2011 PA Scores

xiggi
Fri, 20 Aug 2010 16:38:48 +0000

UCB, we were talking about the instructions. And I answered your “Not exactly, xiggi. They specifically ask the user to rate a university’s academic programs from distinguished (5) to marginal (1).”

I think that it is clear that you had omitted the most important word, namely undergraduate. Again, do not take my word for it! :)

Anyhow, here’s the position of James Barker:



In an interview Monday, he defended his approach. “The request from U.S. News is to measure the academic quality of undergraduate programs,” Barker said. “It did not say research programs, it did not say prestige. It did not say size of endowments, or anything other than undergraduate education. And I took that charge seriously, measuring what I would think would be the full package of the undergraduate experience,” including faculty-student ratio, relationships between faculty and students in and out of class … do they spend time having lunch together.

“I believe that Clemson does that better than anyone,” he said. “That’s why my ranking for Clemson is where it is. You’ll notice I did not give anyone a 5, because I did not believe any of us had reached that level… I’m a hard grader.”



It is interesting that, on the one hand, you always want to convince everyone that those people are experts and have the best knowledge of the colleges, and that people like me are fools not to understand that, but on the other hand, when one of those experts speaks up … it is a different story.

Oh well!