<p>Penn State is sinking like a rock</p>
<p>Antioch, assuming you can consider it once prestigious.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Princeton didn’t become part of the “Big Three” until the 1930s, when Albert Einstein, Kurt Goedel and a few other heavyweights came to the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ. IAS is not actually a part of Princeton University and never has been, but Princeton University’s reputation soared because a lot of people mistakenly associated these certifiable geniuses with the university. (In fairness, IAS was initially housed in Princeton University building and even after it got its own building IAS scholars did sometimes lecture at the university and had relationships with people on the Princeton faculty). </p>
<p>Princeton capitalized on that reputation boost effectively. It assembled an outstanding faculty, a huge endowment, terrific students, etc. Before the Einstein era, though, Princeton was just a sleepy, top-15ish private university. Columbia and Chicago were up there right behind Harvard and Yale in the early part of the 20th century, well ahead of Princeton in scholarly reputation.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>All “good” colleges have gotten significantly more selective.</p>
<p>But be wary of the 1988-1989 discontinuity in USNWR rankings, due to the methodology change. If you want to see trends in USNWR rankings (an imperfect indicator of prestige), it is best to start with 1989 (even though the pre-1989 rankings were more purely prestige rankings, as opposed to prestige combined with selectivity and/or graduation rate rankings – though the rankings themselves can cause schools to gain or lose prestige and affect what students apply and attend).</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Absolutely right. If US News still used its original ranking methodology, these schools would be the top 25 today:</p>
<ol>
<li>(tie) Harvard 4.9</li>
<li>(tie) MIT 4.9</li>
<li>(tie) Stanford 4.9</li>
<li>(tie) Yale 4.8</li>
<li>(tie) Princeton 4.8</li>
<li>UC Berkeley 4.7</li>
<li>(tie) Caltech 4.6</li>
<li>(tie) Chicago 4.6</li>
<li>(tie) Columbia 4.6</li>
<li>(tie) Cornell 4.6</li>
<li>(tie) Johns Hopkins 4.6</li>
<li>(tie) Duke 4.5</li>
<li>(tie) Michigan 4.5</li>
<li>(tie) Brown 4.4</li>
<li>(tie) Northwestern 4.4</li>
<li>(tie) Dartmouth 4.3</li>
<li>(tie) UVA 4.3</li>
<li>(tie) Carnegie Mellon 4.2</li>
<li>(tie) UCLA 4.2</li>
<li>(tie) UNC-Chapel Hill 4.2</li>
<li>(tie) Georgia Tech 4.1</li>
<li>(tie) Vanderbilt 4.1</li>
<li>(tie) U Texas-Austin 4.1</li>
<li>(tie) Wisconsin 4.1</li>
<li>(tie) WUSTL 4.1</li>
</ol>
<p>Schools like Emory, Rice, Georgetown, USC, and Notre Dame would drop out of the top 25. That’s why you can’t say a school’s “prestige” is rising or falling based on changes from year to year in US News rankings. US News changes its ranking methodology frequently, sometimes by a little, sometimes by a lot. At one time PA counted for 100% of the ranking; until recently it was 25%, and for the last two years it’s been only 15%. They recently added a rating by HS counselors, which now counts for 7.5% of the total ranking. And so on. So a lot of the movement in US News rankings from year to year just reflects the fact that the rankings are measuring different things. </p>
<p>And some of it is manipulable by the school. For example, some schools have gone test-optional or test-flexible, in part because they think only applicants with strong SAT or ACT scores will submit those scores, and their reported median SAT and ACT scores will go up. That counts for 7.5% of the total ranking.</p>
<p>Actually bclintonk, your PA ratings were a little off (only by a tiny margin). Perhaps from a previous year. Below are the latest PA ratings (2012 eddition). The 2013 eddition will be out next month I think.</p>
<ol>
<li>(tie) Harvard 4.9</li>
<li>(tie) MIT 4.9</li>
<li>(tie) Princeton 4.9</li>
<li>(tie) Stanford 4.9</li>
<li>Yale 4.8</li>
<li>UC Berkeley 4.7</li>
<li>(tie) Caltech 4.6</li>
<li>(tie) Chicago 4.6</li>
<li>(tie) Columbia 4.6</li>
<li>(tie) Cornell 4.6</li>
<li>(tie) Johns Hopkins 4.6</li>
<li>(tie) Michigan 4.5</li>
<li>(tie) Penn 4.5</li>
<li>(tie) Brown 4.4</li>
<li>(tie) Duke 4.4</li>
<li>(tie) Northwestern 4.4</li>
<li>(tie) Dartmouth 4.3</li>
<li>(tie) UVA 4.3</li>
<li>(tie) Carnegie Mellon 4.2</li>
<li>(tie) UCLA 4.2</li>
<li>(tie) UNC-Chapel Hill 4.2</li>
<li>(tie) Georgia Tech 4.1</li>
<li>(tie) Vanderbilt 4.1</li>
<li>(tie) U Texas-Austin 4.1</li>
<li>(tie) Wisconsin 4.1</li>
<li>(tie) WUSTL 4.1</li>
