To coincide with this extremely important event (sarcasm), media outlets are full of stories about college rankings and admission. There's the "Who Needs Harvard?" article in August 13th's issue of Time, which, in a nutshell, says what so many already know: the college search is about fit. Just this weekend, UVA and 24 others were deemed the "new ivies" by Newsweek and Kaplan (hmm...Kaplan in the college ranking business). Interesting, since the term "public ivy" has been used for years to describe this place. The same publication came up with the top 100 universities in the entire world (UVA is #80).
The merits of US News' methodology are examined in many, many places on the web, so I won't bother explaining my reluctance to put much weight on the number they assign us (#24 this year). Out of curiosity, though, I looked at the method used to determine Newsweek/Kaplan's world ranking and found it pretty interesting.
Fifty percent of the score came from equal parts of: the number of highly-cited researchers in various academic fields, the number of articles published in Nature and Science, and the number of articles listed in the ISI Social Sciences and Arts & Humanities indicesThere's no mention of student satisfaction, resources/support services for students (especially international students), study abroad programs, popularity of foreign language or cultural study, or placement in graduate/professional school. Maybe it's silly of me to expect more student info than a faculty:student ratio in ranking methodologies.
40 percent of the score came from equal parts of: the percentage of international faculty, the percentage of international students, citations per faculty member (using ISI data), and the ratio of faculty to students.
The final 10 percent came from library holdings (number of volumes).
Among all the articles, one jumped out at me as putting things in perspective. Looking at the colleges where the CEOs of the Fortune 50 companies went to school, the message is clear. Success is not a function of your alma mater.
I know better than to hope people will ignore the rankings. I hope, though, that people will put things in perspective. When I was 18, you could have put me in a Harvard classroom (oh wait...I was in one for a high school program), but I wouldn't have learned. It didn't feel right. In a similar (but newer) chair, not too many miles away, I was happy, engaged and learning.
2 comments:
"Public Ivies: is about 20 years old. You can check out the wikipedia entry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Ivies) for more information. If only the guy had thought to trademark it...
I feel sorry for you folks at times like this. I agree with you wholeheartedly: rankings are worthless, based on poor measures of performance and generally unexplainable. There are just too many contradictions in the ranking's process. If you really can measure the difference between UVa and UC-Berkely, what makes it change from year to year? The rankings change from year to year because USNWR needs to sell magazines.
But I take issue even with the "match" philosophy. I don't think the bright kids who go to UVa are as fragile as lightbulbs. That is, if you put them in the wrong 'socket', the won't 'blow up'. They 'fit' a lot more places than we give them credit for. Instead of advising them that they are looking for the 'best fit', we need to inculcate them with a spirit of adaptability, of resilience, and of self-reliance. That prepares them for the real world, where they won't work in their majors and they might change jobs every three years and reinvent themselves roughly every eight.
Instead, to overcome their natural tendency to treat collge admissions as a prize to be won, we adopt this "find the perfect match" meme. I'm concerned that the cure may be worse than the disease.
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