What private schools would the top publics replace if USNWR ranked differently?

College Search & Selection
61

<p>For college rankings, I am an advocate for transparency and measurable points of comparison and definitely not in favor of hearsay and limited viewpoints. I understand the resistance of those colleges that are negatively impacted by the elimination of PA scoring, but wonder why we all should be held hostage to these non-quantifiable, non-transparent, non-verifiable, non-broadly surveyed views. If you must, create a separate ranking for subjective ratings, but at least provide something that has relevance to undergraduate education and some statistical basis. </p>

<p>In case anyone was interested in how the ex-PA rankings looked, here they are. For most colleges, there really isn't that big a swing and the first 20 colleges are identical with or without PA scoring. (Note: this was done on the 2007 USNWR rankings with data from that year). </p>

<p>Ex-PA , with PA , Change , College</p>

<p>1 , 2 , 1 , Harvard
2 , 1 , -1 , Princeton
2 , 3 , 1 , Yale
4 , 5 , 1 , U Penn
5 , 8 , 3 , Duke
5 , 4 , -1 , Stanford
7 , 12 , 5 , Wash U
7 , 5 , -2 , Caltech
7 , 11 , 4 , Dartmouth
7 , 9 , 2 , Columbia
7 , 7 , 0 , MIT
12 , 14 , 2 , Brown
13 , 14 , 1 , Northwestern
14 , 9 , -5 , U Chicago
14 , 12 , -2 , Cornell
14 , 17 , 3 , Rice
14 , 19 , 5 , Notre Dame
14 , 17 , 3 , Emory
19 , 14 , -5 , Johns Hopkins
20 , 19 , -1 , Vanderbilt
21 , 28 , 7 , Tufts
21 , 23 , 2 , Georgetown
23 , 22 , -1 , Carnegie Mellon
24 , 31 , 7 , Lehigh
25 , 30 , 5 , Wake Forest
25 , 27 , 2 , USC
27 , 23 , -4 , U Virginia
28 , 31 , 3 , Brandeis
29 , 21 , -8 , UC Berkeley
29 , 35 , 6 , U Rochester
29 , 25 , -4 , UCLA
32 , 28 , -4 , U North Carolina
33 , 41 , 8 , Case Western
34 , 25 , -9 , U Michigan
34 , 33 , -1 , W&M
36 , 34 , -2 , NYU
36 , 35 , -1 , Boston Coll
38 , 44 , 6 , Rensselaer
39 , 50 , 11 , Tulane
40 , 35 , -5 , Georgia Tech
40 , 44 , 4 , UC Santa Barbara
42 , 44 , 2 , UC Irvine
43 , 50 , 7 , Syracuse
44 , 38 , -6 , U Illinois
45 , 38 , -7 , U Wisconsin
45 , 38 , -7 , UCSD
47 , 49 , 2 , U Florida
48 , 42 , -6 , UC Davis
48 , 42 , -6 , U Washington
50 , 44 , -6 , U Texas
51 , 48 , -3 , Penn State</p>

62

<p>Gourman Report ranking for undergraduate Classics</p>

<p>Harvard and Radcliffe Colleges
California-Berkeley, University of
Yale University
Princeton University
Michigan-Ann Arbor, University of
North Carolina-Chapel Hill, University of
Bryn Mawr College
Texas-Austin, University of
Brown University
Columbia University
Pennsylvania, University of
Cornell University
Stanford University
Chicago, University of
Illinois,Urbana-Champaign, University of
Duke University
Johns Hopkins University
California.Los Angeles, University of
Indiana University-Bloomington
Boston University
Catholic University of America, The
Fordham University
Vanderbilt University</p>

63

<p>"For college rankings, I am an advocate for transparency and measurable points of comparison and definitely not in favor of hearsay and limited viewpoints."</p>

<p>One point you consistently seem to fail to grasp is that measurable points of comparison shouldn't mean much if they are inconsistently measured, improperly weighted, and have little bearing on actual quality of education.</p>

<p>The other point you also don't seem to get is that the purpose of the peer assessment score is to help balance the inherent bias towards private schools that occurs if you just look at the statistics, not some kind of undesirable side-effect.</p>

<p>"In terms of the peer assessment survey, we at U.S. News firmly believe the survey has significant value because it allows us to measure the "intangibles" of a college that we can't measure through statistical data. Plus, the reputation of a school can help get that all-important first job and plays a key part in which grad school someone will be able to get into. The peer survey is by nature subjective, but the technique of asking industry leaders to rate their competitors is a commonly accepted practice. The results from the peer survey also can act to level the playing field between private and public colleges."</p>

64

<p>
[quote]
The other point you also don't seem to get is that the purpose of the peer assessment score is to help balance the inherent bias towards private schools that occurs if you just look at the statistics, not some kind of undesirable side-effect.

