| UCB, thank for your amusing repartee and the unveiling of Xiggi U. Perhaps, Deep Springs could be convinced to add my name to theirs, and we'd be done.
Fwiw, if I may, I'd like to repeat my point about the PA. What I do not like about it is that it's too darn short and nebulous. If you and your group are indeed correct in that it reflects the opinion of a very knowledgeable group of august scholars and administrators, why not make the data both PUBLIC and verifiable, or at least make the identity of who replies and who ignores a matter of public interest.
While I'd like to know who gives a 5/5 in every category to your alma mater, I'd settle for something else: a greatly expanded peer assessment with CLEARLY identified categories ... ten or twenty of them. Yes, I'd like to see how such "intangibles" as huge lectures, poor housing, and a small army of teaching subs stack against the reputation of a Nobel Prize winner. Yes, I'd like to see clear categories and not an ever changing mumbo-jumbo that does not satisfy anyone, with the notable exception of people who can figure out the reasons why schools such Harvey Mudd are ranked below the non-coed stars of yesterday.
I also would like USNews to cease its current practice of mixing two separate issues for the sole desire of keeping a level field that benefits a clearly set of schools. By their own admission, without the propping those schools would drop much lower.
As far as separating graduate schools from the undergraduate schools, the need exists because USNews decided to call its survey ... the BEST COLLEGES. Since there is already one version of the BEST GRADUATE SCHOOLS, there is no need for a hybrid product that simply muddies all waters by allowing data points that have little impact on undergraduates to mar the final product, and this by design. |