<p>collegehelp,
In #18, you state that the Gourman rankings "can be corroborated by delving into the details of any program and by comparing the Gourman rankings with other rankings." What other rankings are you referring to?</p>
<p>collegehelp:</p>
<p>"And, it does not bother me that Gourman did not make all his specific weights and data available to the public."</p>
<p>It bothers me.</p>
<p>"The bottom line is: Are the rankings valid? Yes, they are valid. They can be corroborated by delving into the details of any program and by comparing the Gourman rankings with other rankings."</p>
<p>Then perhaps Gourman is just copying them? (Isn't the case, but looking at other rankings to validate one ranking is flawed, especially since seeing the methodology for the latter would be easier.)</p>
<p>So, Gourman puts out the criteria. But what about the weights? The weights are very important. And on top of that, what about the specific information about each program in each criteria? How do we know he isn't doing what US News does and substituting information where he can't find it?</p>
<p>I agree with thethoughtprocess that some of Gourman's criteria are a bit irrelevant/unnecessary for undergrad.</p>
<p>"The Gourman rankings for GRADUATE programs DOES list UC Santa Cruz at #11."</p>
<p>That simply goes to show that its graduate rankings are probably more accurate than its undergrad ones. Honestly, he put UCSD in the top 10 undergrad linguistics, but not UCSC? That's absurd. And on this note, one can't compare his ranking with other ling rankings, 'cause--as far as I know--there are no other ling rankings, except for the 1995 NRC grad ranking in linguistics.</p>
<p>hoedown-
referring to your post #19, Gourman says "virtually no ties", which is true.
The line reads as follows:
The fact that there are virtually no "tie" scores indicates
the accuracy and effectiveness of this methodology.</p>
<p>Well, I don't think the lack of ties proves accuracy or effectiveness of his method. It simply means that his method discriminates schools from one another. I think (I hope) this particular comment, taken in context, meant that the method produced a score that discriminated schools from each other. </p>
<p>The support for the validity of the Gourman rankings does not come from a lack of ties. It comes from what you called criterion validity, the criteria being other rankings for business and engineering from US News, and from all the criteria by which experts judge the quality of an academic programs.</p>
<p>hawkette-
The other rankings include the US News rankings for business and engineering departments, rankings of graduate programs, rankings by PhD production. But, what I was trying to say was that, in principle, the Gourman rankings are verifiable (or refutable) by carefully studying the departments using various indicators of quality, if one is willing to put forth the effort. The end result of the Gourman method is verifiable.</p>
<p>kyledavid80-
Maybe UCSC has a top undergraduate linguistics program, maybe not. Linguistics is not my area. </p>
<p>But, I would not dismiss rankings that are 99% correct because on one school.</p>
<p>Perhaps a linguistics expert out there would be willing to render an opinion about the Gourman undergrad linguistics rankings.</p>
<p>collegehelp: my qualm is: if there's a flaw there, then how do we know whether it's flawed in other instances, too? As for the ling ranking, it seems as though Gourman simply forgot UCSC -- even UC Santa Barbara made the list. So even if UCSC doesn't have a top undergrad department (doubted), it would at least be ranked higher than UCSB. So it's just little things like this, coupled with his lack of explanations, that make me wary of his rankings.</p>
<p>kyledavid80-
I again want to point out that you can look at the Gourman rankings and see whether they are accurate. What is your major? Look at the Gourman rankings for your major. Are they mostly correct?</p>
<p>Think of the weather report on the news as an analogy. You don't have to understand how they make their forecast to see if it is accurate. Just look out your window.</p>
<p>Linguistics would be my major. =) (You couldn't tell?) And no, the Gourman rankings for linguistics aren't quite accurate.</p>
<p>As for your analogy, I fail to see how such logic can be applied to this situation.</p>
<p>For what it's worth, I love Gourman. To me, his rankings have proved to be the most accurate.</p>
<p>kyledavid80-
I think the Gourman rankings for linguistics are good.</p>
<p>I looked at the Gourman undergrad linguistics rankings and compared them with graduate linguistics rankings on phds.org and with the US News graduate rankings for English from US News. Undergrad and grad are different but I would expect some correlation between the quality of a grad program and the quality of the undergrad program.</p>
