Just how ridiculous is Peer Assessment?

jags861
Fri, 17 Aug 2007 16:43:57 +0000

also, peer assessment levels the playing field somewhat. for example, everyone harks on berkeley being the greatest thing since sliced bread–yet if you removed PA for the rankings, I wouldn’t be surprised if Berkeley dropped to the 40s. Look–the schools that rank directly above berkeley (Notre Dame, Vanderbilt, Emory Rice, etc.) have a 3.9, 4.0 and 4.1s PA respectively–versus berkeleys 4.8. So in a sense, Peer assessment is an X factor some schools and USnews rely on. Its the shotgun from gears of war for college rankings.

the point of PA is to include everything that isn’t exactly numerically measurable into a numerical score. namely, faculty quality and respect in the academic community. sure you can choose a metric to measure the quality of a faculty (say nobel prize winners) but only a handful of schools have them. Sure you could say faculty X has won Y number of awards, but how much does each award count? What about percentage of faculty with awards versus absolute numbers? How come some awards are better than others, and who decides which ones are? Are research awards included or should just awards which involve undergraduate teaching? What about smaller schools where the faculty just hasn’t really won any awards but still offers a solid education? Do they get 0s in faculty quality? PA attempts to tidily sum up all of that with a questionaire to people who ARE in the know.

if you remove PA from the rankings, i feel like you have a list of interchangable statistics which basically tell you how hard it is to get into a school, and what percentage of students graduate on time.