why isn't USC one of "CC Top Universities" yet?

coureur · December 1, 2009, 10:47am

Not in our little corner of California. All the high schools in our suburban San Diego district offer German as do the local community colleges. And both my daugters took four years of German in high school. D1 switched to Latin when she got to college, but D2 is continuing with German in college (but not as a German major) and plans to do a semester abroad in Vienna.

hawkette · December 1, 2009, 10:48am

bear,
I guess you’re a harder grader than I as I would consider Caltech’s 4.6 PA score as pretty darn good. My guess is that it’s not higher because it’s such a focused institution. But student quality wise, it’d be hard that there are more accomplished technical students anywhere else in the USA.

Re PA scores and student bodies, I agree that there can be a divergence. Sometimes this is caused by historical perceptions of colleges with strong research infrastructures, but a lagging student body. And sometimes it can be it can be the result of a school effectively upgrading its student body thru a number of initiatives and riding the wave of a much larger current, high quality, high school graduating class. The academic community tends not to value the latter, even if the experience for the student may be far superior to what one might get at one of the high PA/lower student body schools.

As for the Brown-Wash U non-argument, I agree that old thoughts sometimes die a long, hard death. Wash U deserves much better than it gets around here. Same can now be said for USC.

bluebayou · December 1, 2009, 11:28am

Awesome. But that is going against the academic tide. For example, Troy-Fullerton, arguably the top public in SoCal – ignoring Whitney – does not offer German, nor does Uni-Irvine, possibly the top, non-magnet public. Heck, Irvine district, one of the tops in the State has dropped German i all of its high schools due to lack of student interest. All of these high schools are huge feeders to 'SC.

Not saying I agree (since I’m a big proponent of foreign languages), but in a world of diminishing resources, colleges, like high schools, need to make tough decisions. And, when you have <5 kids enrolled in AP German and 200+ in other languages, the solution is obvious (particularly under a union contract where every teacher is supposed to teach 30-35 kids per period).

UCBChemEGrad · December 1, 2009, 12:05pm

Hawkette, Peer Assessment is measuring “distinguished academic programs”. I don’t think colleges will boost their PA scores that much by becoming more selective with their undergrads. Academic program distinction is determined first and foremost by faculty quality (and not teaching quality - but more visible distinctions such as research). Academic programs don’t become distinguished by having a cohort of high-SAT-scoring 18-22 year olds. Also, every college cannot have a high PA score since that would imply no distinction.

hawkette · December 1, 2009, 12:52pm

ucb,
My point (and bear’s, I believe) is that ABC College’s PA and the quality of ABC’s student body isn’t always a match. Lots of examples of schools with terrific student bodies and not-so-terrific PA scores (Tufts, Wake Forest, W&M, Emory, ND, BYU, etc.) as well schools with strong PA scores, but less competitive student bodies (most examples are public Us).

As for “measuring distinguished academic programs,” I’m not sure how one does this, especially for a ranking that purports to be for undergraduates. I don’t think many academics know how to do this either as there is both great disagreement among the voters about what this means/the standards that should be used and even greater disagreement about the advisability of even participating in the PA charade.

As the manager of USNWR’s process, Robert Morse, admits, PA scoring is a leveling device, ostensibly used to create results that academia itself will accept and which permits USNWR’s perpetuation of an unofficially-endorsed ranking system.

Since 1998 when the 5.0 PA scale was introduced, only 4 colleges in the USNWR Top 50 have seen their scores increase (two by 0.1 and two by 0.2). Ironically for this thread, USC was one of the schools that has experienced an increase of 0.2 (NYU was the other).

kvilledeac · December 1, 2009, 1:03pm

I continue to be amazed that so many CC posters seem unable to distinguish the difference between undergraduate quality and overall university quality. It’s pathetic.

USNews’ primary ranking is for undergrad. This forum is primarily about undergrad. The PA survey does not distinguish between undergrad and graduate, but does have a massive bias towards the latter, and is thus a flawed metric for ranking undergraduate schools. This is why other factors have been included over the years.

One can easily argue that UCB is a better overall university than USC, but that should happen on a different forum than this undergraduate one. For undergraduate, one is not significantly better than the other. Let’s not muddy the issues because UCB undergrads have an unjustified superiority complex. Go back to UCB and help out with the graduate research, and then you can talk smack.

coureur · December 1, 2009, 1:05pm

Based on what data?

UCBChemEGrad · December 1, 2009, 1:12pm

Well, it is a subjective process…there is no right or wrong answer. But let’s play a little game like you always do:

Take 5 national universities: Harvard, Northwestern, Michigan, Emory, and Georgetown.
Take 5 academic programs: physics, political science, mechanical engineering, English, and economics.

Now, which of these 5 do you think offers the most distinguished program in each discipline? How many times would Harvard be first? How many times would Emory be first?

interestingguy · December 1, 2009, 2:30pm

I was kidding around. Sorry I didn’t draw a smiley face. Happy? :)

Besides, I didn’t call USC a “regional” but “directional” school, which it is technically.

hawkette · December 1, 2009, 2:37pm

ucb,
I think it’s a great question and shows the impossibility of being able to formulate an accurate answer, particularly as it relates to the average undergraduate student.

