<p>Well, posterX, a few corrections are called for in your posts.</p>
<p>To begin, the answer to your question “Will the new Institute help Princeton move up from its #57 spot in the rankings?” is almost certainly, yes. </p>
<p>Neuroscience is a NEW field for Princeton, whereas it is a well-established one at Yale thus explaining (but then you already knew this didn’t you) why Princeton is not currently ranked highly on these lists. I suspect that Princeton’s development in this field will be quite rapid given the University’s commitment to it.</p>
<p>I hope that in the future you'll be more careful with your citations. The first ranking you are citing is NOT produced by the Chronicle of Higher Education as you seem to suggest in your first post. This survey is the work of a private company and the results were simply reported in the Chronicle without endorsement by them. </p>
<p>The survey is, in fact, controversial and is not universally accepted as authoritative. It was the work of a private company called Academic Analytics of which the State University at Stony Brook is a partial owner. These are rankings not of the overall reputation or quality of particular departments, but of something the authors call the “Faculty Scholarly Productivity,” essentially a measure of how frequently faculty members appear in print or are cited. </p>
<p>To its credit, The Chronicle of Higher Education wrote what appears to be a fairly balanced examination of the work of this company. You’ll see that there is some praise (mostly from universities paying $30,000.00 a year for company’s services) but also some withering criticism of the techniques that have led to some very curious results such as the following in their ranking of English departments.</p>
<p>(from the Chronicle’s article)</p>
<p>“But a close look at other data in the index has some college officials raising their eyebrows. The University of Georgia's No. 2 ranking in English, for instance, has caused some scoffing. Say you have an exceptionally bright undergraduate poised to enter graduate school in English, says one university administrator who did not want to be named: "Would you really recommend the person attend the University of Georgia? It's where this unidimensional figure gets out of touch."</p>
<p>Now, as an advocate for Princeton, which is ranked #1 in English by this study, you might find it odd that I should criticize the company’s system. Look, however, at the top ten universities for English. I won’t quibble with the University of Georgia’s rank at #2, but neither Yale, nor Harvard ranks even in the top ten. (I suspect posterX that you’ll find some reason to dismiss this particular ranking as it applies to Yale!) Both Yale and Harvard are widely known to have outstanding English departments and it simply doesn’t make sense that neither would make even the top ten. The problem is in what is being measured and how it’s being measured.</p>
<p>Another example will be found here, where, in Philosophy, Princeton is tied for second and Harvard and Yale (again, both known for being powerhouses in this area) don’t make the top ten.</p>
<p>Here is the article in the Chronicle that reviews the company’s work:</p>
<p><a href="http://chronicle.com/free/v53/i19/19a00801.htm%5B/url%5D">http://chronicle.com/free/v53/i19/19a00801.htm</a> = Chronicle article evaluating Academic Analytics</p>
<p>The real “gold standard” for this kind of evaluation is done by the National Research Council to which you refer in the second part of your post. Unfortunately, their last study is from 1995 and the new one that was supposed to be out in 2005 has been delayed and may not appear until 2008. You might have noted to your readers that Yale’s neuroscience department was already in operation in 1995 while such a concentration did not even exist at Princeton. (It’s a little difficult to rank something that doesn’t exist.) Here is a link to a summary of the 1995 report.</p>
<p>In that study, Yale still ranks second in neuroscience but, contrary to your previous post, did not do well in the physical sciences.</p>
<p>Overall graduate department faculty rankings in different disciplines were as follows in that study:</p>
<p>Physical Sciences and Mathematics</p>
<ol>
<li> Berkeley</li>
<li> MIT and Caltech tied</li>
<li> Harvard and Princeton tied</li>
<li> Cornell</li>
</ol>
<p>Biological Sciences</p>
<ol>
<li> UCSF</li>
<li> MIT and UCSD tied</li>
<li> Harvard, Stanford and Yale tied</li>
<li> Berkeley</li>
</ol>
<p>Arts and Humanities</p>
<ol>
<li> Berkeley</li>
<li> Princeton</li>
<li> Harvard</li>
<li> Columbia</li>
<li> Cornell and Yale tied</li>
</ol>
<p>Universities with Highest Number of “Distinguished” Programs</p>
<ol>
<li> Berkeley (32 programs)</li>
<li> Stanford (28 programs)</li>
<li> Harvard (25 programs)</li>
<li> Princeton (24 programs)</li>
<li> MIT (20 programs)</li>
<li> Cornell (19 programs)</li>
<li> Yale (19 programs)</li>
</ol>
<p>So…be careful “what you wish for” with these rankings and please avoid misleading readers by not citing sources accurately. If you want to call the Academic Analytics study authoritative, you’ll need to accept some pretty low rankings for Yale in many areas. (I’m going to bet you’ll want to discard those particular rankings.) </p>
<p>If you’re supporting use of the more widely-respected National Research Council rankings it would be fair of you to point out that Princeton didn’t have a neuroscience program at the time those rankings were compiled. You’ll also need to be accepting of the remainder of those pesky NRC rankings!</p>