USC is NOT the 7th best engineering grad school program in the U.S.

College Majors Engineering Majors
1

<p>Well it's quite clear that USC did indeed "job" it's numbers that helped it become ranked number 7 at USNWR for grad engineering ratings. Shameful!!</p>

<p>U.S.News & World Report
Wednesday, June 17, 2009</p>

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<p>Education
Home > Education > Morse Code: Inside the College Rankings > University of Southern California and the Engineering Rankings
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Morse Code: Inside the College Rankings</p>

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<p>University of Southern California and the Engineering Rankings
June 11, 2009 02:44 PM ET | Robert Morse | Permanent Link | Print</p>

<p>The U.S. News rankings have been in the news lately because of questions about some of the information a few schools have submitted. First, it's important to note that U.S. News produces the rankings to spotlight the country's top academic programs. The rankings give the public the important ability to compare institutions on many key characteristics. We believe that they offer prospective students and their parents one tool to start to find the best school for them.</p>

<p>Though much of the data U.S. News uses to calculate the rankings can be (and often is) cross-checked with the statistics that government and professional agencies gather, U.S. News does rely on the schools to report data accurately to us. This is a reasonable expectation, given that these same academic institutions are dedicated to the exchange of information and demand the highest level of accuracy and integrity from their students and faculty.</p>

<p>There have been a few incidents of data problems that have occurred in the hundreds of thousands of data points we publish. We take these reports very seriously, investigate what happened in each circumstance, and respond appropriately. Most recently, the University of Southern California's Viterbi School of Engineering on June 10 told U.S. News that its actual number of full-time, tenure-track engineering faculty members who have been elected members of the National Academy of Engineering—a very high honor for engineering faculty—was actually 13 at the end of 2008. The school had reported 30 NAE members to U.S. News when we did the Best Engineering Schools rankings, published in April. We have contacted the school to discuss how this discrepancy occurred.</p>

<p>How would this reporting error by USC have affected its U.S. News engineering ranking? It would have meant that the 2008 percentage of the school's full-time, tenure track engineering faculty who were NAE members would have fallen from 18.3 percent to 7.9 percent. The percentage is the calculation U.S. News uses for NAE membership in the ranking model. USC's Viterbi engineering school likely would have fallen in the rankings, but—because the rankings use so many different data points—it does not appear the impact would have been dramatic. U.S. News is not going to publish revised rankings of graduate engineering schools. We are, however, working on a method of updating our website so that changes such as this can be noted.</p>

<p>U.S. News has been working closely with the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) for a number of years to improve the accuracy of the data submitted to us by engineering schools. U.S. News and the ASEE already exchange data on engineering school research expenditures in order to ensure the accuracy of the figures used in the graduate engineering school rankings. In the future, the ASEE's engineering school deans have told us that they are going to help develop ways to improve the accuracy of the number of NAE members that is reported by schools to U.S. News.</p>

<p>Tags: rankings | USC</p>

2

<p>USC will never hear the end of this from UCLA</p>

3

<p>Haha, what a joke. USC is a good school, but not #7 in the nation good.</p>

4

<p>Is USC thaaaaat good? I’ve met some people in the industry who’d prefer a cal poly pomona graduate over harvey mudd or sc…</p>

5

<p>No one said that Cal Poly and Harvey Mudd were worse other than US News, haha. Maybe I should rephrase it. USC is not a bad engineering school, but it is nowhere near deserving of a 7 ranking.</p>

6

<p>

What would you rank usc at?</p>

7

<p>Before you start “shaming” the university, consider that it may have been an honest error. Perhaps someone used the same form from a previous year to submit data and forgot to change that number. Something like the number of NAE members is easy enough to catch, so I have a hard time believing someone would forge that data. </p>

<p>And even if it was done with intent, it was most likely the work of one person and not the entire university. </p>

<p>Regardless, USNWR should be double checking the data. It’s unacceptable that a news agency would file a report without verifying the source as much as possible.</p>

