USNWR Rankings Adjusted for Teaching Excellence-More Relevant/Reflective for Students

<p>"How many students participated in the teaching excellence study of 1995?</p>

<p>How many from each school?</p>

<p>How were these students chosen?"</p>

<p>So I guess my answer to these questions are zero, zero, and not applicable.</p>

<p>Hmmmmm.</p>

<p>"By the way, Hawkette's favorite data, the 1995 classroom excellence survey, was obtained by asking college administrators, provosts, presidents, etc. (the same people who are responsible for the PA info and whom Hawkette thinks are wrong, not very knowledgeable and/or misguided) about the top schools for teaching."</p>

<p>Shocking. Just shocking. </p>

<p>Ok. Not really. :)</p>

<p>Nice Midatlmom. </p>

<p>Hawkette, you lied to me when you said you didn't know the answers to my question. Your posts were all over that thread. </p>

<p>Not cool.</p>

<p>" and the rankings are compiled using solely objective data"</p>

<p>If the rankings were based only on objective data,</p>

<p>what would this mean for the rankings?</p>

<p>Now the rankings would be objective?</p>

<p>Hawkette, don't even answer.</p>

<p>
[quote]
"By the way, Hawkette's favorite data, the 1995 classroom excellence survey, was obtained by asking college administrators, provosts, presidents, etc. (the same people who are responsible for the PA info and whom Hawkette thinks are wrong, not very knowledgeable and/or misguided) about the top schools for teaching."</p>

<p>Shocking. Just shocking.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>
[quote]

Hawkette, you lied to me when you said you didn't know the answers to my question. Your posts were all over that thread.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>lolllll. hawkette got *pwned *</p>

<p>lol. what's this? a new drama? a new turn of events? :) but alas, hawkette always has something to say, lol. we'll see what she has to say now</p>

<p>Hawkette, do you have a link to the original Teaching Excellence data?</p>

<p>^ The original Teaching Excellence data is listed in the thread/post midatlmom describes in Post #39.</p>

<p>what's PA? Everyone keeps on saying PA PA PA.</p>

<p>dstark,
I find it interesting, but sadly unsurprising, that you seek to move the discussion to one of motive rather than substance. What's wrong-do you lack the intellectual heft to make a reasoned argument without resorting to weak jibes directed toward me rather than the topic? </p>

<p>Do you have ANY interest in having a substantive and relevant give-and-take about the possible advantages and disadvantages of various factors and how they relate to how a college delivers undergraduate academic education? If so, I'd like to read your comments. </p>

<p>My advice (not that I expect you to take it): post whatever information you believe will support the substance of your argument, make your case, and let the reader judge the strength of the presentation (or does that leave too much to chance and a favored college might not compare as well as you would like?). </p>

<p>lgellar,
I don't have a link to the original data for the USNWR Teaching Survey, but the data and methodology can be found on microfilm at your local university library (USNWR issue date was either 9/18/95 or 9/16/96).</p>

<p>zhaos,
PA is Peer Assessment. It is the most heavily-weighted (25%) part of the USNWR ranking methodology and also the most controversial.</p>

<p>^ PA = Peer Assessment.</p>

<p>It's a US News survey of academics to determine which colleges have the most "distinguished academic programs". US News gives the survey a 25% weighting in their annual college rankings. </p>

<p>PA is the most controversial measure, because it is subjective in nature.</p>

<p>
[quote]
I don't have a link to the original data for the USNWR Teaching Survey, but the data and methodology can be found on microfilm at your local university library (USNWR issue date was either 9/18/95 or 9/16/96).

