Why The Strength of Departments/Faculty Isn't Relevant to Undergraduate Education

College Search & Selection
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<p>A lot of people on this site like to cite the NRC, ARWU, QES and Times Higher Education Rankings to compare universities because they consider research output, faculty strength and departmental resources to be the most important indicators of institutional prestige. This is all fine and good if you're evaluating these schools at a macro level but this forum is supposed to dedicated to the quality of undergraduate education and reputation of the universities at the undergraduate level.</p>

<p>Lets examine the WSJ Feeder Rankings to see how excellence at the graduate level doesn't always correlate with an esteemed reputation in the eyes of professional schools at the undergraduate level. Berkeley, Chicago, UCLA and Michigan have stronger graduate programs than Williams, Brown, Amherst and Duke but lets see how these schools fare comparatively in this study.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.wsjclassroomedition.com/pdfs/wsj_college_092503.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.wsjclassroomedition.com/pdfs/wsj_college_092503.pdf&lt;/a>
<a href="http://www.wsjclassroomedition.com/pdfs/wsj_college2_092503.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.wsjclassroomedition.com/pdfs/wsj_college2_092503.pdf&lt;/a>
Williams: #5
Duke: #6
Amherst: #9
Brown: #12</p>

<p>Chicago: #14
Michigan: #30
Berkeley: #41
UCLA: #61</p>

<p>Here is the list of the graduate schools used in the study:
Business-Chicago Booth, Dartmouth Tuck, HBS, MIT Sloan and Penn Wharton
Law-Chicago, Columbia, Harvard, Michigan and Yale
Medicine-Columbia, Hopkins, Yale, UCSF and Harvard</p>

<p>This survey is fairly geographically balanced but they probably should have used 1, 2 or all 3 of Stanford's professional schools and Penn Med instead of Columbia Med. Despite the fact that Amherst and Williams don't even have professional schools and none of Brown/Duke's professional programs were surveyed in the study, these 4 colleges absolutely dominate this survey.</p>

<p>Why didn't the inclusion of 2 of Chicago's professional programs boost UChicago into the top 10? Why is Michigan at #30 despite the fact that Michigan Law which is a very incestuous program was surveyed? Why doesn't Columbia do better when 2 of its professional schools were surveyed?</p>

<p>Stanford would probably be #2 after Harvard is SLS and GSB were included and Duke would be #5 you would think over Williams if Duke Med or UVA Law were surveyed. The fact that these two universities are so well-represented despite the East Coast slant of this survey is astounding.</p>

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<p>Also discussed many times on this forum is why rankings based on the percentage of graduates who get into prestigious graduate programs are as problematic as rankings based on any other of the many simplistic measures that people like to use to rank colleges.</p>

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</p>

<p>No its not</p>

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You call 1/15 west coast, 3/15 midwest, 11/15 northeast and none the rest of the country “geographically balanced”?</p>

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<p>All I can say is if you want to major in ECE, you don’t want it done at Williams or Brown over Berkeley. </p>

<p>Department ranking is just as important as overall ranking. And the reason why HYPSMC are topping in the rankings is because they do have topnotch departments.</p>

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<p>

Like I said, at least 2 of Stanford’s graduate programs whether in law, business or medicine should have been used. Other than that, there’s not too much you can complain about. The East Coast is where the majority of the prestigious professional schools in the country are located. So, why shouldn’t the East Coast be overrepresented?</p>

<p>The Midwest is represented just right. 2 of Chicago’s graduate programs and Michigan Law were surveyed.</p>

<p>Like I said, Stanford, Duke and Penn (no Penn Med) as well as LACs obviously are the real losers of this survey but yet they do incredibly well.</p>

<p>

Obviously because those schools don’t even offer ECE. You’re talking about Engineering while I’m talking about Business, Law and Medicine. I’m sure the pecking order for Engineering is a lot different.</p>

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<p>let’s talk about business then.</p>

<p>or which school would you pick for business over Wharton other than HYPSM?</p>

<p>BTW, what is the point of this thread?</p>

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</p>

<p>Yet another attempt to quantify the unquantifiable.</p>

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<p>

About half of the top programs in each “professional” discipline are outside the east coast so at least half, not 20% of the surveyed schools should be outside the east coast in order to be “geographically balanced”.</p>

<p>

Even you admitted that the survey was incomplete. Thus the study was biased. And you made your “profound” conclusion based on a one-year survey?</p>

<p>And why is feeder to medicine-business-law the only metric for academic excellence?</p>

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<ol>
<li><p>The strength of departments and faculty is extremely relevant to undergraduate education.</p></li>
<li><p>The absence of postgraduate students does not make a department weak.</p></li>
<li><p>None of the professional schools used as benchmarks of prestigiousness in WSJ’s unscientific, one-off survey from several years ago have undergraduate programs at their universities (except for Wharton).</p></li>
<li><p>You are an idiot if you think Amherst, Duke, Brown and Williams don’t offer strong undergraduate programs of study.</p></li>
<li><p>The JD, MD and MBA are professional degrees. There are people who do not aspire to them. In fact, the people who are most concerned with strength of departments/faculty are usually interested in the topic because they want to get a good education, which is a goal completely independent of getting into a prestigious professional school.</p></li>
</ol>

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<p>“The strength of departments and faculty is extremely relevant to undergraduate education.”</p>

<p>To many here on CC, it is the student body that is MORE important than departmental strength and faculty.</p>

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<p>I think in the end, all of these “output” surveys are going to be skewed by where each undergrad decides they want to go and none of the surveys, as far as I know, factor in preferences like going directly into workforce which may have to do with finances more than anything else.</p>

