UF President cooks USNews Rankings

College Search & Selection
21

<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/florida-state-university/731501-bernie-machen-knows-best.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/florida-state-university/731501-bernie-machen-knows-best.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>A similar thread started yesterday on the FSU board. The title is tongue in cheek.
The survey was obtained via the sunshine laws in Florida, with a simple public records request.</p>

<p>His treatment of other Florida schools is not going over well here in the state. <a href=“http://www.tampabay.com/opinion/editorials/article1011155.ece[/url]”>http://www.tampabay.com/opinion/editorials/article1011155.ece&lt;/a&gt;
The editorial says, in part,

</p>

<p>His rankings of other state U’s was uncalled for. Should be interesting next time the U presidents all all meeting together.</p>

22

<p>UF’s president got caught with his pants down. UF is a public university. Florida has a “Sunshine Law”/open government records statute. The local newspaper requested from the university the US News survey form Machen completed. Conveniently, other state universities didn’t keep copies of the surveys they completed. If president Machen had know every newspaper in Florida was going to publish his “confidential” form, I’m sure it would have looked a lot different.</p>

23

<p>Well at least he got Michigan’s rating correct. ;-)</p>

24

<p><a href=“bclintonk:”>quote</a><br>
If these patterns—giving high ratings to one’s own school while low-balling one’s closest competitors—were widespread, they should largely cancel each other out,

[/quote]
</p>

<p>That’s right. Also, US News can disregard each school’s self-rating, or aggregate the PA data in ways that are hard to manipulate. Mostly, the PA gaming is just added statistical noise, not something that would greatly influence the rankings.</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>Mutual lowballing would reduce the rating of schools in proportion to the number of their competitors.</p>

25

<p>He was previously a high level admin at UM. Taking care of his old friends?</p>

26

<p>These aren’t “peer assessments” - they are cocktail party assessments.</p>

27

<p>This is the problem I have with USNWR where I’m supposed to believe in rankings where 25% of the rank is determined by the cumulative opinions of guys like this, who can’t know about the relative differences between all these schools and rates Purdue, Tulane, SUNY-Stony Brook and Utah above and Montana, Texas-Dallas, St. Louis U and Syracuse equal to Dartmouth, Brown, Georgetown, Tufts. And this guy is probably more informed than the average person who is filling out these surveys.</p>

28

<p>Too subjective, too influential, too easily cooked. Intellectually dishonest is right.</p>

<p>Florida State has more nationally ranked programs than Miami, btw.</p>

29

<p>

</p>

<p>Really? How do you cook the Peer Assessment rating for a given school, when it relies on large numbers of other assessments by competitors, all of whom might be making their own opposite attempts at cooking?</p>

30

<p>So your premise is that cooking is widespread?</p>

31

<p>Maybe he just doesn’t know that much about other schools. This might show more that university administrators shouldn’t rate schools that they aren’t familiar with. Dartmouth was rated as strong as UNH. University of Tennessee (which he should know a lot about) was ranked the same as ETSU. Clemson wasn’t as good as South Carolina, but as good as South Carolina State. Brown and CMU as strong as Temple, Oklahoma, and South Carolina. Utah better than BYU. Iowa a 4 but Iowa State and Notre Dame a 3? The pairs I made were schools that were listed very close to eachother, maybe show a pattern.</p>

<p>If you look at what he changed, Clarke (right above COlumbia) was switched from 5 to 2. </p>

<p>It seemed like he did half of this on autopiolet, with huge blocks of 2s or 1s.</p>

32

<p>Why believe in USNWR rankings at all? All of their data is in question lately. There are threads on CC talking about universities jobbing their so called objective numbers. It’s all ridiculous!</p>

33

<p>hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!</p>

<p>This is great. Many, many thanks to the Gainesville Sun for getting this form and putting it out there for all to see. There could hardly be a better recipe for killing this Peer Assessment ranking. I hope that every news organization in the USA will petition their public universities to get this made publicly available. Make all of the University Presidents, Provosts and Deans of Admission publish their votes….and then let the squirming begin. Hahahahahahahaha. </p>

<p>As for the actual votes, I really don’t care that much that he put U Florida up at a 5 rating. What did you expect? This is like an eighth grade student council election and the kids vote for themselves and their friends. The beauty of this disclosure is that we can finally see the detail and who is voting for their friends and who is penalizing their enemies and who is just intellectually dishonest about the way that they fill this stupid form out. </p>

<p>Two things really stood out to me:</p>

<ol>
<li><p>This guy ranked over 250 schools. By voting, he is claiming familiarity with each school’s faculty, curriculum and graduates. Anybody think he has the perspective to evaluate and judge the “scholarship record, curriculum, and quality of faculty and graduates” of all of these schools? Not a chance. Hahahahahahahahahaha. </p></li>
<li><p>I took a look at how he rated the colleges which have a religious name or affiliation. In the finest tradition of elite academia, he really trashed 'em. Way to go, big fella. </p></li>
</ol>

<p>A 3-RATING FOR
Georgetown
Notre Dame
Brandeis
Fordham
TCU (how did this happen?? they had a 2.6 last year. does he have a buddy who works there??)</p>

<p>A 2-RATING FOR
Pepperdine
Catholic
Trinity
Boston College
Seton Hall
St. John’s
Oral Roberts
Duquesne
Immaculata
Baylor
SMU
BYU
Regent
Marguette</p>

<p>BTW, anyone else notice that he gave the University of Utah a 4? Machen used to be the President there. Their score last year was 2.9. Hahahahahahahahahahahaha.</p>

34

<p><a href=“parent2noles:”>quote</a></p>

<p>So your premise is that cooking is widespread?

[/quote]
</p>

<p>That’s a new question. I’ll stick to the original one: what did you mean when you said that the Peer Assessment rating is “easily cooked”? It’s a many-player, zero-sum game, played in secret. Those are pretty hard to cook.</p>

35

<p>All PAs should be made public. I changed my mind.</p>

<p>All info that goes to cds and usnwr should be made public.</p>

<p>The schools have the info. So let’s see it.</p>

36

<p>This will surely be fodder for this board for quite some time.</p>

<p>Look at all the hoopla generated in revealing one response.</p>

<p>

Ok…criticize over 2,000 OPINION surveys. The results are public…it’s the aggregate PA score.</p>

37

<p>The aggregate scores make more sense than 1 score or 2 or 3.</p>

<p>I’d still like to see them.</p>

<p>The world won’t end. </p>

<p>UCB, your school will do even better; although, it doesn’t have much higher to go. ;)</p>

<p>If we see all the scores, UCB, it will become obvious that a few fools like the Fla guy don’t change the aggregate. </p>

<p>The scores as a whole are pretty good. ;)</p>

<p>After all, Brown and ND don’t really have 3.0 scores. And Fla doesn’t end up with a 5.</p>

38

<p>:)</p>

<p>UCB, it’s good. </p>

<p>We get to see who really has a 10th grade education in math or not? ;)</p>

39

<p>^i think the fact Michigan beat out DUke and NU blew hawkette’s mind.</p>

40

<p>Well Michigan’s yield is much higher than Duke’s. ;)</p>