8

<p>My, that’s a bold statement, saying someone doesn’t “deserve” a high ranking. Really now, why’s that?</p>

<p>@eyeheartphysics: not like ucla people have the intelligence to comprehend the rankings… or for that matter, even read the article :P</p>

<p>USC’s engineering school benefits from a lot of strong industry connections which may or may not be represented in these rankings, and may or may not factor in to people’s perceptions of how “good” a program is.</p>

9

<p>“Is USC thaaaaat good? I’ve met some people in the industry who’d prefer a cal poly pomona graduate over harvey mudd or sc…”
That’s because they hadn’t heard of hmc.</p>

10

<p>Did everyone forget to read the sentence that said:

</p>

<p>But hopefully they update their website with the new information.</p>

11

<p>Hm, interesting to see how this turn of events may affect the 2011 rankings. </p>

<p>Peer Assessment (0.25) - nobody knows for sure, but I don’t think the other schools will look favorably on USC regarding this incident. PA will probably slip given that the big-name schools will give it a more negative rating and schools that normally don’t rate USC might chip in with a low rating due to the bad publicity.</p>

<p>Percent of Faculty in the National Academy of Engineering (.075) - obviously this will go down significantly. </p>

<p>Everything is scaled. If PA drops by 0.03 and the NAE score is halved (from say .06 to .03), that’s enough to push USC out of the top 10.</p>

12

<p>^^^^Exactly what I’m thinking too elixirs. USC will definitely not be in the top ten next year. It’s insulting that it’s rated over Michigan even now. Just goes to show you that USNWR puts too much emphasis on certain criteria w/o checking thoroughly for authenticity.</p>

13

<p>USC has been ranked top 10 for several years and I think very few non-USC students actually believe it’s in the top 10. It’s somewhere between 15 and 30. Consider these rankings from 2008:</p>

<ol>
<li>MIT</li>
<li>Stanford</li>
<li>Berkeley</li>
<li>GaTech</li>
<li>Illinois</li>
<li>CMU</li>
<li>Caltech</li>
<li>USC (tied)</li>
<li>Michigan</li>
<li>Cornell</li>
<li>Texas</li>
<li>Purdue</li>
<li>UCSD</li>
<li>Texas A&M</li>
<li>Wisconsin (tied)</li>
</ol>

<p>Now let’s look at the peer assessment and recruiter assessment scores. These are ratings given by professors and recruiters. I assume they generally know what they’re talking about (especially professors) even if it’s subjective and thus not perfect.</p>

<p>Peer assessment/recruiter assessment scores (listed in the same order as above):</p>

<ol>
<li>4.9/4.8</li>
<li>4.8/4.7</li>
<li>4.8/4.5</li>
<li>4.4/4.3</li>
<li>4.5/4.3</li>
<li>4.2/4.2</li>
<li>4.6/4.6</li>
<li>3.5/3.7</li>
<li>4.4/4.2</li>
<li>4.3/4.2</li>
<li>4.2/4.1</li>
<li>4.1/4.1</li>
<li>3.7/3.9</li>
<li>3.7/3.7</li>
<li>4.1/4.0</li>
</ol>

<p>Hmmm… who is that odd 3.5/3.7 in the sea of 4.0+'s in the top 10…? USC of course. Unworthy of top 10 or even top 15 according to professors and recruiters. As flawed as peer assessment is, this is a rather glaring oddity. I wouldn’t rule out numbers manipulation. It’s just not a top 10 engineering school. Nothing wrong with that (after all, all but 10 schools are non-top 10 :P) but let’s not pretend USC is something it isn’t.</p>

14

<p>^^Obviously USC has used the same BS figures for the past several years pertaining to it’s NAE faculty numbers. How USNWR let them get away with this for so long is very telling as to why they cannot be trusted as an impartial ranking system.</p>

15

<p>wait really? you started an entire thread just to bash a single school?
you prick.
USC’s a damn fine school, regardless of this. every school rigs rankings, just most of them don’t caught for it. yeah, i know there are some better schools, but it’s still an excellent school.</p>