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<p>

Exactly.</p>

<p>You will realize the absurdity of this metric if you care to do a more complete analysis. You might ask why Cornell ranks a lowly #25. And why some of the more undergraduate-focused schools didn’t do too well either - #35 Notre Dame, #36 Emory, #45 Tufts, #47 WUSTL.</p>

<h1>28 Caltech … “lighter in law than most in our top 50”. Do they really expect many engineers are actually pre-law?</h1>

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<p>

Wait what? Wharton is included in the study, Princeton doesn’t have a business school Yale’s SOM isn’t super elite like Yale College.</p>

<p>My point is to prove that elite undergraduate focused universities with weaker graduate programs do a better job of sending students to top professional programs than universities who have stronger graduate programs like Berkeley, Michigan and Chicago. Essentially, one should never choose Berkeley over Williams for an undergraduate education besides Engineering despite the fact that Berkeley is higher ranked in every single discipline in the world because it simply doesn’t matter at the undergraduate level.</p>

<p>

Nope, which is why your own school Reed sends so many grads to top PhD programs despite Reed’s so-so standing in the academic world based on the pure strength of its departments and faculty. The same applies to Dartmouth, Brown, Amherst, Williams, etc.</p>

<p>

How do you define departmental strength then if we don’t consider number of publications, research output and faculty awards?</p>

<p>

I think we’re talking about different things. What we see here through the WSJ is that professional schools don’t care about how good the faculty is at a given undergrad, they care about the strength of the student and the opportunities he’s been given at his university. So in essence, Williams’s undergraduate focus is a lot more important than Berkeley’s status as the 2nd best graduate school overall in the world behind Harvard.</p>

<p>

They absolutely do and I think that’s exactly what I’m arguing i.e. that faculty strength doesn’t equate to strong undergraduate education and vice versa.</p>

<p>

Fair enough and this might apply to Chicago a little more but Berkeley and Michigan are as preprofessional as they come. Both these schools are among the top 3 for total law school and medical school applicants in the entire country. Their alums are applying to top professional programs en masse, but they’re simply not getting into them, or at least not in the same rate that Williams students are.</p>

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</h1>

<p>On a per capita basis, Cornell grads simply aren’t as successful at getting into top professional schools as their peers at the other 4 non-HYP Ivies and Duke.</p>

<p>The other 4 schools are undergraduate focused but their student bodies overall aren’t good enough to make the cut at most of these programs. Selectivity is misleading; Penn and Duke enroll much stronger students than Tufts, Emory, ND. etc. do.</p>

<p>Also, Caltech is the notable exception. It is the king of STEM and no one really expects any law, med or business placement from it. This study doesn’t discredit it any way unlike some of the so-called “elite universities” in the US.</p>

<p>Nothing in your rebuttal has disproven anything that the WSJ has stated.</p>

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<p>Wait a sec. You can’t examine faculty strength without examining…faculty strength. And the exact opportunities students have to access and interact with their high performing faculty. </p>

<p>Why again is wsj some authority?</p>

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</p>

<p>There are plenty of students with good reasons to choose Berkeley over Williams. Examples:</p>

<ol>
<li><p>A California resident who finds Berkeley to be much less expensive than Williams.</p></li>
<li><p>A student advanced in a subject like math who will likely be taking graduate level courses as an undergraduate.</p></li>
<li><p>A student interested in computer science who wants to eventually work at a small company in Silicon Valley.</p></li>
</ol>

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<p>I don’t see any extra value of a Williams degree to a Berkeley degree. If anything, I see the other way around.</p>

<p>Williams has no international prestige. Berkeley is famous world-wide.
You would have a better, superior networking for having a Berkeley degree than a Williams degree.
You will also most likely make more as, according to the Forbes’ payscale survey, Berkeley grads make more than Williams grads do.
And Berkeley grads are highly represented at top business schools, top law schools, top engineering schools and top medical schools.
You’ll find many more Berkeley grads holding high post in banking or government than Williams grads, not just in the US but all over the world. </p>

<p>these are just a few reasons…</p>

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<p>Which are unquantifiable … and unrankable.</p>

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<p>

That’s why comparing on per capita basis is seriously flawed as you are comparing apples to oranges. In Cornell’s case, you are comparing a school that offers a broad range of disciplines to schools that offer mainly arts and sciences (e.g., LAC’s). Most of the students at Cornell’s six non-CAS colleges are likely not interested in law or medicine.</p>

<p>Besides, Cornell is not just behind the other 4 non-HYP Ives and Duke; it is behind 24 other schools!</p>

<p>

Great, so you are saying that Notre Dame and Emory have weaker student bodies than 34 other schools that rank above them, including Morehouse College and New College of Florida. Tufts and WUSTL have weaker student bodies than 46 other schools ranking before them. Carnegie Mellon, Vanderbilt, USC, and Boston College have such weak student bodies overall that they don’t even make the top 50 list.</p>

<p>Btw, I like your logic. You just prove that Michigan has the 18th strongest student body among research universities.</p>

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<p>Don’t you think the “few” people on this site like to cite the NRC, ARWU, QES and Times Higher Education Rankings … DO know that? But, can you blame them for jumping at the slightest chance of introducing metrics that support their position, especially when they get little to no traction in a forum dedicated to the undergraduate level and teaching the undergraduates. </p>

<p>The reality is that this group of people does not have a strong interest in the issue per se. All one has to do is to consider how unpopular the discussions about graduate school rankings are when relegated to the proper forums on CC. In addition, those “important” rankings do not generate much interest when posted in the individual school forums.</p>

<p>The repeated attempts to bring those biased international research rankings here is just part of a game, and one that boils down to desperately looking for a justification for the "raison d’</p>