[/quote]
</p>

<p>It's right here, Hawkette...</p>

<p>
[quote]

Head of the class. (top-ranked universities and colleges for undergraduate instruction)(America's Best Colleges).</p>

<p>U.S. News & World Report 119.n11 (Sept 18, 1995): pp140(2)</p>

<p>"In recognition of the widespread public concern about the quality and effectiveness of teaching on the nation's campuses, U.S. News this year for the first time asked presidents, provosts and deans of admission to select the 10 schools in their category where the faculty "has an unusually strong commitment to undergraduate teaching." Here are the colleges and universities that received the most votes":</p>

<p>TOP NATIONAL UNIVERSITIES </p>

<ol>
<li>Dartmouth College (N.H.) </li>
<li>Brown University (R.I.) </li>
<li>College of William and Mary (Va.) </li>
<li>Rice University (Texas) </li>
<li>Princeton University (N.J.) </li>
<li>Stanford University (Calif.) </li>
<li>Duke University (N.C.) </li>
<li>Miami University at Oxford (Ohio) </li>
<li>University of Notre Dame (Ind.)</li>
<li>Yale University (Conn.)</li>
<li>University of Virginia</li>
<li>University of Chicago (Ill.)</li>
<li>Emory University (Ga.)</li>
<li>Univ. of California at Santa Cruz</li>
<li>Vanderbilt University (Tenn.)</li>
<li>Boston College (Mass.)</li>
<li>Harvard University (Mass.)</li>
<li>Northwestern University (Ill.)</li>
<li>California Institute of Technology</li>
<li>Wake Forest University (N.C.)</li>
<li>Univ. of N. Carolina at Chapel Hill</li>
<li>Brigham Young U. at Provo (Utah)</li>
<li>Washington University (Mo.)</li>
<li>Georgetown University (D.C.)</li>
<li>Tufts University (Mass.)</li>
</ol>

<p>TOP NATIONAL LIBERAL ARTS COLLEGES
1. Carleton College (Minn.)
2. Swarthmore College (Pa.)
3. Williams College (Mass.)
4. Grinnell College (Iowa)
5. Amherst College (Mass.)
6. Earlham College (Ind.)
7. Haverford College (Pa.)
8. St. John's College (Md.)
9. Colorado College
10. Davidson College (N.C.)
11. Oberlin College (Ohio)
12. Pomona College (Calif.)
12. Wellesley College (Mass.)
14. Bowdoin College (Maine)
15. St. Olaf College (Minn.)
16. Bryn Mawr College (Pa.)
16. Macalester College (Minn.)
18. Bates College (Maine)
18. Middlebury College (Vt.)
18. Reed College (Ore.)
21. Kenyon College (Ohio)
21. Spelman College (Ga.)
23. Smith College (Mass.)
24. University of the South (Tenn.)
25. Centre College (Ky.)

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</p>

<p>Sounds good to me. I think the PA is perfectly legitimate though.</p>

<p>rjk and company, it's sad that PA is 25% of the US News ranking and the top publics are still ranked well out of the top 20. If anything, this survey on Teaching Quality is more in line with the mission of US News to measure the undergraduate learning environment than PA as Hawkette has said. It doesn't matter either way though honestly.</p>

<p>With PA, Cal and Michigan are top 25 univerities at best. Without PA, I don't even know if they would be ranked in the top 50. The top privates are so far ahead of the top publics either way that it doesn't even matter.</p>

<p>I, for one, find Hawkette's threads to be extremely informative and generally free of bias. I feel like I learn something new everyday because of them.;)</p>

<p>


</p>

<p>Why should it matter where they are ranked poorly without PA if you see PA as "perfectly legitimate?" It should not be "sad" to you that the top publics are out of the top 20 if you see PA as perfectly legitimate. Once, again, you start flip-flopping on your logic here.</p>

<p>EAD,
I appreciate your comments and glad that you like my threads, but I take some issue with your comments about the publics in general and what their standing is vis-</p>

<p>^^Hawette may be biased and I may disagree with a lot about what she says but at least she's a class act. EAD is biased and immature, as evidence by his need to knock down other schools to make himself feel better.</p>

<p>Fundamentally there's no difference between EAD and Hawkette. EAD puts down top publics with usually nothing but his own opinion. Hawkette recycles the same set of information over and over again, digs out information from 12 years ago, to prove his point, which is basically: publics are good, but not as good as the similarly ranked private schools. </p>

<p>Hawkette is just more clever, because he doesn't say top publics are bad, but rather, he says they are good but not as good as so and so schools. They both have agendas. 90% of hawk's posts are about how terrible Michigan is, this is a guy that has nothing to do with the school, and probably never even been to Ann Arbor.</p>

