Michigan in Global Top 20:

Colleges & Universities University of Michigan
1

http://cwur.org/2015/

Good to see a high ranking, but it displays a typical incongruity…which of these is not like the other:

World Rank 19
Institution University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Country/Region USA
National Rank 15
Quality of Education 24
Alumni Employment 17
Quality of Faculty 140
Publications 3
Influence 20
Citations 6
Broad Impact 14
Patents 12
Score 68.36

How does a faculty which ranks in the single and low double digits for publications, “influence”, citations, “Broad Impact”, and patents end up with a quality of faculty rank of 140? Usually, if you are to back-fit a ranking like this to meet preconceptions, you’d usually use a kitchen-sink category like “Broad Impact”. Here, there is an acknowledgement that the school projects intellectual presence, yet the faculty is ranked out of the top 100. How does that happen?

Michigan’s faculty is globally recognized. 140? Really?

2

It is a quality and quantity question. There are a bunch of top faculties that publish in major journals but with many more so so faculties that drag down the average.

3

"Quality of Faculty, measured by the number of academics who have won major international awards, prizes, and medals [25%]

Quality of Faculty: This indicator measures the weighted number of faculty members of an institution who have won, in addition to the Nobel Prize and the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, the following awards, medals, and prizes covering virtually all academic disciplines: Abel Prize, Balzan Prize, Charles Stark Draper Prize, Crafoord Prize, Dan David Prize, Fields Medal, Fundamental Physics Prize, Holberg International Memorial Prize, Japan Prize, Kavli Prize, Kluge Prize, Kyoto Prize, Millennium Technology Prize, Praemium Imperiale, Pritzker Prize, Shaw Prize, Schock Prize, Templeton Prize, Turing Award, Wolf Prize, and World Food Prize (this list could be modified in the future if necessary). Faculty members are defined here as those who were employed full-time at the institution in question at the time of winning the award, medal, or prize. For each faculty member, rF points are assigned to his/her institution according to the following formula:"

Doesn’t say “relative to the institution’s size” though, so looks like it’s not averaged.

4

^^^Something is wrong with that 140 number for quality of faculty. Look at the many institutions rated above Michigan in this area. It doesn’t make any sense at all.

5

That may be the case if they measure by the number of Nobel Prize laureates.

6

Michigan regularly hires assistant profs, and gives them a start in their careers. Some really top universities won’t do that to the extent Michigan does. Also, comparing “a professor” in the US versus “a professor” in Germany is apples to oranges. Parts of Europe have a very different system where it is very difficult to become a professor. People in Science and engineering who would be a tenured professor after 5-7 years can end up toiling away for 20 years before becoming a professor in Europe.

Michigan should be hiring assistant profs. It is a public university. I can see how some ranking criteria could lower Michigan quality of faculty if compared to private US universities or European Universities. I don’t think it means anything.

7

According to this ranking, Michigan’s “Quality of Faculty” is way behind all the UC’s (except Riverside and Merced), and only 10th in the B1G Ten:

UC’s: Berkeley(6), LA(13), San Diego(19), Santa Barbara(29), Irvine(44), Davis(59), Santa Cruz(100),


[QUOTE=""]

Santa Cruz(218+), Merced(218+)

[/QUOTE]

B1G Ten: UIUC(21), Wisconsin(34), Rutgers(37), Maryland(43), Purdue(47), Penn State(62), Minnesota(63), OSU(82),
Northwestern(104), Michigan(140)


[QUOTE=""]

Iowa(167), Indiana(178), MSU(218+), Nebraska(218+)

[/QUOTE]

We are also behind most of our public peers:
Texas(25), Washington(41), Texas A&M(46), UNC(86), Florida(96)
Virginia(126)

and some much lower ranked publics:
Colorado(31), Utah(67), Arizona State (66), Arizona(87), Iowa State(109)

At least we have company, two Ivies are also ranked poorly:

Brown(73), Dartmouth(218+)

One thing for sure. It’s not a math/data error, as Michigan ranks below 100 every year since 2012.

And it appears that they are counting the total number of faculty with major international awards, not averaging (see post #2).

Go figure!

8

“Quality of faculty” as measured by international prizes is a pretty meaningless metric, IMO. And contra billcsho, Michigan does not have “many more so so faculties that drag down the average”–not that the average even matters for the particular metric in question, but that’s a side issue. There are very few disciplines in which Michigan’s faculty isn’t ranked in at least the top 15 in the U.S., and many are ranked in the top 10 or top 5. Only a handful of U.S. universities–Harvard, UC Berkeley, and Stanford come to mind–can boast such across-the-board faculty strength. Schools like Yale, Princeton, MIT, and Chicago obviously have outstanding faculties in their areas of strength, but they are in important respects not full-service universities. UCLA, Cornell, Penn, Columbia, and Duke are competitive in the full-service category, and Wisconsin is close as well. I don’t have time to go though the NRC rankings right now, but here are some current US News rankings of graduate programs–basically a proxy for faculty strength:

LAW: Michigan #11
MEDICINE (research): Michigan #10
MEDICINE (primary case): Michigan #5
BUSINESS: Michigan #11
ENGINEERING: Michigan #6

PUBLIC AFFAIRS: Michigan #12
EDUCATION: Michigan #11
NURSING: Michigan #6
PHARMACY: Michigan #7
SOCIAL WORK: Michigan #1
PUBLIC HEALTH: Michigan #4
ECONOMICS: Michigan #13
POLITICAL SCIENCE: Michigan #4
PSYCHOLOGY: Michigan #4
SOCIOLOGY: Michigan #4
HISTORY: Michigan #7
ENGLISH: Michigan #13
MATH: Michigan #9
COMPUTER SCIENCE: Michigan #13
PHYSICS: Michigan #11
CHEMISTRY: Michigan #15
BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES: Michigan #19
EARTH SCIENCES: Michigan #8
STATISTICS: Michigan #8
FINE ARTS: Michigan #27
And of course, near and dear to my heart (per The Philosophical Gourmet, based on a survey of philosophers):
PHILOSOPHY: Michigan #4

So where exactly are these “so so faculties”? I don’t see many clinkers here except arguably Fine Arts, though most schools would kill for a ranking as high as #27, and the fine arts aren’t typically where an academic institution’s name is made. Notice also that the US News rankings don’t even cover fields like Anthropology, Classics, Dentistry, and Musical Theater where Michigan is widely regarded as having some of the strongest faculties in the country.

9

It also worth noting the following: 1) as is true of all universities, the prizes won by faculty are effectively tail events so one has to weigh that against the other 99% of the faculty; 2) many prize winners are not hands-on with students; 3) teaching quality is inherently subjective; 4) the “methodology” mentions a number of prizes, but by a quick scan (I may have left some out) the prizes NOT mentioned, and areas of strength for Michigan: The Pulitzer, The Fulbright, The Guggenheim, The Sloan, The PCase, The MacArthur, The National Medal of Science, The National Book Award…

10

Good post bclintonk: it is clear to me that you can’t be top 10 in cites and patents and dollars pulled in via grants by faculty and then suddenly end up with a faculty rank of 140. It just does not scan. To my mind the huge jump between patents, cites, impact…speak to the likelihood that the 140 total measure is spurious.