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<p>This doesn’t purport to be a ranking of undergraduate programs. It’s a ranking of universities, and more specifically (though they don’t explicitly say it) research universities. Undergraduate education is only part of the mission of a research university; it also engages in graduate and professional education, and it produces research and new knowledge. The methodology here is heavily tilted toward research. Research output counts for 30% of the ranking. Citations, basically another way of measuring the influence of research and scholarly writing, counts for another 30%. So it shouldn’t be surprising that the universities with the greatest research output and the most influential scholars and researchers do very well here. The truth is, Brown, Vandy, UVA, and Dartmouth aren’t research powerhouses. Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Columbia, Chicago, and Penn are. But so are UC Berkeley, UCLA, Michigan, U Washington, Georgia Tech, Texas, Wisconsin, Illinois, and the other publics that appear at the top of this list.</p>
<p>And it isn’t “Basically every state school in the country above Dartmouth.” I count 27 of them, of which 7 are in the research-heavy University of California system. You won’t find a West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Auburn. Ole Miss, LSU, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas, South Carolina, Clemson, Georgia, Florida State in that group. You will find a lot of Big Ten schools–Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, Minnesota, Purdue, Penn State, Ohio State, Michigan State, plus the private Northwestern and their CIC partner Chicago, major research players every one; and pretty much everyone at these schools would acknowledge that the 3 Big Ten schools that don’t come out ahead of Dartmouth–Indiana, Iowa, and Nebraska–are lighter on research than the rest of the group.</p>
<p>Notice that with 7 UCs and 8 big-time public research universities from the Big Ten, we’ve accounted for well over half the publics that rank ahead of Dartmouth. And there’s a pretty strong case to be made for each of the remaining 12, if we’re thinking here about the institution’s contributions to the production of new knowledge as opposed to merely educating undergraduates. U Washington, Georgia Tech, Texas, and UNC Chapel Hill are major research players. Schools like UMass, Pitt, Maryland, Arizona, Colorado, Rutgers, UVA, and Florida are smaller but still significant players.</p>
<p>So the list is not random; it is measuring something, mostly research output and research influence. That may not be what you want it to measure, and it may not even be something you value. But like it or not, it is something that academics themselves value; it’s something academic administrators value; it’s something government policymakers value; and it’s something society as a whole ought to value. It is, to a substantial degree, how academic institutions measure themselves against their peers and competitors, and how they judge each other. And it is, to a substantial degree, how they carve out global reputations.</p>
<p>Let’s be clear about one thing, though: this is not a ranking of “Grad Schools.” No doubt there’s a strong positive correlation between a university’s research strength in a particular field and the perceived quality of its graduate program in that same field. But research is the dog and graduate program strength is the tail it wags, not vice versa. Does research strength have any relevance for undergraduates? Many people on CC seem to want to deny there’s any link. I say it depends on the field, the student, and what the student is looking to get out of a college or university experience. But if that’s the case, then it would be horribly wrong to suppress this information, as goldenboy suggests. And in general, suppression of information that doesn’t comfortably conform to your pre-established worldview is a profoundly anti-intellectual approach that is bound to get you in trouble sooner or later.</p>
(although MIT doesn’t either.)</p>