OT: Regarding Those University/College Rankings
by Achilles on Aug 31, 2010 9:38 AM PDT
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PrintFor those interested in things like the U.S. News and World Report rankings system for colleges and universities, you might want to take a look at this article from The Chronicle of Higher Learning.
A few quick things jump out: Of all the different rankings, there is nothing close to consensus on what criteria make up a quality institution of higher learning. And, as the article points out, there are almost no post-graduation measures.
This is a FanPost and does not necessarily reflect the views of BruinsNation's (BN) editors. It does reflect the views of this particular fan though, which is as important as the views of BN's editors.
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I think we all agree the rankings are BS. The problem is that the general public and perspective students do pay attention to them. We all know the rankings are inaccurate but we can not pretend they do not matter. The question should be how can we increase our ranking while maintaining our core values as opposed to other schools like Figueroa Tech who increase their rankings by gaming the system?
I think it is no accident
that USC who has been annually ranked lower (by a lot) than us is all of a sudden ranked higher in US News & Report now that their football team’s struggles will make that school almost completely irrelevant.
The best thing you can do for your children is to love their mother. John Wooden
I think there is more to this ...
than just the most recent USN&WR outcome.
The real point is that the criteria have very little to do with what kinds of students get produced there.
I’ll tell you the real criteria: Ask any grad school recruiter the following question: All things being equal — GPA, job experience, high school attended, extra curriculars, standardized test scores — who are you going to admit, the UCLA grad or the USC grad? There is no issue on this, the UCLA grad gets in to the grad school first. This is not debatable.
Especially when you go east.
The only schools with a broad academic reputation are UCLA, Cal, and Stanford.
Go Bruins!
Poor, poor Cal Tech
Always being left out of the conversation. You’re omitting them because they fail the “broad” criteria?
even in your case
it would still then be debatable whether UCLA was the better institution for providing an education, or whether a bunch of smart people decide to go there – the same people who are fit for grad school. And it would be debatable whether UCLA does well at educating people at the top end of their distribution (sending them on to grad school) while failing the rest of the kids. Obviously I don’t think either thing is true, but even if you had data on your measure – which is presumably not currently collected – it is still not clear that this would be totally convincing to people.
by britishbruin on Aug 31, 2010 6:55 PM PDT up reply actions
Don't forget
Ask any grad school recruiter the following question: All things being equal — GPA, job experience, high school attended, extra curriculars, standardized test scores — who are you going to admit, the UCLA grad or the USC grad?
I’d argue, based on my own experience, that the UCSD, UCD, and UCI grads will get in before the U$C grads. From what I’ve seen, the U$C grads are getting in at the same rate as the UCSB grads.
Love the good folks at UCSB and it’s a very good school (beautiful campus too), but it’s no UCLA.
by Bellerophon on Aug 31, 2010 10:24 PM PDT up reply actions
Not only about Grads
When my daughter was graduating high school in MA (we are now back in CA) the Counselor at her high school encouraged her to apply to a “safety” school, which for her was USC. He was afraid she would not get in her first choice, ASU, and would be a slam dunk at USC.
Though, I would be stunned that class sizes were not significantly smaller at USC than at UCLA.
by Bruin Dad and Grad on Sep 1, 2010 10:25 AM PDT up reply actions
Ratings are subjective and easily manipulated
but it is still a complete and total embarrassment to be ranked below that campus across town. Maybe its just me, but even if SUC offered to pay off the people doing the rankings, I would hope that the idea of them being ranked higher than us would be so ridiculous that SUC would be laughed out of the room.
So yes, anyone with half a brain can tell you that UCLA is a better school than SUC, and that the rankings don’t actually mean anything, but I think it is important that we do everything in our power help out UCLA. At a time when budget cuts are threatening to make these rankings a reality (I mean UCLA being around #25, not SUC being ahead of us, because that won’t happen anytime soon) it is important that we step up our alumni giving.
Only 40% of alumni give to the school (and in terms of rankings, it doesn’t matter how much you give), we need to take it upon ourselves to step it up and improve our score in that category, while helping our university weather one of the most trying economic times in its history. I’m a recent graduate who has yet to find a paying job (though there are plenty of people willing to let me work for them for free), and I just donated $10 to the school today to help boost our rankings. I know that most people here probably are in the 40% who do donate, but if you aren’t yet, let’s make sure we do what we can to protect our universities reputation.
We're havin' too much fun today. We ain't thinkin' 'bout tomorrow.
totally agree - as my comments last time this came up will attest.
by britishbruin on Aug 31, 2010 6:48 PM PDT up reply actions
It is fine to make comments
It is another thing to make your case more forcefully beyond comments. Burying long comments in threads like this is not enough. If you feel strongly about it … then do something … write about it … talk about it. Talk up UCLA.
This is not to single you out but its directed for everyone else.
it's fair to single me out
I spend a lot of time writing comments and relatively little time initiating action, beyond stuff I do in the limited field of the alumni from my graduate program. If I halved my BN viewing and commenting, worked that time and donated the proceeds to the school, we might be several ranking places higher by now… I do talk up UCLA at any opportunity, but mostly for people considering grad school, which doesn’t help with anything much from a ranking perspective.
