<p>RML,
Your “ranking” was not removed-it was moved to the graduate study area of CC which is where it belongs. The THES rankings deal with total university rankings which are heavily dominated by perceptions of graduate departments. Many of us also believe that the USNWR PA rankings are most reflective of graduate departmental prominence in the academic world. For most undergrads, your ranking has close to zero utility. </p>
<p>bc,
It’s not that folks don’t understand the arguments you are making about the “academic enterprise.” It’s just that we disagree with you. As this thread makes clear, we don’t accept the mostly-irrelevant-to-undergraduate-students premises and various desperate explanations by those in academia (and their acolytes on CC) to try to justify the PA scoring. </p>
<p>You’re inside the belly of the beast and so probably don’t recognize that there is a large and intelligent chunk of American society (probably mostly in the for-profit sector of the economy) that believes colleges and faculty should be more dedicated to the education and training of students rather than research for personal and institutional benefit. In an ideal world, the two might find synergy, but we all know that such instances are rare in undergraduate education as professorial rewards in the academic community tilt heavily to the research side. Unfortunately, far too often in the practice of academia by many research institutions, undergraduate students are a secondary consideration, a constituency who best serve the institution by paying the bills and not taking up too much of the faculty’s time and energy. </p>
<p>The time has come for USNWR to dump the PA scores….or at minimum, separate them. If you must, keep 'em in another ranking so that PA fans will have a listing that will make them feel good. But this fraud as part of the rankings methodology has run long enough and there is plenty of support, both outside AND inside academia, for their discontinuance.</p>