@sbbaler, so what that it was put out by Times Higher Ed? Discounting Nobels won by more than one person, and only counting prizes at the moment they are awarded is very flawed methodology… and just because the ranking was put out by a media corporation doesn’t magically make it beyond criticism.
The data I posted above clearly illustrates the shortcomings of what Times Higher Ed purports to be the basis for their ranking.
there are shortcomings to all ranking systems including these prestige rankings as noted by many posters… and as pointed out Berkeley is under represented in these rankings… that’s the nature of rankings Btw. Stanford faculty has had the most nobel prize winners since 2000 at 11 which is the most of any institution or school.
In the spirit of sbballer, “there are shortcomings to all ranking systems…that’s the nature of ranking…btw” HYP rank higher than Princeton (#4) and Berkeley (#20), according to the most widely used U.S. News & World Report among U.S. universities administrators and college applicants.
profdad… I think you meant to say Stanford #4 not Princeton. Princeton has been ranked 1 domestically by USNWR for a while I believe. yes exactly… always shortcomings to all rankings…
Even US news can’t get their own rankings straight… … Princeton is #1 on domestic rankings but #13 on global rankings. Berkeley is #3 on US news and world reports global rankings but #20 on domestic.
Berkeley gets penalized for among other things not having a large endowment… but it outpaces Princeton in Noble prize winners and members inducted into the national academy of sciences. Princeton gets a bump in domestic USNR because it has the highest endowment per student.
Bottom line depending on how you set up the criteria you can get a lot of different results.
Sbballer, that was exactly my point. Many (not all) ranking institutions have their own agenda and thus they choose those criteria that serves their agenda the best. We thus should understand their self-interest. Personally, I take rankings, particularly those outside the U.S., with a high dose of suspicion.
USNWR has their agenda… international ranking systems are not any more or less biased than USNWR. what does endowment per student have to do with ranking (princeton)? or should it be ranking based on annual fund raising (stanford), total endowment (harvard), or annual endowment returns(yale)? depending on the criteria you select for this metric you will get very different results.
USNWR does have its own agenda: it is in the business of selling their magazines. No one believe that its criteria and weights are perfect either. But I do believe endowment and fundraising are important drivers of university success. Money cannot guarantee success, but success rarely arrives without enough money. This is true for all organizations, for profit corporations or not for profit universities.
Well, that presumes that every quality faculty member is going to receive an offer from both Berkeley and Stanford and therefore has the luxury to choose between the two. Only a lucky few will ever have that choice, and quite honestly, if you’re really that good, I don’t think a 10-30% difference in salary should be all that important to you anyway. It seems far more important to seek a department with a more comfortable fit so that you have the best chance to obtain tenure (or if we’re talking about a tenured position, then you should choose a school that provides you with the lifestyle that you prefer).
Moreover, academic hiring tends to be highly idiosyncratic, depending on the perceived ‘needs’ of the particular department during a particular job market cycle. If you’re, say, a brilliant mechanism design candidate on the job market when Stanford is simply not hiring mechanism designers (perhaps because Stanford already hired some during the previous cycle), you won’t even get the job talk from Stanford, let alone the offer. But Berkeley might give you one, and you might then very well eventually win a Nobel for Berkeley. Similarly, it is an unfortunate fact that departments do implement ‘quotas’ for the maximum number of candidates from the same PhD program or postdoc institution to whom they will provide job talks. For example, MIT confers about 10-20 new economics PhD’s every year. It would be extremely unusual for the Stanford economics department, or any other economics department for that matter, to provide job talks to 5 or more of them (heck, even 3 would be considered high), for that would represent ‘too many’ MIT candidates under consideration. Nor is it particularly easy to determine who the ‘best’ 5 candidates are. Hence, any MIT candidate who isn’t invited for a job talk at Stanford may very well get one from Berkeley, and that one may very well turn out to have the most successful career.
I would also point out that perhaps one of the best ways for the Berkeley faculty to thrive would be to simply take the best Stanford PhD graduates. Most schools - Stanford included - implement strong ‘anti-incest’ policies which strongly discourages them from directly hiring their own PhD graduates - the governing philosophy being that young researchers are better served by joining a new school where they will interact with new people and thereby develop new ideas. Hence, many top Stanford PhD graduates who want to stay in the Bay Area may have little choice but to go to Berkeley.