[/quote]
Why do we have to give the publics a handicap though? Isn't it possible that private universities do a better job of educating their students?</p>

<p>Based on what everyone's saying, theoretically, a high PA would translate into a high placement rate into graduate programs because there's such a benefit to be had from working with top faculty. Unfortunately, I don't think any placement rate data is available, and until there is, I'm not sure U.S. News should make the PA category part of its overall scores. </p>

<p>Actually, why can't U.S. News simply make a separate listing of universities that have high placement rates into certain graduate programs?</p>

65

<p>^

[quote]
-1 Princeton
-1 Dartmouth
-1 Vanderbilt
-1 UC Irvine
-2 Stanford
-2 U Virginia
-2 U North Carolina
-2 UC Davis
-3 Cornell
-3 Carnegie Mellon
-3 Boston College
-3 Georgia Tech
-3 Penn State
-4 MIT
-4 NYU
-4 W & M
-4 U Texas
-5 U Chicago
-5 UCLA
-5 UC SD
-5 U Illinois UC
-6 J Hopkins
-6 U Washington
-7 Cal Tech
-9 UC Berkeley
-10 U Wisconsin
-12 U Michigan

[/quote]
</p>

<h1>Private schools negatively affected: 12</h1>

<h1>Public schools negatively affected: 15</h1>

<p>Both publics and privates lose with elimination of PA score.</p>

66

<p>Not everyone go to graduate school. Most people can't afford to. They go to work right after school. How would including getting into graduate programs help?
Berkeley graduate are well represented in the top law/business/med schools in either case.</p>

67

<p>dilksey,
I'm not missing the issue, but I am asking for more specificity if you believe that this is occuring. If there are differences, then these can be pointed out and people can interpret the information as they think appropriate, but I don't think that the answer is the dismissal of these objective data points.</p>

<p>Now, if your claim was that the weightings for the non-PA factors unfairly support privates, I would accept that as a more legitimate line of argument (even if I wouldn't necessarily agree with it). But I think the weightings/emphasis that different institutions place on these measurement factors are a very powerful argument for separate public and private rankings.</p>

68

<p>
[quote]
How would including getting into graduate programs help?
Berkeley graduate are well represented in the top law/business/med schools in either case.

[/quote]
It would eliminate the need for PA. Based on what people are saying, high PA means high placement rates because you get contact with top faculty. The difference is that a placement rate is an objective statistic.</p>

<p>As far as Berkeley graduates being well-represented, I think this can be accounted for by Berkeley's high selectivity, not its PA score.</p>

69

<p>What? that doesn't mean anything, high PA means you just learn from the best. Most engineer students do not go further because they found a great job right out of school.</p>

70

<p>


</p>

<p>Harvard is Harvard and Stanford is Stanford first and foremost because of the perennial excellence of their faculties, not because of the SAT scores of their entering class or alumni giving rates or faculty salaries. Academic excellence is a question of reputation, to be sure, and that's a mushy, subjective variable. But for academics, it's all about reputation, and what counts most is their reputation among those most knowledgeable, their peers. Tenure and promotion decisions are made, lateral job offers are made, careers are made, funding decisions are made, membership in prestigious learned societies is offered, Nobel prizes are awarded on the basis of reputation. Academics decide to join a faculty largely on the basis of its scholarly reputation. There's a pecking order, everyone in the business knows it, and while it isn't transparent or "objective," it's real and powerful and a central fact of life in the academic world. Your desire to dismiss academic excellence as a factor in evaluating colleges and universities strikes me as more than a bit bizarre, and wildly divorced from the real world that academics and academic administrators live in. Bottom line, this really is what drives the academic enterprise. SAT scores, building endowments, faculty salaries---all those are ancillary. To build a great school you need to build a great faculty; everything else is just a means to that end.</p>

<p>You can wish it away if you want, but to my mind any "ranking" of colleges and universities that doesn't include and place heavy emphasis on some measure of academic excellence is useless, just a pile of secondary statistics. High faculty salaries, for example, can be a helpful tool to allow you to attract better faculty, but they're no guarantee of faculty quality and a pretty poor proxy for it; the top people in a field are going to gravitate toward the top faculties because they want the prestige and they want to work with other top people in the field. A bump in pay might be nice, but it's rare that you'll see a top scholar move from a highly regarded faculty to a less prestigious one on the basis of pay alone; if they were that interested in money, they'd have gone into another line of work. </p>

