Dartmouth vs UC Berkeley

Alexandre
Wed, 13 Jun 2007 01:38:27 +0000

Well, I definitely like the new KK a lot better.

Gerhard Casper wrote a letter to the USNWR back in 1996. In it, he urged the USNWR to approach the rankings in a more rational manner rather than rely purely on statistics that seem to change violently on an annual basis.

“I am extremely skeptical that the quality of a university - any more than the quality of a magazine - can be measured statistically. However, even if it can, the producers of the U.S. News rankings remain far from discovering the method. Let me offer as prima facie evidence two great public universities: the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor and the University of California-Berkeley. These clearly are among the very best universities in America - one could make a strong argument for either in the top half-dozen. Yet, in the last three years, the U.S. News formula has assigned them ranks that lead many readers to infer that they are second rate: Michigan 21-24-24, and Berkeley 23-26-27.”

http://www.stanford.edu/dept/pres-provost/president/speeches/961206gcfallow.html

In short, Dr. Casper believes that the quality of a university cannot be measured statistically. Most academics and corporate recruiters agree with him. Education is a highly personal venture, particularly at the university level. The quality of the student body and the size of the class room are important factors to be sure, but taken out of context and without a common frame of reference, they are hard to interpret. And even if they could be properly interpreted, those are just two of many important criteria in determining the quality of a university. Quality of faculty, strength and depth of curriculum, faculty intensity and level of expectation, cutting-edge research opportunities for undergraduates, access to latest technologies, labs and reports, quality of libraries and computer, ties to industry, size of endowment, both in absolute terms and in terms of endowment per student, alumni loyalty and influence, intellectual vibe, access to and preponderance of artistic, political, social and intellectual events on campus, political and social activism etc… Most of those cannot be measured statistically with any degree of accuracy.