<p>Does that not depend on the specific subject matter, level of difficulty and other criteria? A student’s learning style is not the only criterion to bear in mind.</p>
<p>It might be great to have 12 students dissect Shakespeare’s The Tempest. But surely, the same pedagogy does not work as well with organic chemistry?</p>
<p>What I think might be valuable is readily available course evaluations. Alas, it seems that since Harvard has turned to online evaluations (as opposed to in-class filling out of paper questionnaires), student participation has plummeted. In such cases, it is the most committed supporters or detractors who are motivated to comment on a course and prof.</p>
<p>Still, I’m wondering how useful learning that 90% of a professoriat numbering, say, 500 (450) is either very accessible or not very accessible would be to a student who might well not take a course with any of these profs, given that s/he would like take a total of 32 courses over four years. Even within the same department, profs differ wildly in teaching style and accessibility. When my H was in grad school, his prof ate lunch with his grad student team almost every day. Another prof demanded that his students make appointments to see him two weeks in advance.</p>
<p>bluebayou,
Your candor on PA is appreciated although you seem to have just accepted it rather than actually like it, right? Also, I have been a proponent of using objective data only in the compilation of rankings. How would you feel about rankings without PA? </p>
<p>Re your employer objections, I agree that there would be a new set of problems to address and that gamemanship of one sort or another is likely to evolve. But two things drive my continuing suggestion, that if you are going to add subjective comments, then add students, alumni and employers to the mix. First, I think that the opinions of these other stakeholders are every bit as worthy as those of academics. Granted, different types of questions would need to be asked, but their opinions would be heard and this would give a more well rounded view of the faculty of a college. Second, for the employers, I am very confident that students would love to know what employers thought of their colleges and their faculty. It would really frame the impact (or lack thereof) of faculty in terms of developing hireable students. I would also expect the employer results to reveal the great geographic impact on hiring patterns, eg, not many firms from Kansas City are flying to Princeton or Hanover to interview students, but a goodly number of them probably are going to Wash U or Notre Dame. I think that making this fact more broadly known and recognized would be healthy on a lot of fronts, including in the college admissions frenzy and hype.</p>
<p>actually, I guess I do (barely) like PA since I haven’t seen anything else that is “better.”</p>
<p>The problem with “objective” data, is that any numbers used are: 1) subject to manipulation; and, 2) subject to GIGO, e.g., alumni giving favors wealthy schools over publics. One the things that I don’t like about the mathematically-correct RP survey is its starting point. While the numbers may be “objective” and correctly modeled, RP starts with a false premise and assumptions, IMO – but, yet, the data are “objective.”</p>
<p>The problem with the suggestion of employers is that is ASSUMES up front that goal of a college is to develop “hireable students” and I’m not sure I agree; there are a LOT of disciplines that lead to grad work, not hiring by local employers. But, by your very example, you would be adding further regional bias to a “national” ranking. How many grads at Carleton are hired locally? How many look for jobs as opposed to enter PhD programs? WashU and ND (and P’ton and Dartmouth) have national student bodies. But, would a California applicant really care if the KC employers love ND students? In my backyard, USC has a phenomenal alumni network which hires a lot of USC graduates. Surveying employers who are managed/owned by 'SC alums would yield a PA of 5 for their alma mater and a 2 for the local competition (UCLA).</p>
<p>How about we have university faculty members rate engineering firms? What, you complain “what possible qualifications would a group of English professors have to rate the quality of such firms? Well, they drive across bridges, and use buildings, they want them to work well. Therefore, as consumers, they should rank the firms.”</p>
<p>I would be completely uninterested in business rankings of universities for the simple reason that they have no qualifications to provide meaningful rankings.</p>
<p>Even the academics who are asked to do so by USNews are better able to this than business people would be. However, the real problem with the ranking is not the limited knowledge of the people doing the ranking (although that is certainly a limitation). One could overcome the lack of knowledge problem by having each college faculty rate its own college, and then rate competing departments- where most academics are pretty well informed, rather than colleges as a whole. You would get out of this a set of preconceived notions and rivalries, but some real information about departments. </p>
<p>The real problem with PA, setting aside all the details that are poorly executed, is the absurdity of presuming that one can summarize anything as complicated as even the smallest college with a single number. </p>
<p>Sticking with the CS example, suppose you had a good survey of CS faculy around the country and they rated undergraduate CS departments. CMU would probably rank higher than Yale or Williams. Does this mean a given student would be better off at CMU? Maybe, DEPENDS ON THE STUDENT. The overall ranking would reveal what faculty members think of each other’s departments, but not whether the experience of the college is better at one place than another.</p>
<p>As noted, what student is being served is also important. My guess is that if one exchanged the students at Harvard with the students at Central Washington University, one would find that the Harvard students would do as well, in and after college as Harvard students do now, and that CWU students would do as well, in and after college as CWU students do now. Would those faculty, in terms of the students, be considered equally as good? Would CWU now be considered better than Harvard. It is impossible to do outside evaluation with any precision, it is best left up to the folks inside the schools and the judgment of individuals considering attending or paying for it.</p>
<p>“It is impossible to do outside evaluation with any precision, it is best left up to the folks inside the schools and the judgment of individuals considering attending or paying for it.”</p>
<p>Specifically, who do you mean when you write, “the folks inside the schools?” Do you mean the faculty? the students?</p>
<p>Yes, the university community. Many universities have ongoing deliberations about their mission, if they are meeting it, and what is their role. I have been on college strategic planning committees that involved all elements of the college, including clerical personnel, in this process. At the University of Chicago, for example, there are annual faculty meetings on the improvement of undergraduate teaching, and to share methods that others have found successful. Different universities and colleges have different missions. Most are quite aware of their mission and work very hard to fulfill it.</p>
<p>Still not clear. You seem to be including the students in one post (individuals considering attending or paying for it) and then you talk about the faculty. Which is it?</p>
<p>Everyone in the community typically participates, and does so in many ways. There are student representatives that contribute to various meetings as well as very detailed student surveys. For example, many of the changes that have occurred at UChicago for the past ten years came from a very comprehensive survey of student wants and needs.</p>