<p>The presumption that most LAC profs are there because they "love to teach" is as presumptuous as saying all Starbucks employees because they love making coffee. Maybe they did not have the total package to be hired at the major universities.</p>
<p>barrons, I am not that stupid. Some LAC profs went there because they wanted to teach, some of these may be good at teaching, others bad. Some may have gone there because they could not get other positions at fancy research places and some of these who hated to teach may in fact be bad teachers and others may have surprised themselves and become good teachers. Same reasoning applies at univs.</p>
<p>But, whether good or bad or indifferent, such teachers may be randomly and normally distributed at all places, in fact profs may not make good teachers and that Taiwanese TA may be tops. My point is: good , bad or indifferent, in small colleges you get to spend more time, more face time. Adolescents need lots of adult time, ie time with adults to mature and grow. At small colleges, teaching is labor intensive, no large classes, more discussion, more seminars etc and I am not assuming that the teachers are uniformly good or passionate or went there to teach.</p>
<p>afan,
I respect your views, but I doubt that you and I will ever agree as you have no faith in any rankings whatsoever. I understand your sentiment, but my position is that we are not going to get rid of rankings so, if we’re going to try, let’s try to do the best job possible. </p>
<p>I would prefer a ranking system that utilizes objective data only. No subjective Peer Assessment scoring or at least have it separately reported. Like you, I have a problem with the subjective weights that USNWR assigns to the various categories. However, I do like the sort capability of the online version of USNWR as I can see how schools stack up in a selected category. Frankly, I think it would be great if USNWR would provide a customization tool that any student could manipulate to reflect his/her interests. The problem, of course, is that won’t sell many magazines! </p>
<p>My disagreements with the rankings are due to the use of subjective factors that are inconsistently applied by unknown persons. Do you know how the Provost at Cornell voted? Do you know if he voted? Do you know how or if the President of Auburn voted? If both voted, do you know if they applied the same standards in making their judgments or did they both just make it up as they went along? How did their votes compares with the vote of the Dean of Admission at UC Davis? Or did he vote? Were any of these among that group of 7% of respondents who indicated that they had intentionally downgraded the score of a rival school to make their own look better (this was reported by xiggi in a post on 3/8/07 from page 7 of this thread <a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=306650&page=7)%5B/url%5D">http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=306650&page=7)</a>.</p>
<p>I have pointed out several examples where any outside observer would rightly raise his/her eyebrows and wonder what is causing these great discrepancies in schools that are very, very similar in so many other respects. Look at them again.</p>
<p>3.9 USC vs.
4.3 UCLA</p>
<p>3.8 W&M vs.
4.3 U Virginia</p>
<p>3.5 Wake Forest vs.
4.2 U North Carolina
4.5 Duke</p>
<p>3.9 Notre Dame or 3.6 Boston College vs.
4.5 U Michigan</p>
<p>3.7 Tufts vs.