I think what I was getitng at is that ...
… you are clearly thinking through in your comments. I see time and time again you offer extended thoughts in a comment and then build right on it. What I think would be more productive is when you have a certain idea or narrative you want to build out and are thinking through, you should initiate the discussion in a new post.
In some ways that would serve as a better organizing tool and more importantly will be seen by more folks inspiring them to take action.
It's not just prospective students and their parents whose behavior is modified by the stupid rankings ...
it’s also many faculties and administrators who, instead of having the integrity to turn away from the nonsense, buy into it.
Admissions policies have been changed, to the detriment of diversity, to game the system.
Some change the nature of their research to gain publication in the types of journals that gain ranking recognition.
Public service and teaching, which often go unrated, are shunned.
It is hard for me to believe that something so stupid has had an impact on people that are supposed to be so smart.
sjh
A UCLA prof once said to me
anything worth working for is worth cheating for.
(with reference to high-powered incentives for teachers to improve test scores).
Essentially, if you cannot precisely measure what it is that you want to incentivize (or rank), then any proxy measures you use will lead to distorting behavior.
by britishbruin on Aug 31, 2010 7:00 PM PDT up reply actions
is there evidence of the changing of admissions policies?
this sounds like something that ought to be much bigger news.
by britishbruin on Aug 31, 2010 7:10 PM PDT up reply actions
Yes
I’ve not been on a faculty for years. But, at the time when I was and the US News rankings were gaining traction, it was clear that there were schools who were forgoing other criteria in favor of the test scores and other empirical standards that US News used in their rankings.
And, there was some controversy over their doing so. Some faculty and student groups protested. I’ve never seen the data, but rumor is that sc is one of those schools — if the rumor is correct, sc started chasing students with very high test scores to the exclusion of other criteria that had been previously used.
Some might say that the test scores are the most valid entrance standard; if you believe that, then these schools did nothing wrong. But, if you believe that the strength of a university stems, in some part, from diversity — and that test scores are but one way to evaluate a candidate, then catering to the rankings has made a detrimental change to some schools.
I know that one reason Wisconsin fell in the law school ratings was that we refused to adjust our criteria to favor the “ranked standards”. And, I was proud that we did.
sjh
One other point
The University of Wisconsin law school was known for its interdisciplinary approach to the study and teaching of law.
I sat through faculty meetings where those who wanted to play the rankings games suggested that we start publishing more in law reviews — which were counted in the rankings — than in the prestigious interdisciplinary publications chosen by many of my brothers and sisters.
Our strength had become a weakness. Not because we were not writing great stuff but because we were publishing it in the “wrong” places.
That anyone would try to steer publications so as to maximize ranking points shows how the ratings tended to pervert one of the missions of the university — scholarship or the contribution to knowledge.
sjh
by Class of 66 on Aug 31, 2010 10:02 PM PDT up reply actions
Test scores and U$C
I do remember from my days as a high school senior, when I applied to college, I received information from a lot of schools, including U$C. I distinctly remember the UC application (you remember the single one you’d fill out for every UC campus you wanted to go to; man, whoever thought of that was brilliant) asked for your highest combined SAT score (this was back in the day of the 1600 point SAT). In other words, you could take the SAT as often as you liked, but they wanted the highest combined score (i.e. if you scored 700 and 600 on your first test for a combined 1300, but scored 660 and 660 on your second time for a combined 1320, you would simply report the 1320 number).
Most other schools did that as well, from what I recall. U$C, on the other hand (as did many other schools, including a certain purple-and-gold school to the north as well as a certain burnt-orange-and-white school to the southeast), asked for the highest score on each component, from any given test (i.e. in the example above, you could put down the 700 and the 660 for a combined 1360). In other words, the U$C method took the same performance and reported it as a 1360, while the UC schools considered it a 1320.
Obviously, this was some time ago (Clinton Administration), and I can’t say if U$C is still doing the same. I would suspect, however, given the quality and quantity of U$C graduates at my law school versus the more numerous (4x) and better prepared UCLA graduates, that ol’ Second Choice is still cookin’ the numbers to help them out with the rankings.
In fact, didn’t they get caught not too long ago claiming faculty that weren’t really faculty to help boost the number of award winners they had (I think it pertained to their engineering program).
by Bellerophon on Aug 31, 2010 10:21 PM PDT up reply actions
Not Just the Way they reported scores
but also the weight they gave them in the admission process.
I suspect that if US News started ranking the number of freckles on the faces of incoming freshmen, we’d see a lot of schools demanding large, hi-res portraits as a part of the application and some poor sucker in the admissions department would be tasked to count the spots.
sjh
on 'diversity'
I think the students with greatest academic potential should be offered places. This means taking into account the background of students when interpreting their test scores, which are a combination of ability and prior training. If a focus on pure scores out of context is taking place, this is bad.