<p>Now I acknowledge that we don't have really good metrics for academic excellence, especially the further we go down the pecking order. USN's PA score, based on a survey of college and university administrators, is suspect, because while administrators care deeply about where their own school stacks up in the pecking order and follow their peers intensely (and everyone follows those at the top), there are a lot of schools they won't know about. Also, USN's PA score is not based on a fine-grained analysis of discipline-by-discipline faculty, but rather on an overall impressionistic rating. That said, however, I do think USN's PA ratings more closely track what most academics think about the overall quality of various schools than do the overall USN rankings, which are based on a lot of variables that are only remotely related, if at all, to a school's academic excellence. (Alumni giving rate? Give me a break). </p>

<p>NRC rankings of faculty quality by discipline are a much more fine-grained tool, because they're based on asking the academics in a given discipline how they rank other faculties in that discipline. Again it's imperfect because there are always a lot of knowledge gaps, especially the further you go down the reputational pecking order. Everyone in philosophy knows who's at Princeton, NYU, Michigan, Harvard, Stanford, and other top schools in the field, what they've done lately, who's coming and who's going and so forth, but not nearly as much attention is paid to a school like Florida or Purdue, consequently small differences in peer ratings are less meaningful the further you go down the reputational tables. Also, the NRC faculty quality rankings are done in the context of ranking graduate programs, so LACs and other colleges and universities that don't have a graduate program in a particular field are left out. But believe me, these NRC rankings are taken very, very seriously in the academic world---not because anyone thinks they're perfect, but because at the end of the day they're the best tool we've yet devised to measure how a faculty is viewed by the most knowledgeable people in the field, and consequently the best proxy we've got for academic excellence, subject to all the limitations I've just described. And if academic excellence is not what we're ultimately trying to measure here, or at least a central component of it, then just what is the point of this whole exercise?</p>

71

<p>If you pick a big school based on their faculty "quality", you will be sorely dissappointed b/c for 95 of 100 students, you will never be more than a number or annoyance for the faculty. The student peer group, on the other hand, will have an enormous influence on students goals, lifestyle, experience etc.. </p>

<p>I would focus more on the students you are guaranteed to interact with than the faculty that might get to know your name at best. Thats even if they stay there the full 4 (or 5or 6) years you are trying to get credits/classes.</p>

72

<p>^ Student quality is a relative constant at top universities... show me something else that distinguishes a university.</p>

73

<p>
[quote]
If you pick a big school based on their faculty "quality", you will be sorely dissappointed b/c for 95 of 100 students, you will never be more than a number or annoyance for the faculty.

[/quote]

You are making sweeping statements without any supporting evidence. What makes you an expert on this subject?</p>

74

<p>swish14: Who teaches classes, gives lectures on topics outside of class, guides students on research projects, advises students on future job/educational possibilities and writes recommendation letters for graduate schools at your college?</p>

75

<p>At the undergraduate level, the quality of the faculty in a college is only relevant with regards to teaching ability and not credentials. You may or may not benefit from having Feynman instead of Dr. Joe Schmoe teach your Physics intro class, but you will DEFINITELY benefit from being in a classroom filled with brilliant students who will add a lot to the discussion of the subject and will motivate you to do better in the class. Having a smaller classroom experience further enhances your ability to learn. I would rather be in a gender theory class, which is being taught by a no-name professor who is very passionate about teaching undergrads, with 10 other students who all scored 2200+ on their SAT/deeply interested in the subject than be in a large gender theory lecture hall filled with 100 kids, half of whom couldn't crack 2000 on the SAT/are sleeping in class, that is being taught by world-renowned post-structuralist philosopher Judith Butler. This is why the undergraduate experience at a place like Dartmouth is worlds better than one at a place like UCBerkeley.</p>

<p>Also bclintonk, do you think Carl Sagan, Noam Chomsky, Judith Butler, Jeffrey Sachs, etc. will take time to hand out amazing recommendation letters for graduate school to any interested/passionate student, let alone care about them when they have world conferences to attend and research to do? Think again.</p>

76

<p>"If you pick a big school based on their faculty "quality", you will be sorely dissappointed b/c for 95 of 100 students, you will never be more than a number or annoyance for the faculty."</p>

<p>That statement is completely accurate for most professors. </p>

<p>Then again, I'm in a big major. I'm sure if you were like a cultural studies student you'd have more bonds with your prof.</p>

77

<p>bclintonk,
Thank you for the obvious effort that you put into your post #72. You clearly put some time and energy into writing that and I appreciate it.</p>