4.4 Brown
4.5 U Penn
4.6 Cornell, Columbia</p>
<p>If you have knowledge of these schools and you agree with these scores, then we have nothing more to discuss as we will just agree to disagree. But if you agree that these scores look “off” then I ask you to join the group that says either ditch PA scoring, take steps to separate, or amend it in a way that enlarges the universe of graders and introduces new, perhaps more undergraduate student-relevant, perspectives. </p>
<p>I expect your answer is that it is all a waste of time and effort, but I’m an optimist and maybe you’ll come to adopt my hope for a more constructive ranking system.</p>
<p>I do not consider college kids children in need of handholding attention. But i came of age in a more independent era when parents were not still making our decisions at age 18. Maybe today's kids are less independent and need that handholding. Many recent news stories suggest that is true.</p>
<p>Most profs at ND or BC would not get an offer from Michigan. Same for WF and UNC and W&M and UVa. They just are not "stars".</p>
<p>Nice work Hawkeye, since the gripe seems to be with the LACs have you thought about re-doing the same list with LACs?</p>
<p>Rama,</p>
<p>The "trusted survey" to which I was referring was the NRC. The NRC equivalent is a small and declining part of the study. USNEWS is nonsense.</p>
<p>I am perplexed though. Earlier you said you had spoken with "engineering professors". More recently, you said "that their expertise was in anthropology or sociology of education etc", These people were professors of engineering with these backgrounds???</p>
<p>As I noted, careful professors would be reluctant to give opinions about the quality of undergraduate teaching at a college unless they had some reliable basis for their conclusions. They could tell you how many prominent people there were in their fields, but this would not translate that directly into quality of undergrad experience.</p>
<p>Hawkette,</p>
<p>Your list of comparisons does not raise my eyebrows. Please explain, why should it?</p>
<p>George2007,
I have not worked as much with the data behind the LACs nor have I visited nearly as many of the schools. I like very much the schools I know, but I don't know enough about several of these to have quite the same level of conviction. As for ones that appear underrated, W&L (at 3.8) looks very pretty darn low given what I know about the school and the students/graduates. Likewise, for Davidson (4.1) though not as surprisingly low as W&L. Interesting, though, that both W&L and Davidson are in the South. Plus, I suspect that most West Coasters (and me) would put Pomona on the same level as Williams/Amherst/Swarthmore. Not sure why they would be scored at a 4.3 when these others are at 4.7. </p>
<p>LACs should be more straightforward as there are no pure research schools and no publics. Here is the full list for the Top 20 LACs and their PA scores</p>
<p>USNWR Rank, School, PA</p>
<p>1 Williams 4.7
2 Amherst 4.7
3 Swarthmore 4.6
4 Wellesley 4.5
5 Middlebury 4.3
6 Carleton 4.4
7 Pomona 4.3
7 Bowdoin 4.3
9 Haverford 4.2
10 Davidson 4.1
10 Wesleyan 4.3
12 Vassar 4.1
12 CMC 4
14 Harvey Mudd 4.1
14 Grinnell 4.2
16 Colgate 4
17 W&L 3.8
17 Hamilton 3.7
19 Bryn Mawr 4.3
20 Smith 4.2
20 Colby 4</p>
<p>afan,
If you know those schools and you don't consider those scores to be "off" then, as I posted earlier, we will just agree to disagree.</p>
<p>
[quote]
No other school stands to lose more than UMichigan if it were eliminated. It would drop a whopping 10 spots.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Actually, I would say U. Washington and UT-Austin completely dropping out of the top 50 without the PA score is losing more...</p>
<p>JWT86,
The data that I had access to only went to #50 for ex-PA ranks. I agree that U Washington would be hurt in dropping from its current #42, but I don't how far below 50 it would go. U Texas, however, is tied with 4 others for #47. While its ex-PA rank is not clear, its drop might not be as precipitous as U Washington.</p>
<p>Hawkette,</p>
<p>So no criteria at all for under/over ranking? </p>
<p>Should W&L be higher on the list? Specifically, higher than some of the other LAC's? I have no basis for concluding that. How do you come to that assessment? "W&L is better than Harvey Mudd because..." Same question for Pomona.</p>
<p>gabriellaah, </p>
<p>Who are you talking to?</p>
<p>Thanks Hawkette, I was also wondering about endowment. I was looking at the cost of living index the other day and it cost almost 2X as much to live in Boston than in the south. is this factored in somewhere</p>
<p>If you wanted to get rid of peer assessment score, the only objective measure that truly measures the strength of a university is endowment (total and per student). Endowment provides the foundation for hiring faculty, building campaigns and student aid. Everything else is a watershed event. </p>
<p>Total endowment 2006 top 10:
Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Texas, Princeton, MIT, Columbia, Cal, Michigan, Texas A&M</p>
<p>Endowment per student (lac's excluded):
Princeton, Yale, Harvard, Stanford. MIT, Rice, Caltech, Dartmouth, Northwestern, Emory</p>
<p>^^^why use endowment per student when you can just as easily measure expenditure per student? It's like trying to measure fuel consumption by how big a car's gas tank is. It's the one major change USNews made several years ago that I agree with.</p>
<p>While a large endowment is useful for funding the things you mentioned, it does not provide an actual picture of the quality of education offered at various universities. Universities with extensive research options will obviously require larger portions of their endowments to be directed to research, which does not always improve the quality of an undergraduate education. Beyond the first question of where do we direct this money (hiring the best researchers and building labs, hiring excellent lecturers, building a stadium to seat 100,000, etc.) is how effectively the money is used in each area.
