2010 USNEWS Graduate School Rankings

College Search & Lists
4

<p>rjkofnovi,</p>

<p>I wondered about the same and that led me to investigate and here’s what I found:</p>

<p>Step 1: quick glance of the data:

  1. USC has the highest % faculty as NAE members
  2. Both the peer and recruiter assessments for USC are out of top-25</p>

<p>Step 2: determines what jump out as unusual:

  1. USC has higher % faculty than even Berkeley/Stanford/MIT(?)<br>
  2. If USC does have that many NAE members, who come its peer assessment score is so low (that’s like Chicago having bunch of Nobels but low peer ratings for its economics)? How come none of its departments is in the top-10 (those NAE members must reside somewhere, not vacuum)?</p>

<p>Step 3: investigate the NAE %:
[USC</a> - Viterbi School of Engineering - Facts](<a href=“http://viterbi.usc.edu/about/facts.htm]USC”>http://viterbi.usc.edu/about/facts.htm)
It says, “More than a third of its 165 faculty members are fellows in their
respective professional societies. With 33 faculty members elected to the
National Academy of Engineering”.
Click the link “National Academy of Engineering” to see the list. The ones
in black are not faculty. Even among the ones in red, some are still not.
Even among the ones that are, some of them are no longer “active” but
emeritus (retired); they shouldn’t be counted for US News either. Now you
see there are <em>a lot</em> that shouldn’t be counted for US News… What’s more is the engineering school does have 165 active full-time faculty; so many of the people on this list are actually *excluded" from that 165. The % was therefore overstated further.
Another thing I discovered through looking at the bio is that the
engineering school got a few to join when they were already pretty old and
(presumably) retired. One example is Simon Ramo:</p>

<p>[USC</a> Stevens -](<a href=“http://stevens.usc.edu/read_article.php?news_id=3D222]USC”>http://stevens.usc.edu/read_article.php?news_id=3D222)
He joined last year. He was 94. I seriously doubt a person can be an active full-time faculty at that age. It’s rare to have a new hire at that age.</p>