<p>Sometimes in life, it's said that perspective is everything. I think that is the case here. You are an academic with a strong interest in the industry and an intense interest in your specialty. In my case, I have worked in the for-profit world for over 30 years and my interest is not in the research accomplishments of faculty, but rather in the training and development they provide to students in preparation for their post-graduate lives. I don't mean in a trade school manner, but rather in a reasoning/critical thinking skills/problem solving manner. Educating students is what college education means to me, not whether Professor Smith did something of note in the lab or Professor Jones got published in a (usually obscure) magazine. I value the work of faculty, but for different things and in different weights than you might.</p>

<p>In the decision about ranking the faculty excellence at a college, you and other academics likely don't assign much value to the teaching/development element of a faculty member's job responsibility, By contrast, IMO, for the student looking to join the for-profit world, this talent has the greatest importance. This is a fundamental difference between what you value and what I (and I would guess most students) value. In my world, a faculty member that is great at research and lousy in the classroom is not top and maybe not even mediocre.</p>

78

<p>


</p>

<p>Hawkette,</p>

<p>I'll choose not to take offense at what could be interpreted as an accusation of indifference on my part toward my students' education, which is just completely false. </p>

<p>Let me just say this: it is difficult to measure any aspect of faculty excellence, but by far the most difficult to measure is classroom teaching. If what you're saying is that USN's PA scores and the NRC's faculty quality rankings don't address this, I agree 100%. But there is not a single metric in the USN ranking that gets at this, either, nothing even remotely close. And to pretend we're getting at differences in educational excellence by measuring things like SAT scores and faculty salaries and alumni giving rates (which more likely reflects the aggressiveness of the development office than student satisfaction rates, and to the extent it says anything at all about alumni satisfaction, completely dilutes the experiences of recent graduates by burying them in a pool of alumni going back 40 or 50 years) is to do a real disservice to college applicants and their parents. </p>

<p>I also agree with your observation that a faculty member who is great at research and lousy in the classroom is a problem. The problem I have is that a lot of people on CC falsely assume there's an inverse correlation between scholarly excellence and teaching excellence, and there's simply no basis for that in reason or in empirical fact. Some outstanding scholars are also outstanding teachers; others are less gifted teachers but work hard at it and are effective; others simply don't get it, or don't care. But the same distribution of teaching ability is apparent among people who are not outstanding scholars, but nonetheless manage to find their way onto college or university faculties. The very best of the best are the people who are both stellar teachers and top-notch scholars doing cutting-edge work in their disciplines; their students are truly blessed, because they're not only getting excellent teaching, they're getting teaching that is bringing them fully up-to-speed on the frontiers of human knowledge. And you know what? Good students at good schools usually figure out who these people are, and gravitate toward them. (Students also, by the way, gravitate toward professors who have a great classroom "schtick," are funny, tell a good story, have charismatic personalities and what they call in television "high Q-ratings," but these people, although popular, are not necessarily the most effective teachers in my book, even though they may get high evaluations from their students). I maintain you're more likely to find a higher density of these stellar scholar-teachers on a faculty that has a high concentration of top scholars, than on one that doesn't. And when I'm shopping around for colleges with my daughter, the quality of whose education I care about passionately, it's exactly that group that I'm going to seek out.</p>

79

<p>
[quote]
Harvard is Harvard and Stanford is Stanford first and foremost because of the perennial excellence of their faculties, not because of the SAT scores of their entering class or alumni giving rates or faculty salaries.

[/quote]
If you ask, the vast majority of people will tell you that those schools are great because they're hard to get into. I am willing to bet that very, very few people will say because the faculty are doing cutting-edge research in their field. Honestly, next time you're with friends who are not in academia, ask them what they think makes Harvard/Stanford so great. </p>

<p>In fact, that's really what's mostly wrong with the PA. Most college applicants don't care what the academics think, especially in light of the fact that many have said they really have no idea what goes on at other schools enough to make it a valid assessment. They want to know what their future employers, graduate programs, and social contacts will think.</p>

80

<p>Who? Academics don't have an idea what goes on at other schools to make a valid assessment or students?</p>

<p>Academics know full well the quality of faculty of other institutions. I'm conducting research in a plant biology lab right now at Harvard. Every year, there are symposiums and conferrences where plant biologist and researchers get together and present their latest work to each other. Head PIs and their post doctoral fellows are always busy out of the lab visiting conferrences and getting insight on what cutting edge research and findings is going at other institutions.</p>

<p>Peer Assessments matter do account for a lot. You'd be surprised how much collaboration exists between universities.</p>

<p>PS. PA exists for solely to measure what universities do best, produce research. The main job of a university is to not churn out businessmen, employers, people who make money for a living. The main pursuit is education and research. There is no ranking in the world that states what recruiters for top companies think of xyz undergrad program. It wouldn't make sense.</p>