<p>For the top 30 universities in COHE’s 2005 Scholarly Quality Index rankings. Remember, any school to make the top 30 (below) is doing very well, since there were hundreds of other universities rated that didn’t end up making the cut here.</p>
<p>The original ranking has Harvard, Caltech, UCSF, MIT and Yale as the five top universities in the United States in terms of Scholarly Quality Index. It’s interesting to see what happens when you adjust for the number of programs.</p>
<p>Rank, School, Scholarly Quality Index, # of programs (both Items from COHE 2005 Ranking), Composite Index of Items</p>
<p>1 U. of Wisconsin at Madison +0.90 83 74.7
2 Yale U. +1.35 55 74.3
3 U. of California at Berkeley +1.03 70 72.1
4 U. of Washington +0.82 79 64.8
5 Harvard U. +1.68 38 63.8
6 U. of Pennsylvania +1.06 55 58.3
7 Duke U. +1.07 52 55.6
8 Pennsylvania State U. +0.64 85 54.4
9 Johns Hopkins U. +1.08 49 52.9
10 Vanderbilt U. +1.09 48 52.3
11 New York U. +0.89 56 49.8
12 Cornell U. endowed colleges +0.73 68 49.6
13 U. of Michigan at Ann Arbor +0.65 74 48.1
14 Stanford U. +0.89 52 46.3
15 Princeton U. +1.03 43 44.3
16 Columbia U. +0.66 59 38.9
17 U. of Virginia +0.81 48 38.9
18 Washington U. in St. Louis +1.16 33 38.3
19 U. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill +0.67 56 37.5
20 Massachusetts Institute of Technology +1.44 26 37.4
21 State U. of New York at Stony Brook +0.80 41 32.8
22 Carnegie Mellon U. +1.18 27 31.9
23 California Institute of Technology +1.59 19 30.2
24 Northwestern U. +0.64 46 29.4
25 Emory U. +0.71 41 29.1
26 U. of California at San Francisco +1.59 15 23.9
27 U. of California at San Diego +0.64 33 21.1
28 Georgia Institute of Technology +0.69 29 20.0
29 Rice U. +0.71 27 19.2
30 Dartmouth College +0.73 21 15.3</p>
<p>yeah well first off those rankings are crap.
And second, yeah u cant really beat chicago with most grad schools. Chicago has great programs in almost everything for gradschool.</p>
<p>wait … why would you adjust for programs? Are we assuming being average in a lot of programs beats being excellent in a few, because personally I don’t mind the whole quality over quantity mantra. But hey, that’s just me.</p>
<p>Or is there some other method to your madness?</p>
<p>Yes, I agree in quality over quantity as well. The top five in the ranking before it was adjusted, Harvard, Caltech, UCSF, MIT and Yale, are probably the best out there in terms of research quality (the original rankings are quality-based rankings, which is the reason why Caltech appeared at the very top – in any survey type or overall university ranking, Caltech often gets severely penalized because it is so small).</p>
<p>Chicago wasn’t among the top 30 in the original ranking. However, I agree it is certainly one of the best universities in the world. There are other rankings, like the one at <a href=“http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14321230/[/url]”>http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14321230/</a> , which have Chicago among the top 20 universities in the entire world - above even the prestigious Kyoto University that is in today’s headlines.</p>
<p>The “adjustment” here is just for fun. It just gives a balance between the quality ranking (Scholarly Quality) and the number of programs. In other words it gives a minor boost to universities that happen to have a greater academic breadth, like Wisconsin and Berkeley, and U-Washington-Seattle, all of which are incredible research universities. </p>
<p>Personally, I would give more validity to the original ranking, not this adjusted one. :)</p>
<p>COHE published all of these rankings, including rankings of many specific fields, in an extensive issue this past year. The surveys were actually conducted by a separate company, though.</p>
<p>I agree - it’s #20 in the Newsweek Top 100 Global Universities ranking linked above. In the COHE Scholarly Quality Index, however, it’s unfortunately not in the top 30 in the original 1/12/07 ranking, which is why I didn’t include it. (It’s actually #33 in that, and if I had included #31-50 in my adjusted ranking, it would have showed up somewhere in the list at the top of this thread).</p>
<p>Here’s the original list of the top 30, before the adjustment.</p>
<p>1 Harvard U. +1.68 38
2 California Institute of Technology +1.59 19