<p>Of the top 10 undergrad Gourman linguistics programs, 8 are also in the top 10 graduate rankings for linguistics on phds.org. I think phds.org uses the NRC data. Of the 30 schools listed by Gourman, 22 are in the top 40 on phds.org.</p>
<p>I would expect some correspondance between the quality of a linguistics program and the quality of the English program. Of the top 10 Gourman linguistics schools, 7 are in the top 10 PhD programs in English from US News and 22 of the 30 Gourman linguistics programs are in the top 40 English programs from US News.</p>
<p>I think the Gourman information would be useful to an applicant who is searching for possible linguistics programs.</p>
<p>Well, the correlation between grad rankings and Gourman undergrad isn't suprising - after all, the Gourman report looks at grad and undergrad as virtually the same thing - the rankings use "graduate work and practice", "number of students", "number of professors", "number of TA's" etc. to rank schools - so a large grad program would have more students and TA's - and of course, Gourman pretends like this makes for a good undergrad as well.</p>
<p>For undergrad, the ratio of professors to students is important, TA's generally aren't liked, and why would graduate work and practice in the field even be considered to compare undergrads? The students are undergrads.</p>
<p>Thus, its not suprising the Gourman report rankings correlate with graduate rankings - it doesn't even differentiate between the two. Gourman report is a great Graduate ranking though.</p>
<p>phds.org does use NRC data -- which is 12 years old, but ignoring that, I still don't find Gourman's ranking to be that great. He puts Yale ahead of Stanford?! That's a big no (notice the striking difference to the NRC ranking). And he puts UCSD above MIT? What? I'm not saying that MIT should automatically be above UCSD because it's an elite school, but because MIT simply has an overall better linguistics program (it has/had Noam Chomsky, come on).</p>
<p>I don't see why there would be a correlation of quality between English and linguistics programs. For one, English is usually a large program; linguistics is usually quite small. I think the matchups in the comparison of yours are simply because those programs are at great schools that tend to be in the top 10 in many fields.</p>
<p>I think Gourman information would be useful in simply finding linguistics schools. Beyond that, no. He leaves out UC Santa Cruz, which arguably has one of the best linguistics programs in the country. But on top of that, Gourman's weights and info are all ambiguous. It's obvious both in the ling ranking and many other rankings that Gourman is biased toward public schools -- hell, even I am, but he goes a bit overboard.</p>
<p>Anyway, that's my two cents.</p>
<p>Gourman's department rankings tend to be relatively accurate, and any theory about his having copied other rankings are unfounded since Gourman was the first source to rank departments back in the 60s. His department rankings are respected enough to be recognized by the Federal Government. </p>
<p>My objection with Gourman is that he completely ignores smaller departments. Top LACs (like Amherst, Bowdoin, Carleton, Claremont McKenna, Davidson, Grinnell, Harvey Mudd, Haverford, Middlebury, Macalester, Oberlin, Pomona, Reed, Swarthmore, Wesleyan and Williams to name a few) and some non-research intensive departments at Dartmouth, Brown etc... are amazing and deserve to be ranked up there with the best of them.</p>
<p>Of course, the fact that Gourman ranks Michigan #3 among undergraduate institutions (behind #1 Princeton and #2 Harvard but ahead of #4 Yale and #5 Stanford) is sweet music to my ears. But as much as I love Michigan, I am realistic enough to know that Michigan shouldn't be ranked quite so high. I could see Michigan being ranked anywhere as high as #6/#7 (if you look purely at academics, overall resources, reputation in academic and corporate circles and alumni network) or as low as #17/#18 (if you include student selectivity and resources/capita). But the top 5 are carved in stone as far as I am concerned.</p>
<p>Does anyone know about the english departments at various schools in Chicago, IL? Which is the best?</p>
<p>Alexandre: didn't Gourman teach at Michigan or something? Would show why he has a bias...</p>
<p>My objection to Gourman rankings is, obviously, that he doesn't show enough how he got the ranking.</p>
<p>He lived around LA. Have no idea of educational background. He liked Wisconsin too so I don't think he has a UM bias.</p>
<p>Gourman bio:</p>
<p>Kyledavid, Gourman has never been affiliated to Michigan. In fact, he was affiliated to Notre Dame, so if he does have a bias, it would be against Michigan, not for Michigan! LOL!</p>