</ol>
<p>Either way, as UCB accurately states, if the USNWR used the same methodology to rank universities today as it did back in the 1980s, there would be very little change.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>No, I was using the 2012 online edition but I made two transcription errors: I wrote down 4.8 for Princeton when it should have been 4.9, and I wrote down 4.5 for Duke when I was actually looking at the page for Penn, which I omitted. Thanks for catching my errors.</p>
<p>Cornell suffered a decline in reputation in 1969 after African American students who had taken over Willard Smith Hall armed themselves in the course of the occupation, and were photographed leaving the building with rifles and bandoliers. Half of the faculty members in the Government Department resigned in protest over the administration’s handling of the situation.</p>
<p>Columbia and Penn saw their popularity decline when urban crime rates were rising, and have seen then rise as urban crime rates have fallen.</p>
<p>Articles regarding peer assessment:</p>
<p>[Reputation</a> Without Rigor | Inside Higher Ed](<a href=“http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/08/19/rankings]Reputation”>http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/08/19/rankings)
[USNWR's</a> Peer Survey Problems | Mother Jones](<a href=“http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2009/08/usnwrs-peer-survey-problems]USNWR’s”>USNWR’s Peer Survey Problems – Mother Jones)
[University</a> of Florida President Bernie Machen, in a recent assessment of national universities, gave his school the highest-possible ranking, “distinguished,” as he also did Harvard, Princeton and Yale universities. | Gainesville.com](<a href=“http://www.gainesville.com/article/20090617/ARTICLES/906171007]University”>http://www.gainesville.com/article/20090617/ARTICLES/906171007)</p>
<p>@greybeard - Willard Straight Hall</p>
<p>What the USNWR did in the early 1980s was merely a ranking of the top graduate programs in the country which they thought would be a carbon copy reflection of undergraduate programs as well. As time went on, the USWNR refined its methodology to include more objective data and student-centered measures like graduation rates, retention rates, SAT/ACT scores, faculty pay, etc. to attempt to actually capture the quality of a university at the undergraduate level.</p>
<p>Is USNWR perfect? Nope. Is it the best ranking of undergraduate programs in the U.S. out there? Absolutely.</p>
<p>The Peer Assessement has been under the most fire by Americans of all the USNWR ranking measures but Morse refuses to exclude it since he believes that the raw academic strength of a university’s program are of some value to undergraduates-and I would agree.</p>
<p>While there are some measures in the ranking that help private schools, the PA and “Top 10% of High School Class” statistics clearly help public schools since they are less holistic in their admissions practices and they offer a larger range of academic programs (thus have more faculty).</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>No, this is a misrepresentation. PA is not about graduate programs. Dartmouth, for example, has hardly any graduate programs–it has a business school, a medical school, and small graduate programs in engineering and a few basic sciences. When Dartmouth was ranked #10 among national universities in 1983, it certainly wasn’t on the strength of its graduate programs. The PA survey has never asked college and university administrators about graduate programs; it asks them about undergraduate education. And if PA were about graduate program strength, a PA score would make absolutely no sense for LACs, most of which have no graduate programs at all. Essentially the PA is just a survey of top college and university administrators (presidents, provosts, and directors of admissions) impressions of the overall academic strength of their peer institutions. That makes it a pretty subjective, softball number. But higher education is a highly competitive industry. Schools are competing all the time for top students and top faculty. The key administrators at those schools generally have a pretty good sense as to where they stand in that competition—who they’re chasing, who they’re gaining on, who’s gaining on or passing them, who they lose faculty recruiting and retention battles to, and who loses to them. </p>