It will be interesting to hear what higher ed faculty have to say
in 5-10 years when the predominance of college students will have been brought up in the “No Child Left Untested” era. The same breadth of knowledge and experience you refer to is being (if not has already been) snuffed out by the endless focus on testing, testing, testing. I’m all for excellence in education – I want nothing but the best for my own child – but when all teachers can do is have their entire focus on one set of tests because that’s how they are judged, something is seriously wrong. I’ve seen first-hand how that changes an elementary school, and it’s disgusting and depressing. I worry that test scores will be the sole judge of admitting students to higher ed, as there will be nothing else.
/rant
Roses are red, violets are blue...f*** $C.
yup
recently coauthored a paper in the American Educational Research Journal on some of the unintended consequences of NCLB and distorted behaviours, based on interviews conducted with parents, teachers and principals at elementary and middle schools. Aside from squeezing out things not being tested, it also focuses disproportionate teaching energy on the kids right on the bubble of reaching ‘proficient’ regardless of whether they are the kids who need most attention or stand to gain from it; there are incentives to try to attract more middle-class white kids to your school to bring up the average test scores; etc
Quotation you might appreciate from the paper:
From a broader public policy perspective, there are also reasons to worry about the uniformity of curricula that NCLB encourages. One teacher humorously extended the logic of NCLB to a basketball team to make this point:
[A joke I saw was] comparing No Child Left Behind to [NCAA basketball], you know? ``All players must perform at the exact same level. All players need to know how to play every single position exactly the same. If your team does not perform at this level, all of your players can move to whatever team that they want to.’’
I would love to read that.
That meshes with parts of my past and present employment. A brief Google search of a quote from your block quote didn’t find anything. I searched through what is a (perhaps not exhaustive) list of recent articles on the AERJ site and didn’t find anything looking like a match to what you wrote about. I have access to jstor, and should be able to read the article once I can find a title and/or issue number. I just added a little-used email to my profile page here. If you’re willing to leave the comfortable cloak of online anonymity long enough to share article details with me, I’d appreciate it. If not, that’s cool – though I’ve contacted a couple of people through BN, I try not to give specific personal details about myself here or anywhere else online, so I can understand if you’d rather not.
Roses are red, violets are blue...f*** $C.
no, of course
now I look at it, maybe that quote fell victim to the final round of edits – they conditionally accepted the paper, then asked us to cut it from 12,500 to 10,000 (!). Email me at my cloak-of-online-anonymity address (britishbruin on google’s web based email service) and I’d be happy to send you the link to the article.
I was just reading the above article and others on the subject
and I have noticed something: That every other guide has us considerably above suc* in the ratings except USNWR. Check out Washington Monthly, a ranking based on the amount of public good the institution does for the Nation for instance.
USNWR can be gamed and suc* has done it before. Instead of taking them to task, how about we continue to put out more information to discredit USNWR even if we ascend in the ranks later.
EGO TROIORUM MALLEUS SUM
Go Tritons
From a proud Dad of a UCSD 2014 kid
sjh
by Class of 66 on Sep 1, 2010 8:39 AM PDT via mobile up reply actions
Go Tritons
From a proud Dad of a UCSD 2013 kid
:)
by bornagainbruin on Sep 1, 2010 10:05 AM PDT up reply actions
Go Tritons
from the proud friend of a Triton (undergrad), Bruin (grad) alum who is getting married in a couple of weeks…
by britishbruin on Sep 1, 2010 10:47 AM PDT up reply actions
Go Tritons & Bruins!
Might as well jump on the UCSD bandwagon. =) From a UCLA undergrad and UCSD med school grad!
Go Bruins!
Josh is in Sixth College
He’s an engineer major. I’ll get his schedule next time I talk to him. I’m curious to know if he and Jen will be in any of the same classes this fall (probably not, but you never know).
Also, Muir is in a great location on campus. I hope she loves it as much as you love UCLA!
by bornagainbruin on Sep 2, 2010 9:15 AM PDT up reply actions
Also
A great eatery off campus that lots of students go to is Rigobertos. It’s about a 15 minute drive. She’ll probably be going there a decent amount over the next few years, so you might want to take her there if you have a chance.
by bornagainbruin on Sep 10, 2010 2:14 PM PDT up reply actions
Criteria Controls
This is a good example on how where one puts one’s thumb on the scale can affect the results of “rankings”.
I actually like where the Washington Monthly placed theirs. Why? Because they reflect my values and my vision of a great university. Others will, of course, disagree.
The criteria used in this study weighs heavily the “public contributions” of both the faculty and graduates of the schools.
Faculty rewards and research are heavily weighted. Schools with distinguished scholars will do well.
And, I particularly like the idea that what graduates do with their educations is important.
Notice what happens when “endowments” are not a significant part of the ratings.
It is not surprise that all of the UC’s do very well in these rankings.
sjh
I would completely agree with this
It seems like Harvard, Yale, etc., will always be in the top 3. Why is that? Like you said, endowments.
On a side note, I’m wondering if UCSD is going to be the third flagship university? Already starting to look that way.
EGO TROIORUM MALLEUS SUM
by Bruins102NCAA on Sep 2, 2010 1:38 AM PDT up reply actions
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