Just how ridiculous is Peer Assessment?

sv3a
Mon, 20 Aug 2007 15:58:19 +0000

No, actually many school presidents don’t know what’s going on at other undergraduate schools. When they know ‘what’s going on’, it’s pretty much a measure of the academic work that school produces, and the vast majority of that comes from grad work. This is not entirely relevant to undergrad rankings. While PA does have its use in these rankings, being the ultimate stat at 25% makes little sense at all, and is a skewed perception of how good an undergraduate school really is. That’s why schools with noticeable graduate work like Illinois and Texas have higher PA scores than schools with better undergrads like William and Mary. There are several exceptions, but the trend is basically towards having a more prolific academic reputation (98% grad work) than actually understanding each school’s undergraduate quality. It’s simply impossible for a college president or dean to be able to really get a feel for the undergrads for many schools- they are busy enough as it is.