ranking reveals something important – I don’t have an answer, but it seems like an interesting question.</p>
<p>I wonder what the other measures in the USNWR ranking are that would cause a school with a PA of 3.8 ( a solid PA but not in the top 30 – tied for #32 in fact), Notre Dame, to be ranked above schools with higher PAs (Georgetown with 4.0, UCLA with 4.2, Carnegie Mellon and Michigan both with 4.3). I can understand the whole giant Public Research University argument diminishing the average undergrad’s experience, but this doesn’t apply to Georgetown or Carnegie Mellon.</p>
<p>I wonder what WashU has going for it outside of faculty prestige that could cause it to be ranked above Northwestern, Johns Hopkins, Cornell and Brown, when Wash U is at 4.1 and the others ranked below it have much higher PAs of 4.3, 4.5, 4.5 and 4.4 respectively. </p>
<p>I don’t have answers, just questions. I expected to see PA and USNWR rankings to be more or less in the same rank order, and those that are draw my attention. I can understand the size argument for Berkeley, UCLA, Michigan, but that argument does not apply to Northwestern, Hopkins, Cornell, Brown, and in the case of Notre Dame, Georgetown and Carnegie Mellon.</p>
<p>Anyway… I don’t think this is an irrelvant question. What if a high USNWR ranking relative to PA score means something significant that could correlate to a very high delivery of education to the undergraduate?</p>
<p>Oh well, enough curious wonderings…</p>
<p>Oh please. IBClass06’s quotes say it all. Marketing matters. The PA score is 25% of the entire USNWR ranking! Particularly with LACs, this is the one category where a college can have an immediate effect on their ranking!!! I’d have more respect for the rankings (if that’s not an oxymoron) without this joke. Most LAC employees have no idea what 90% of other colleges are really like.</p>
<p>Dunnin:</p>
<p>Ya’ gotta parse the numbers. However, I fully believe that there exists a bias in (the secular) academe which discounts the PA of religious schools, so the likes of Georgetown, ND, BC, & BYU take a peer hit. Again, just a belief.</p>
<p>But, wrt specific numbers, WashU has a higher grad rate than Hopkins, higher retention rate than Hopkins and Cornell, higher % of smaller classes, smaller % of large classes, low student faculty ratio, higher SAT scores (no surprise there since they chase 'em with merit money), higher proportion of to 10% of class, etc. So while WashU’s PA maybe lower than Hopkins and Cornell, it beats them on most every other USNews metric.</p>