<p>
[quote]
Fundamentally there's no difference between EAD and Hawkette.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>the only difference between EAD and hawkette is that one is outrightly annoying, the other's just less so. lol</p>

<p>Hawkette is a woman keefer. She does have an agenda to be sure but is just a bit more subtle in her approach.</p>

<p>EAD. Perhaps PA should be 50% of the ratings, or more. That way publics would get their due on USNWR. I still recall a time when a school like Berkeley, for example, was considered a top ten university. I believe it was because the PA was the primary factor used to determine overall quality.</p>

<p>^^^ Top 5 actually. Berkeley was 5th in 1988</p>

<p>I am not certain, but I believe that Michigan was also considered a top ten school at that time.</p>

<p>Both EAD and Hawkette want to use and objective data (USNWR supposedly) to support a subjective conclusion: Duke is better than Berkeley. This is somewhat ironic: how can you objectively make a subjective statement? It's just impossible. We want to use a subjective form of data (peer assessment) in order to support a subjective conclusion: Berkeley is better than Duke. But yet they disagree with us.</p>

<p>I think it's a huge mistake to equate an "unusually strong commitment to undergraduate teaching" with "teaching excellence." These are very different concepts. In the first place, university presidents, provosts, and deans of admission are in no position to independently assess the quality of classroom teaching at other schools; they have a difficult time even judging the quality of teaching at their own institution. Unlike scholarship which is entirely public and open to inspection by others in the business, teaching is something that goes on behind closed doors. So at best, you're going to get unreliable hearsay. PA at least measures something university presidents and provosts (but not deans of admission) are in the business of judging, the scholarly distinction of a faculty, something they are well qualified to assess.</p>

<p>In addition, if I'm asked as an academic which schools have "an unusually strong commitment to undergraduate teaching," my first thought is not which schools have the best teaching---something which again I'm in no position to judge. My first thought is that I'm being asked which schools place the greatest undergraduate teaching demands on their faculty, as opposed to the research, service, and (for research universities) graduate-level teaching components of the job. So, other things equal, if school A requires all faculty members to teach at least three undergraduate courses per academic year and school B requires only one undergraduate course per academic year and school C has no specific undergraduate teaching requirement but expects teaching to be at the graduate or undergraduate level as needed, then I'd say school A has the "strongest commitment to undergraduate teaching" of the three, even if it has the worst undergraduate teaching. An "unusually strong commitment to undergraduate teaching," then, could mean only that the institution requires its faculty to teach more undergraduate courses than is the median for comparable colleges or universities. </p>

<p>Now one might argue that other things equal, having the faculty devote more of their time to undergraduate teaching is beneficial to undergraduates. But that's something one ought to be able to measure objectively, without relying on hearsay filtered through presidents, provosts, and deans of admission: what's the total number of classroom hours taught by tenured and tenure-track faculty, divided by the number of students? That might be a fair measure of how much attention undergraduates are getting, and on that score probably many large research universities would rank well behind the top LACs and a few smaller undergraduate-oriented research universities. It's also probably a better measure than simple student-faculty ratio, which can be hugely misleading insofar as it doesn't necessarily translate into actual classroom hours, which will vary depending on the teaching load, leave policy, etc. Still, even conceding that other things equal more attention to undergraduates is a good thing for the undergraduates, we're still a long, long way from measuring "teaching excellence," which is how hawkette and others want to label the US News "undergraduate teaching commitment" survey. And I'd also note that a heavier teaching load is not an unalloyed positive from either the school's or the students' point of view, either; it can be a huge factor in the competition to recruit and retain top faculty, as well as in faculty satisfaction which may in turn be reflected positively or negatively in the enthusiasm and effort faculty put into their teaching. Sometimes greater teaching demands mean worse teaching on average because faculty are disgruntled, distracted, and under extreme time pressure to keep up with their research, scholarship and other job obligations. Sometimes teaching too many classes means you can't devote enough time to any one class to do it really well. Sometimes less is more.</p>