2 U. of California at San Francisco +1.59 15
4 Massachusetts Institute of Technology +1.44 26
5 Yale U. +1.35 55
6 Carnegie Mellon U. +1.18 27
7 Washington U. in St. Louis +1.16 33
8 Vanderbilt U. +1.09 48
9 Johns Hopkins U. +1.08 49
10 Duke U. +1.07 52
11 U. of Pennsylvania +1.06 55
12 Princeton U. +1.03 43
12 U. of California at Berkeley +1.03 70
14 U. of Wisconsin at Madison +0.90 83
15 New York U. +0.89 56
15 Stanford U. +0.89 52
17 U. of Washington +0.82 79
18 U. of Virginia +0.81 48
19 State U. of New York at Stony Brook +0.80 41
20 Cornell U. endowed colleges +0.73 68
20 Dartmouth College +0.73 21
22 Emory U. +0.71 41
22 Rice U. +0.71 27
24 Georgia Institute of Technology +0.69 29
25 U. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill +0.67 56
26 Columbia U. +0.66 59
27 U. of Michigan at Ann Arbor +0.65 74
28 Northwestern U. +0.64 46
28 Pennsylvania State U. +0.64 85
28 U. of California at San Diego +0.64 33</p>
<p>For the purposes of anything meaningful on CC, this is an unintelligible and meaningless ranking. University of California, San Francisco – the de facto or functional equivalent of UC Berkeley’s med school, but an institution that stands alone in spite of direct ties – is ranked right up there with Harvard, for instance, a multi-faceted university that covers sciences, social sciences, and humanities. It’s like comparing apples and ducks. (Oh, and by the way, UCSF is not just a med school; it has a small number of academic PhD programs in the life sciences, a dental school, and a nursing school too.)</p>
<p>It cracks me up that rankings get so much attention. I remember seeing a ranking in a California magazine that ranked MBA programs in the state. Number 1 was Pepperdine. Berkeley/Haas and Stanford ranked considerably down the list – and the fine print disclosed the sole ranking criterion was size of student body. </p>
<p>Rankings have no “point” beyond their own inherent meanings, if there are any. And that depends entirely on what you are using them for. There is no harm in using them just for statistical comparisons, just like the one mentioned above that “ranked” schools based on the size of their student bodies. But that’s where they end.</p>
<p>Regarding UCSF, it is in the rankings because it has many faculty, research, and students (medical as well as graduate academic students) - very good ones, in fact. The fact that it doesn’t have any undergraduates just demonstrates my point that a single ranking does not have any value in terms of selecting a school.</p>
<p>Also it is important to always remember that rankings can be easily influenced by invalid information, as in the example of the most-famous ones – the USNWR rankings – which use many data points that are completely incorrect, as Andrew Manion has pointed out in a recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education. They are also sometimes affected by the process in which information is gathered, particularly in the case of “survey” based rankings that almost always become heavily biased towards the largest programs – just as Subway or McDonald’s often appear high on the list of best restaurants because they have more locations than any other restaurants in the world.</p>
<p>To sum up the rankings posted above, they were gathered using a process that, according to the Chronicle, is “the first completely objective measure of productivity… [by examining] the number of book and journal articles published by each program’s faculty, as well as journal citations, awards, honors, and grants received… its information on departments could give officials hard facts to back up sometimes unpopular decisions to reorganize programs or invest in specific fields.” They are rankings of departments.</p>
<p>It’s to make the Ivy centrics scratch their heads and say, "Heh, how can anyone but the Ivy schools rank high in anything, especially something important like the quantity and quality of the research done by the faculty? So take UCSF out if that helps which was essentially the result of PosterX’s adjusted rankings. Narrow focus schools should get a downward hit.</p>
<p>Can you point me to the article? When I search on the phrase you used at Chronicle’s site, what I get is a link to Academic Analytic’s Scholarly Productivity Index. Or give a date, maybe?</p>