<p>Combining the data of 3 respectable ranking institutions, namely: THES-Qs, Washington Monthly and Shanghai's Academic Ranking of Best Universities, I was able to rank elite US colleges with the most elite Faculty. Here's how they performed:</p>
<p>As expected, the 4 research-led, extremely elite, very prominent and highly respected institutions, namely: Stanford, Harvard, Berkeley, MIT dominated the ranking with each having a cumulative score of not less than 4.90 in a measure with a perfect score of 5.00, or the highest score a school can get in this area. Princeton, Yale and JHU followed closely, all of them enjoy a considerable gap from the next group, which I call Elite group.</p>
<p>Very interesting. I wouldn’t give too much credence to any of the sources you cite, but I do think collectively they say something about these schools’ respective international prestige—or what I’ll call their “global standing.” Interesting, when we compare your “global standing” results to the US News PA rating, the two sets of data track very consistently. I’ve maintained for a long time that the US News PA rating reflects, more than anything, the consensus view among academics concerning the quality of the faculty at various institutions, measured primarily by their standing as academics in their respective fields. That’s the sort of thing college and university presidents and provosts are likely to consider first when evaluating their peer institutions’ strengths and weaknesses—and it’s something they track closely. That’s also the sort of consideration that’s most likely to influence each school’s “global standing.” Here’s how the data compare:</p>
<p>“global standing”/school/US News PA rating</p>
<p>The MOST ELITE
4.98 Stanford 4.9
4.97 Harvard 4.9
4.93 Berkeley 4.7
4.90 MIT 4.9</p>
<p>Contrary to the view sometimes expressed on CC that the elite publics are buoyed in the US News rankings by inflated PA ratings, the data seem to show the opposite: the schools most helped by US News PA ratings in excess of their “global standing” tend (with a few exceptions) to be elite privates.</p>
<p>School/ margin by which US News PA exceeds “global standing”:
UVA +0.50
Georgetown +0.45
UNC +0.30
Duke +0.28
Chicago +0.27
Yale +0.26
Dartmouth +0.22
Vanderbilt +0.22
Columbia +0.20</p>
<p>The schools whose US News PA score most lags their “global standing” are:
UCLA -0.45
Tufts -0.33
JHU -0.32
UC Berkeley -0.23
Caltech -.023</p>
<p>– Nobel Prizes (Physics, Chemistry, Medicine, Economics)
– Fields Medals (Math)
– Citation of faculty in 21 fields (19 of which are in science/engineering)
– Citations in Science and Nature
– Articles in Science Citation Index and Social Science Citation Index</p>
<p>A bit slanted toward the sciences, eh? Hopkins being ranked so high is a gigantic red flag to the unreliability of this ranking.*</p>
<p>*Not that Hopkins isn’t a fine school – but to put it above Yale or Chicago is laughable.</p>
<p>
Which did you like better about that ranking?</p>
<p>a) Berkeley at #1
b) South Carolina State at #6</p>
<p>That’s one of your sources? Really?</p>
<p>The faculty quality measure in that “ranking” is highly suspect. It’s based on two factors.</p>
<p>– Prestigious awards (Nobels and Fields, perhaps?)
– Members in the National Academies of Science, Medicine, and Engineering</p>
<p>The bias towards science/engineering universities is once again glaringly obvious.</p>
<p>If you’d look at more closely on what I did, you’d find out that I only used data relevant to faculty, which, is in this case, is the combination of 1. Science & engineering PhD’s awarded Rank 2. Faculty receiving significant awards Rank and 3. Faculty in national academies Rank.</p>
<p>Shouldn’t you have included schools below the USNWR “Top 31” to get a better picture of elite faculty? Schools like Wisconsin, Illinois, Texas, and UCSD have more elite faculty than many of the schools listed even though they don’t make the top 31 USNWR cut since it doesn’t measure faculty quality.</p>
Read my post again. You’ll note that I specifically addressed the faculty data, which is heavily biased towards science and engineering.</p>
<p>Why would a Classics major care how many science/engineering PhDs were awarded? Or how many faculty members are in the National Academy of Engineering?</p>
Exactly, there is such an obsession on this board with engineering and hard sciences?
But I guess they are the only real subjects, not like the fluff of history, english, or philosophy…</p>
<p>if you have any data that you think are relevant to this area/ranking, please give it to me so I can try to incorporate them with the already available data that I used here so we can produce a more balanced and acceptable ranking.</p>
<p>Whats funny is that all those “elite schools producing PhD’s” have to find jobs for their graduates or their programs flail around like a beached whale. Thus, they restrict who they accept in their graduate programs to ensure they all get job offers when they obtain their PhD’s. And where do all those PhD’s get jobs? You guessed it…at all the schools ranked below the Ivy League.</p>
<p>To me the measure of a college is its TEACHING faculty, not how many Nobel Prizes in research they have obtained. Because those Nobel Laureates won’t be teaching your kid in undergraduate school, I can assure you.</p>
<p>So I look at the teaching faculty in any given college, to get a feel for how deep they are in a given program. Not that a PhD from Oklahoma University wouldn’t turn out to be “teacher of the year” at your favorite college. But that for an initial representation of the quality/depth of faculty, I look at how many professors are there and what are their credentials. </p>
<p>And many, many second tier colleges are chock FULL of PhD’s from the Ivy League and other “elite” universities. </p>
Finally, some sense!
College is supposed to provide the best learning environment. How exactly does accolades of researchers correlate to that? The researchers are engaging in their own personal interests, not that of undergraduates, because that is where there livelihood and financial security is vested. Please someone UCBChem, RML, Alexandre, anyone answer this!</p>
<p>^ You’re right IBClass. Perhaps they’d be more interested in faculty members with the following distinctions: American Philisophical Society, American Academy of Arts and Science Fellows, Fulbright Scholars, Guggenheim Fellows, McArthur Fellows, National Poet Laureates, Polk Award for Journalism, Pulitzer Prize, National Academy of Education, etc.</p>
<p>Here’s Berkeley’s current faculty acheivements. Perhaps others can post data for faculties of their own schools.
Actually, I would wholeheartedly agree with that. As I posted in another thread, most of the MacArthur fellows I’ve met have been fantastic pedagogues.</p>
<p>My beef is not with those awards as a measure of quality but rather that they were passed over for ONLY the Nobel and Fields in those rankings.</p>
<p>People actively doing reserch are closer to the cutting edge of their area and also more dynamic and interesting than someobne who just passes on what is in the text books. Also they are much better connected with top grad schools and their recommendation will carry more weight than some unkown “teaching” prof. Most young profs coming our of grad school want to go where the best reseatch is being done. The “teaching” schools get the leftovers, in general.</p>
<p>While award-winning professors can do and teach undergrads, I’m not on the wagon that they should be teaching introductory courses for undergrads. The biggest problem with expecting Nobel laureates to teach, in my opinion, is that many of them are decidedly past their prime at that point. It’s a bit much to demand retirement-aged professors to teach undergrads simply because they have a Nobel Prize.</p>
<p>(On a side note, I first saw George Smoot in his brief appearance on Big Bang Theory. He seems like a pretty cool professor to have.)</p>