<p>It’s been my contention for a long time that PA is primarily a measure of university administrators’ evaluations of relative faculty strength, and while you hear stories about the occasional stupid and futile efforts of a few administrators to “game” the PA by low-balling their competitors (as if one PA form was going to matter once all the numbers are compiled) or handing the form to a secretary to fill out, I think if you take a careful look at those PA scores, a lot of people in academia would say they reflect, at least roughly, the pecking order in terms of perceived faculty strength among various institutions. Granted, those perceptions are going to be based more on research achievements than on classroom teaching, which the people doing the survey are not going to know very much about. And yes, the PA scores do fairly closely track graduate program rankings, because graduate program rankings are generally a function of perceived faculty strength and little else. But that’s not the same as saying the PA is a measure of graduate program strength. There’s a substantial correlation, to be sure, but Dartmouth and the LACs prove that PA is not a measure of graduate program strength.</p>
<p>Not that it matter bclintonk. Nobody was debating the validity of the PA on this thread. The reason the PA was brought up was because in the earlier versions of the USNWR, the PA accounted for 100% of the rankings. In that context, very little has changed. University reputation and prestige in academic and corporate circles has not changed since I started researching the matter in the late 80s. I would go on to say that not much has changed as far as high school students are concerned. Since the USNWR has become widely read by high schoolers back in the early 90s, the rankings have not changed much.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>More faculty doesn’t necessarily translate into greater faculty prestige. Take Berkeley’s (a large public research university) vs. USC’s (a large private research university) faculty:</p>
<p>Berkeley’s website claims: 1,582 full time + 500 part time faculty = 2,082
USC’s website claims: 3,400 full time faculty (approx. 1,300 more than Berkeley’s total and 1,800 more full time).</p>
<p>However, despite being significantly smaller, Berkeley’s faculty accomplishments are significantly more than USC’s.
Data adapted from a post by phantasmagoric.</p>
<p>USC
National Academy of Science: 12
National Academy of Engineering: 35
American Academy of Arts & Sciences: 21
Institute of Medicine: 13
American Philosophical Society: 6
National Medal of Science: 1
Nobel: 3
Pulitzer: 0
MacArthur: 2
Wolf Prize: 0
Fields Medal: 0</p>
<p>Berkeley
141 National Academy of Science (~12x as many)
91 National Academy of Engineering (2.6x using USC’s #, 4.2x using NAE’s)
222 American Academy of Arts and Sciences (10.6x)
11 Institute of Medicine (about even but Cal has no medical school)
42 American Philosophical Society (7x)
12 National Medal of Science (12x)
9 Nobels (3x, and they were earned for work done at Berkeley, not bought)
4 Pulitzer Prize
32 MacArthur (16x)
4 Wolf Prize
3 Fields Medal</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>What the PA is or isn’t is just as variable as what the responders think it should be. There is plenty of evidence that the people who fill the survey are not following the sparse instructions of the PA survey, or deliberately responding in a manner that gives the term “subjectivity” a completely new dimension. </p>
<p>What we do know the PA represents year after year is a mirror of the prior years. Probably reflecting the work of the secretaries and junior staff members who fill the survey based on last year’s … USNews edition. </p>
<p>And the above only addresses the integrity of the survey and its mechanism. It does not even address the idiocy behind asking anyone to rank several hundred schools with a modicum of reason. While it “might” be possible for a school official to have a pretty good idea on how “distinguished” the departments are at his or her school, expecting the same person to have more than an entirely speculative answer about several hundred schools is pure heresy. </p>
<p>The PA survey ranges from misleading to entirely moronic. It is a horrible and poorly monitored survey that amounts to a popularity contest. No efforts (despite the claims to the contrary by Morse and his goons) have been made to ensure a modicum of integrity in that survey, or even design a survey that would eliminate its current ambiguity. </p>
<p>It is what it is, and it not pretty!</p>
<p>
You forgot to embellish that by saying what you normally describe, “work of the secretaries with long fingernails”</p>
