<p>U-M is ranked as the world's 14th top institution, according to a new set of rankings released Tuesday by U.S. News & World Report.</p>
<p><a href=“Inaugural U.S. News & World study ranks U-M as 14th-best university in the world - mlive.com”>Inaugural U.S. News & World study ranks U-M as 14th-best university in the world - mlive.com;
<p>Inaugural U.S. News & World study ranks U-M as 14th-best university in the world</p>
<p>The University of Michigan is the 14th-best university in the world, according to a new study by U.S. News & World Report.</p>
<p>The magazine released its first-ever global rankings using a new methodology that takes into account academic research and reputation overall, and not their separate undergraduate or graduate programs like other studies.</p>
<p>The rankings include 500 universities across 49 countries. They also feature the top 100 global universities in 21 subject areas, including fields such as economics and business, engineering, computer science and clinical medicine.</p>
<p>“The Best Global Universities rankings also provide insight into how U.S. universities - which U.S. News has been ranking separately for the last 30 years - stand globally,” the study said.</p>
<p>“All universities can now benchmark themselves against schools in their own country and region, become more visible on the world stage and find top schools in other countries to consider collaborating with.”</p>
<p>Michigan had an overall rating of 76.0 across the 11 weighted categories, tying it with the universities of Toronto and Washington, and coming in one spot behind Princeton University and one spot ahead of Yale University.</p>
<p>Topping the inaugural list are Harvard, which scored a perfect 100, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of California, Berkeley.</p>
<p>The top three U.S. public institutions are the University of California, Berkeley; University of California, Los Angeles; and the University of Michigan.</p>
<p>In September, the annual QS World Ranking had U-M as the top public university in America, and the U.S. News & World Report annual report of domestic higher learning institutions ranked U-M as the No. 4 public university in America.</p>
<p>Hopefully it would not have as much error as in the other report from the same magazine recently.</p>
<p>So if your school ranks high, the ranking is valid. If it ranks low, then they are just trying to sell magazines?</p>
<p>@tomofboston <a href=“How ‘U.S. News’ Ranks Colleges”>http://www.theonion.com/articles/how-us-news-ranks-colleges,33959/</a></p>
<p>As usual, these rankings penalize large public schools. Case in point: UM is ranked 14th and Princeton is ranked 13th. Because this poll is largely research driven, research volume/size/skill/citations should bulk large. </p>
<p>Now lets look at this link: <a href=“http://mup.asu.edu/research2012.pdf”>http://mup.asu.edu/research2012.pdf</a> (page 16) Using this resource for 2010 (figures are somewhat stale but freshest available for this fairly long-dated longitudinal compilation) we can see that UM has executed research at the $1,128,000,000 level and Princeton at the $231,862,000 level; Michigan engages in nearly 5 times the research volume as Princeton. Of course this figure is stale because UM is now (2013) at around $1.3Bln or 5.6 times the 2010 Princeton level.</p>
<p>Using the same link ( <a href=“http://mup.asu.edu/research2012.pdf”>http://mup.asu.edu/research2012.pdf</a> ) you can explore the issue as to whether Michigan is all about quantity and not quality. Princeton measures in the top 25 are 4 in total; for Michigan 8 in total. So on the qualitative dimension, Michigan has twice the number of highly ranked departments.</p>
<p>Measures not comprehended by this study or given scant value: 1) the dollar and quality dimensions mentioned above; 2) UM is generally in or near the top 5 in teaching prizes; 3) in or near the top 5 in citations (BTW: in my opinion “normalizing” citations is somewhere between moronic and spurious, but that is a common USN&WR gambit to advantage smaller schools); 4) in or near the top 5 in doctorates granted (worth 5% in this “methodology”).</p>
<p>Page 16 at above link:
Michigan Total Research= $1,128,000,000</p>
<p>Harvard Total Research = $ 561,703,000
MIT Total Research = $ 646,222,000
Total Harvard&MIT= $1,207,925,000</p>
<p>So in 2010, Michigan’s research volume was approximately the same as Harvard and MIT added together using: <a href=“http://mup.asu.edu/research2012.pdf”>http://mup.asu.edu/research2012.pdf</a></p>
<p>“So if your school ranks high, the ranking is valid. If it ranks low, then they are just trying to sell magazines?”</p>
<p>No, I would argue that the USN&WR is riddled with transparently wrong-headed “methodological” errors. Both the components of the analysis and the weightings are wrong-headed, but let’s take a quick look using the below.</p>
<p>Several simple examples: 1) percent of students graduating in X-years; this is a measure of wealth; it tells us if the school can offer enough course sections and whether or not the student can afford to enroll; both of those measures tell us about student and institutional wealth but nothing about student or institution quality and certainly nothing about terminal outcomes for the students; 2) predicted graduation rate differential: USN&WR rewarded or punishes schools which don’t fit the regression they have designed; in the real world you aren’t allowed to design a crappy model and then assign its outputs to institutions; the point of the model is try to predict if a student will experience a graduation success rate; if the model fails is that the student’s fault, the institution’s fault or the inability of the model to perform robustly? I would argue the last causation as the most likely.</p>
<p>Blue85, the USNWR undergraduate rankings are flawed for several reasons. You already pointed out the flaw in methodology. Another, larger problem, is inconsistent data reporting. The most blatant is the student/faculty ratio. Most private universities completely omit graduate students from their calculations, while most public universities include them. Given the fact that professors are research universities spend much more time with graduate students, omitting graduate students from the ratio is very misleading. With the exception of a couple of private universities, most top 20 USNWR universities claim to have ratios between 3/1 and 8/1. However, in most cases, those universities would have ratios of 10/1 or greater if they included graduate students. </p>
<p>Selectivity data, such as SAT/ACT ranges, or % of Freshmen graduating in the top 10% of their high school class is also very unreliable. In the past three or four years alone, several colleges and universities have been found inflating their admissions data, particularly their SAT ranges. In the case of Michigan, this year the USNWR reported that 64% of Michigan freshmen graduated in the top 10% of their high school class. That figure is incorrect. Michigan has not reported this figure since the 2010-2011 admissions cycle. At that time, 92% of Freshmen were reported to have graduated in the top 10% of their high school class. It had fluctuated between 89% and 92% from 2004 until 2011. I have no idea where the 64% came from.</p>
<p>The Financial resources and Faculty resources calculations are also suspicious. Private universities have sent officials to the USNWR for coaching and their position in those two categories improved 15-20 spots in a single year. Given Michigan’s endowment, state funding, revenues from tuition and donations, credit rating, operating budget, economies of scale/cost effectiveness etc…its financial resources rank should among the top 15 nationally, and yet, according to the USNWR, it is not even among the top 40. </p>
<p>Alexandre: agreed on all points.</p>
<p>This country spends trillions on education, but seems to have no objective quality control nor any measure of bang for buck. You’d think that it would make sense for a not-for-profit entity to be created which would objectively measure quality/quantity in the domain of education. “We” spend so much money on education that it seems silly to not have quality control. Why the only quality control out there is in the hands of a for-profit entity mystifies me.</p>