I don’t know how many times Harvard would be first or any of the others for that matter. But a large part of my plaint is that the differences among the colleges are not nearly as sharp as the PA differences might lead one to believe. There are a lot of talented folks in the academic world and the pyramid need not be so steep. Harvard might be a 5.0, but my personal view is that none of the Top 25 colleges deserve a rating below 4.5. Based on what? Who knows-general perception from a lot of reading and interacting and visiting and touching and feeling and other soft stuff that is darn difficult to quantify. I say give HYPSM their due, but I also appreciate the excellent faculties at a lot of the other places.

As for the mechanics in trying to answer your question: to which program do you assign higher weight? How do you weight for teaching and environmental factors such as the innovativeness of teaching and curriculum choices? How much weight should be given for research accomplishments that occurred a year ago? A decade ago? How much consideration is given to the presence or not of a medical school or a related research facility, even if that has next to zero value for the average undergraduate student? How do you grade a school that does not have all of the depts. you listed, eg, Emory has no engineering? And on and on and on….

It’s a hopeless task and there is no way that the opinions are current in any way similar to the other data that USNWR reports. As xiggi has suggested, if USNWR insists on continuing to publish PA scores, they should separate it out. That would give PA boosters a ranking to crow about without infecting the other, hard data, data points that will help a prospective student assess the strength of the student body, the size of the classroom, the wealth of the institution and its willingness to spend to help undergrads, as well as things like retention and graduation rates.

UCBChemEGrad · December 1, 2009, 4:15pm

You’re complicating the question. You have a subjective opinion on each school’s academic programs, and there is no right or wrong answer. You can rank them as you like such as placing considerable weight on standardized test scores…that’s fine. However, USNWR already has data on undergrad test scores and I disagree with you that this information “distinguishes” a university’s academic offerings, which is what is being asked.

In my opinion, academic distinction (for a research university) comes from renowned faculty - leading thinkers of their respective fields. As for how long should you go back for these accomplishments, I think you can use data for very recent awards:

Note from the links above (thanks to PtonGrad): Most of the “historical” academic powers are still winning a majority of the prestigious academic awards that academics hold most dear.

Coolbrezze · December 1, 2009, 4:25pm

Well I’m sure USC is known nationally for more than just football, the school has the largest international population ( followed by NYU, Columbia, and UIUC).

hawkette · December 1, 2009, 5:38pm

ucb,
The way that you are looking at it and the questions that I am asking are good examples of how two different people would interpret and try to answer the same question. There are probably lots of other ways that folks would interpret the question and that is a major part of the problem with the PA voting. It’s totally undefined with no guiding principles, just a lot of opinion based on greatly varying amounts of effort to uncover the specifics of this institution or that institution.

bluebayou · December 1, 2009, 6:01pm

And I would submit to my good cyber-friend xiggi, that USNews has no reason to so. It’s their ranking, their magazine and their sales budget. They would include % green space or # of trees in their ranking if they thought: 1) it would pass some sort of academic muster; 2) it would sell more magazines.

Since I realize that you also support xiggi’s suggestion, hawkette, I’d refine it such that every data point is separated. While xiggi and you are not fond of PA, perhaps others are not fond of SAT score, or alumni giving, or other “hard data”. (Just bcos it’s “hard” doesn’t make it right.)

UCBChemEGrad · December 1, 2009, 6:09pm

+1.

Actually, the PA survey is pretty simple…the average score of ~ 2,000 surveys. Compare that to other “objective”, “hard” data such as the selectivity, faculty resources and financial resources rank…which is a sprinkling of this and a dash of that…:rolleyes:

IBclass06 · December 1, 2009, 6:16pm

Once again, such a long thread with an obvious answer.

Question:

Answer:

hawkette · December 1, 2009, 10:11pm

blue and ucb,
I’m with you on the idea of USNWR presenting each data singly and letting the user manipulate as she pleases. That was sorta the idea/hope behind that series of comparison threads that I created earlier this fall.

ilovebagels · December 3, 2009, 11:43pm

Were USC a “top university” it would naturally attract sufficiently diverse students to maintain an interest in all of its departments and cutting a department for want of student interest would be inconceivable. At least that’s the way it is at the Top Universities…

kwu · December 4, 2009, 12:37am

Better question: Why isn’t NYU considered a top university?

37,000 applications this past year.

[List</a> of New York University faculty and staff - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_New_York_University_faculty_and_staff]List”>List of New York University faculty - Wikipedia)
[List</a> of New York University alumni - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_New_York_University_alumni]List”>List of New York University alumni - Wikipedia)

And, it has a exclusive club in New York City, shared with Princeton.

I blame antisemitism.

RML · December 4, 2009, 1:06am

I would consider NYU a top school.

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