Hi peterquill,
You made some good points: money is not everything. Fit (and many other factors) does play a role. The question is: among potential many factors, which factor is the most important one? Also, by how much relative to other factors. I think it is quite logical to hypothesize that money is the most important factor; after all, we are talking about a job.
Now, let me disagree with you on a few things with some numbers (evidence) backing up my argument. I have heard many people, including you, arguing that most schools implement the so-called “anti-incest” policy. The argument does not make economic sense. When we hire a new faculty (I have served on numerous search committees for new faculty members), we are dealing with a high degree of information asymmetry. This information asymmetry is much lower when the candidates are our own doctoral students because we have observed them for about 5 years already. Since you used the field of economics for some of your arguments, so I now use some numbers from this field. I went on UC Berkelry, Stanford, and MIT’s economics department websites and counted the number of their economics faculty members’ doctoral affiliations. I focus on there three programs because their faculty sizes are very similar, around 50. Also, they are all very fine programs enabling cleaner comparison. The following are the results; the numbers of faculty members are in parentheses. For UC Berkeley: Harvard (9), Yale (2), Princeton (3), Stanford (6), MIT (9), Berkeley (3), others (15). For Stanford: Harvard (10), Yale (2), Princeton (1), Stanford (10), MIT (10), Berkeley (2), others (8). For MIT: Harvard (13), Yale (0), Princeton (3), Stanford (5), MIT (13), Berkeley (0), others (6).
As you can see, Berkeley hires 3 of their own. Stanford hires 10 of their own. MIT hires 13 of their own. These numbers are at odd with the notion of anti-incest. Now, let me refine what I want to say. I do not say anti-incest is not a factor, but it is a relative minor factor relative to information asymmetry. The argument of anti-incest is over-stated. By the same token, I believe that fit and other factors are relative minor factors as well. At the end of day, money is likely to be the most important factor in recruitment and retention.
From above, the dominance of Harvard and MIT Ph.D. across these three universities is quite evident. You can also see that Berkeley has a higher percentage of their faculty members having their Ph.D. from non-HYPSM universities. I do not want to overly generalize the implications of the final observation; it may relate to how much Berkeley is able to pay. I leave that to readers.
“If a researcher did research at institution A as a PhD student, and said research continued at institution B as a postdoc that resulted in a Nobel Prize winning breakthrough, and yet received the award years later when the researcher was at institution C, you think that it is “fair” that only institution C gets credit for that award, but not institution A and B??”
The hard truth that Stanford fans don’t want to talk about, is that when you actually look at where Nobel Prize winners EARNED their degrees (undergraduate and/or graduate), Stanford doesn’t do very well at all.
Only two Nobel Prize winners in history earned their undergraduate degrees from Stanford, while only nine earned graduate degrees there. Harvard has awarded degrees to 65 individuals who went on to win the NP, excluding winners in the Literature and Peace categories.
@defensor while true, often times the Harvard affiliation comes as a form of reward for a nobel laureate, so many harvard- affiliated nobel laureate got their harvard affiliation after they got their nobel prize…but of course there are many harvard grads who have gone on to get the nobel prize
Berkeley is 6th behind Stanford in US universities. Now this is a listing I believe, not Forbes.
@preppedparent I don’t think anyone doubts that Berkeley has some amazing grad schools and their research output is top notch, but for some reason they have not been able to bring their undergrad program to this level, hence the low place in undergrad rankings, which is completely justified imo.
“while true, often times the Harvard affiliation comes as a form of reward for a nobel laureate, so many harvard- affiliated nobel laureate got their harvard affiliation after they got their nobel prize…but of course there are many harvard grads who have gone on to get the nobel prize”
I repeat, there are SIXTY FIVE individuals who earned their undergraduate and/or graduate degrees from Harvard, who LATER went on to win the Nobel Prize. They did NOT get their Harvard affiliation after they got their Nobel Prize. Capiche?
My student is in the Haas School of Business. USNWR has it ranked tied for second with MIT (in the nation) for undergraduate business education. I believe its undergrad English program is tied with Harvard and Yale for best in undergrad education. You won’t convince me that its undergrad programs aren’t top notch.