(By the way, as a student on one of the universities that made your list of highest per student endowments, I'm not just whining because my university doesn't come out well in under your ranking system.)</p>
<p>We all agree that there is no good way to measure quality of education. What works well for one student may not work so well for another. Rankings are essentially useless for this since experiences can vastly differ even within the same university.</p>
<p>Rankings are a beauty contest. It is a sad truth that people who are popular and people who have money tend to win. That is why schools with the highest peer assessment scores and largest endowments dominate. </p>
<p>The quest to measure the quality of education is nobel. However, in the end you are still using some set of arbitrary criteria to rank schools. Unfortunately, these criteria will be no more valid than any other ranking system out there.</p>
<p>can you please post it? thanks!!</p>
<p>NYU's Peer Assessment Score is 3.8</p>
<p>what is it's rank amongst other schools?</p>
<p>Relative to other universities, NYU is #34, tied with William and Mary, Penn State, Indiana and UCSD to name a few.</p>
<ol>
<li>Harvard University 4.9</li>
<li>Massachusetts Institute of Technology 4.9</li>
<li>Princeton University 4.9</li>
<li>Stanford University 4.9</li>
<li><p>Yale University 4.9</p></li>
<li><p>California Institute of Technology 4.7</p></li>
<li><p>University of California-Berkeley 4.7</p></li>
<li><p>University of Chicago 4.7</p></li>
<li><p>Columbia University 4.6</p></li>
<li><p>Cornell University 4.6</p></li>
<li><p>Johns Hopkins University 4.6</p></li>
<li><p>Duke University 4.5</p></li>
<li><p>University of Michigan-Ann Arbor 4.5</p></li>
<li><p>University of Pennsylvania 4.5</p></li>
<li><p>Brown University 4.4</p></li>
<li><p>Dartmouth College 4.4</p></li>
<li><p>Northwestern University 4.4</p></li>
<li><p>University of California-Los Angeles 4.3</p></li>
<li><p>University of Virginia 4.3 </p></li>
<li><p>Carnegie Mellon University 4.2 </p></li>
<li><p>University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill 4.2</p></li>
<li><p>University of Wisconsin-Madison 4.2</p></li>
<li><p>Georgetown University 4.1</p></li>
<li><p>Rice University 4.1</p></li>
<li><p>University of Texas-Austin 4.1</p></li>
<li><p>Vanderbilt University 4.1</p></li>
<li><p>Washington University-St Louis 4.1</p></li>
<li><p>Emory University 4.0</p></li>
<li><p>Georgia Institute of Technology 4.0</p></li>
<li><p>University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign 4.0</p></li>
<li><p>University of Notre Dame 3.9</p></li>
<li><p>University of Southern California 3.9</p></li>
<li><p>University of Washington 3.9</p></li>
<li><p>College of William and Mary 3.8</p></li>
<li><p>Indiana University-Bloomington 3.8</p></li>
<li><p>New York University 3.8</p></li>
<li><p>Pennsylvania State University-University Park 3.8</p></li>
<li><p>Purdue University-West Lafayette 3.8</p></li>
<li><p>University of California-San Diego 3.8</p></li>
<li><p>University of Minnesota-Twin Cities 3.8</p></li>
</ol>