<p>I am appalled every time that I hear an argument saying that PA isn't important. PA, while it may not measure the quality of an education perfectly, manages to capture the intangibles of a school. What gets hired? What gets noticed? What will help me get into a better grad school? PA is crucial for measuring these factors. All because a "directional school' has a good student-teacher ratio, doesn't mean it offers the same quality of an education that an elite school, such as Middlebury or Amherst, would offer. Would a graduate from Millsapps have the same career prospects as a graduate from Williams? No. Prestige matters. Rankings matter. Having only 40% return the survey doesn't make it invalid, it in fact validates the metric, exemplifying how only people who know the other schools respond, amplifying hte voices of the more experienced peers.</p>
<p>People who think rankings don't matter of PA doesn't matter are wrong. While #3 vs #5 may not matter that much, it is a useful guide to help determine a national reputation of a school. It matters, stop being so idealistic.</p>
<p>The practical reason that I am unimpressed with USNWR’s PA score is that it is an absolute joke of a survey. There’s a pitiful response rate with a lot of college presidents taking the high road and refusing to respond to the peer assessment part of the USNWR data collection efforts. You’ve got to also assume that there’s a chunk of respondents who just tank their competitors and put themselves at the top. A few college presidents have reported putting their institutions as #1 because “if I didn’t think it was the best, I wouldn’t be the right person for the job” or some such. </p>
<p>So, that doesn’t mean that reputation doesn’t matter, but USNWR’s Peer Assessment score is likely a horrible measure of reputation just from a statistical standpoint.</p>
<p>To me it is more valid in many ways than the so call absolute numbers that some schools send to USNWR. Look what happened at Clemson and how they manipulated class size just to climb the rankings.</p>
<p>We have had this debate for years and years.
Fact is that less than 50% of College Presidents even bother to fill it out. Many refuse to on principle.</p>
I meant more that it just shows how much stock the university president’s put into it. It should be replaced by Undergraduate Teaching for the rankings, but that is another debate…</p>
<p>Is it not a valid question? PA is very unkind to schools who focus on undergrads and have limted grad programs, yet do an exemplary job of focusing on teaching. Since the mag is marketed to high schooler and families, it only makes common sense to actually discuss quality of teaching.</p>
<p>Good teachers (like high scoring SATers) are a dime a dozen and can be found on all college campuses large and small. This is hardly a distinguishing factor when trying to determine which colleges academic programs are “distinguished”, which is what PA is measuring.</p>
<p>UCB is EXACTLY correct.
There are plenty of good teachers in every elementary school, high school, college, university, etc, so trying to say that “teaching” should be what is evaluated is kinda moot and irrelevant to what makes a university or college great for certain candidates.</p>
<p>The quality of the programs, academics, etc, however, are VERY important and differ quite vastly from colleges of one tier to another.</p>
<p>idk. no one’s 100% right, but I personally don’t even think ranking undergraduate teaching is even worth considering, much less ranking. It’s quite a funny suggestion though and I applaud your pluck if you support it :)</p>
<p>ranking undergrad teaching could end up in disaster (they attempt to do this through student-faculty ratio and resources), look at forbes, they use RateMyProfessor rankigns for 25% of their data, great easier schools are now advantaged</p>
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