Gourman Report - How reliable?

ericatbucknell
Fri, 16 Jun 2006 16:14:29 +0000

the problem with the gourman report? he made the whole thing up.

1) theres no possible way that so many schools can be ranked without ties or gaps.
2) gourman was provided with no data from colleges and universities. in fact, he never managed to contact any of them to inquire.
3) gourman has no idea how he got his ‘overall’ rankings. he says he averaged departmental rankings for each school, but they come nowhere close to adding up. his explanation for this was that not all departments are ranked in the guide, which is how princetons score managed to jump from 4.72 to 4.95 (this would require the university to have some 300 unranked and perfect programs).
4) the report routinely included programs that dont exist.
5) gourmans own explanations of the criteria differed greatly over ime.

in short, the gourman report is nothing better than something you or i could construct. the strength of graduate programs is pretty well known and thats exactly what gourman seems to have used in constructing his rankings. collegehelps numbers back that up.