<p>Oh yeah, btw - Hawkette’s post made me laugh so hard (and the follow up responses) in apparent jubilation of the general trashing of the PA it appears vindication to me that US News should fire the folks conducting the PA and move on to other forms of analyses. It seems the weight accorded to the PA decreased from some 40% to 25% of the total score recently which does not appear to be a reward for statistical acumen.</p>
<p>I think its safe to say that Peer Assessments are a complete joke. This florida president is completely oblivious to reality. WHAT AN IDIOT!</p>
<p>Xiggi, you have said the problem with the PA is the outliers (i.e. Berkeley for national universities and Smith for LACs). </p>
<p>I understand your point and am not misconstruing it. You want a more detailed PA…fine. You also want to make individual opinion survey results public…this I disagree with. You think having the public looking over people’s shoulders will make them more “honest” with their opinion. I don’t agree. The only reason people want to make the results public is so we can have a witch hunt to find out which academics are “leveling the playing field”.</p>
<p>I still can’t understand why Noles are offended by this. The national average ranks FSU 3.0, which is exactly what Machen gave them.</p>
<p>To truly condemn Machen at this point is premature considering none of us know the true scope of rank manipulation. </p>
<p>One could assume most University presidents would rank their university relatively higher than the norm.</p>
<p>I am a Nole, and I am not offended by the ranking he gave UM or FSU. But to rank the number of state U’s as 1’s the way he did, while giving himself a 5. And not a single “don’t know?” Not a one?</p>
<p>Noles generally think FSU is underrated and 3.0 is too low. As an alumnus, I agree. </p>
<p>Had TK been caught like Machen you can bet the fur would fly in the media. Some UF folks were complaining about Clemson’s similar efforts and were shocked, shocked I tell you, until…recently.</p>
<p>This PA nonsense is slowly, yet deliciously, unraveling like a cheap suit. As a UF journalism undergrad alum, I am very proud of the G’ville Sun. Yeomen’s service down there!</p>
<p>its almost scary as to how irrational and biased this man is. Would you want him as president of your school? lol just look at his choices. He even scribbled like a child. “no wait a minute Yale can’t be good its distinguished”</p>
<p>What I find amazing is that Machen never checked “don’t know” for any of the 250 or so schools.</p>
<p>Let’s face it folks: Machen’s ratings closely follows the national average with a few outliers. Again, outliers will exist in every survey taker’s answers. If everyone voted the same on everything then what’s the point of having a survey at all??? There is also nothing wrong with bumping his school’s rating by one spot.</p>
<p>Just to put things in perspective: The majority of people that are still complaining are the FSU folks.</p>
<p>I think there are more UF people on this thread</p>
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He knows everything. I expected that to be obvious :P</p>
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<p>CC’ers should behind things that fundamentally help a student with his or her decision. Here we have some clueless dude who pretends to be knowledgeable about every college. What a joke and he makes the PA portion of the survey what it is, a joke. Before this was revealed, we had people saying ‘well, things aren’t perfect but these are great educators who know what they are talking about.’ Then when they find out, it’s just some clown with an opinion on every school, it becomes 'well, there will always be outliers that don’t matter. Hello, what makes you think this guy is an outlier? For those that comment on that he has many schools rated as to how they are perceived by others … heck, most of us could parrot the same info and do a better job of tiering schools than he did, and what is learned from it other than regurgitating the status quo?</p>
<p>“I think there are more UF people on this thread”</p>
<p>No superstar, they just talk the loudest and their FSU state school brethern are going along with it to keep the state monoply on lockdown. We have two university presidents, paid by the taxpayers of Florida who have integrity issues (TK in the FSU cheating scandal) who were found out because their correspondance as GOVERNMENT officials is public record. The Big Lie is alive and well with UF and the SUS of Florida. Can anyone with a straight face say a school which puts its undergrads in video and online courses, has them sit in 200+ student lectures, has them taught in a significant measure by TAs and Grad students…this school is BETTER than Brown or Notre Dame? This school is 2 spots better than an in-state school with a lower admission rate and higher 25/75 test scores?</p>
<p>You should be able to get a degree from UF in propaganda arts… as soon a bad publicity comes out, the response is characterized as “sour grapes” “envy”, or even “hatred” or we have Sobick’s Gainesville Sun “Black Helicopter” theory…again, discredit the people shedding light on a situation. Face it, Bernie got caught trying to pad himself and his school.</p>
<p>That’s awesome Barrons. He is obviously going to rate Florida too high. I don’t think rators should be allowed torate their own institution. </p>
<p>Overall, his ratings are pretty good. Chicago, CMU, Cornell, Duke, Georgetown, Johns Hopkins, Northwestern, Notre Dame and Penn all seem to be rated one point lower than they should be. Brown and Dartmouth are the only two glaring mistakes he made, rating them 3 when they are much closer to 5. Otherwise, he is pretty spot on.</p>
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<p>That’s the problem. You don’t know all of these schools yet accept/approve what is ‘spot on’ is the status quo. So, what’s the point other than to mumble back the established pecking order?</p>
<p>I should have qualified my statement ctyankee. Of the 60-70 universities I am very familiar with, his ratings are accurate, with the exception of 2 significant misses (Brown and Dartmouth) and 10 or so arguable misses. Which is why I think that if the USNWR adjusts for outliers (5% from each extreme of the spectrum ought to do it), you would get a pretty good result. In this aprticular case, Brown and Dartmouth would be outliers, as would Florida.</p>
<p>I think making those ratings public would be a good thing, and I also think each rator should be limited to rating just 50-75 peer institutions.</p>
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<p>UCB, despite claiming that you do understand my point, you STILL do miscontrue it. Please read my post about where my problems lies with the outliers that show up in the … statistical analyses that attempt to CORRELATE the PA with data. I do not know how can make that MORE clear. </p>
<p>Dstark, isn’t running in circles getting tiring? Now, we both must be tired for different reasons. There is nothing wrong with your questions about depth and breadth, except that thas is NOT what the famous PA is supposed to measure. There must be dozens of other elements that have used to defend the PA, but none are espousing what the USNews has been asking to measure. Depth and breadth is not exactly what the USNews refers to as **excellence and dedication to the teaching of undergraduates. ** </p>
<p>And that is IT!</p>
<p>As to Bernie Mac’s “puzzling” UWF ranking…I remember a friend mentioned her son graduated from UWF but whose Engineering Degree was granted by UF…From the UWF EE program guide:</p>
<p>“Students who complete the program listed in previous
University Catalogs before December 2008 participate in
the UF/UWF Joint Program and receive their degrees from
the University of Florida.”</p>
<p>If UF touched you, your gold to Bernie…and make him look better. Calculated to the max.</p>
<p>Xiggy, the point of the PA is not to measure actual and real “excellence and dedication to teaching undergraduates”. That is part of it, but not the overall purpose. The purpose of the PA is to offer a PERCEIVED rating of a school’s (overall) undergraduate academic excellence. </p>
<p>This includes quality of (and dedication to) undergraduate teaching, but it also includes many other criteria I am sure.</p>