<p>I will say though, not to rehash old arguments, that the PA is the only subjective component in a ranking that is in itself subjective: “America’s Best Colleges”. </p>
<p>If USNWR wanted to be more objective, they could throw out the surveys and look at including a faculty award component based on objective numbers of current faculty with academic awards.</p>
<p>UCB, in these hard times in academia, the secretaries’ nails have been trimmed by a fair margin. So the images of a gum-chewing, tall-haired, nail polishing secretary is only a figment of my past imagination.</p>
<p>But I am happy to note it made an indelible impression on you. Attesting to your good memory or my repeated attempts to use the same image!</p>
<p>PS Fwiw, you should remember that my beef is not with having a subjective survey. I would welcome a vastly expanded survey that polls the responders about criteria similar to what is purportedly measured in the “objective” section. Instead of an ambiguous all-encompassing question, I would see 8 to 10 criteria.</p>
<p>But more important than anything, I would remove the anonymous part of the survey, and compel the schools to publish it a part of the CDS. Fwiw, one could only applaud that the repeated calls to have schools make their CDS public as worked. When I started yapping about the CDS on CC almost a decade, it usually fell on deaf ears, as most readers had no clue of what it was. Then we started a hall of shame for schools who refused to make their forms public. Look today … it is all over the place, and people start digging deeper and appreciate the extended contents.</p>
<p>There is no reason why the PA survey could not be treated the same way. Honestly and openly.</p>
<p>UCBChemEGrad</p>
<p>Two related flaws in your reasoning. The first assumes publication totals, grant awards and subsequent Academy Award style voting for professional group recognition in any way relate to teaching ability and effectiveness. There may well be an inverse relationship.</p>
<p>The second issue so well stated by Xiggi is these group membership inclusions are largely a popularity contest and good ole boy networking. There is no basis for assuming those voting have any knowledge or interest in teaching ability. The ability to assess teaching quality is the outcome variable prospective students are interested in. Superficial indices of status and prestige may offer comfort to the insecure academician or academician in training. Yet, copious faculty award data and endowment totals (a favorite backup) provide no indication, objective or anecdotal, of teaching quality.</p>
<p>^ UCBChemEGrad made no claim about teaching ability or effectiveness, so you can’t say that was an assumption of his. He only said “faculty prestige.”</p>
<p>I also don’t see xiggi claiming that group membership (by which I think you mean the faculty awards that UCBChemEGrad listed) is a popularity contest. He indicated that the PA score is a popularity contest, and to an extent it is. But that is wholly different from claiming that, say, academy membership is “good ol’ boy networking,” which you’ve claimed before. You’re right that there’s no basis for believing that those voting have an interest in teaching ability (nor would most want them to), but that’s irrelevant, since these awards don’t even claim to take into account teaching ability. Likewise, there’s no basis for believing that admission to these academies (and other awards) is based on “good ole boy networking.” It’s based on the quality of their research, which I would argue does factor into an undergrad’s education (if that undergrad is interested in research, as is more often the case at elite universities).</p>
<p>I think the flaw in your reasoning is that teaching ability is the only factor that matters. I personally couldn’t care less how well a prof teaches - I’m a big boy and can learn the material regardless of how well he/she teaches; indeed, I hope most students at elite universities can learn without needing a prof to stand in front of them and teach. I care quite a lot about the quality of profs’ research (and I did in high school as well). I’m also not in the minority; the majority of students at elite universities are interested in research at least somewhat (some more than others).</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>The problem with this is that Dartmouth is rated as #1 in undergraduate education.</p>
<p>IMHO, Dartmouth always suffers in these rankings because it is being compared to true, full-fledged universities, which it clearly is not and has not intended to be.</p>