Think Tank Ranks Schools

system
Mon, 10 Jan 2005 23:59:24 +0000

allie, there’s nothing absurd about UMass being highly ranked on grounds of being a very major research center. We prospective undergrads should of course not go there just for that reason, but the education of college students is not the sole measure of a university’s quality.
Byerly undoubtedly has a point about Harvard’s tendency to come out on top in rankings, and naming the few surveys that say otherwise will not change that fact. I don’t have the time or patience to sort through the methodology of all these surveys, but I’m willing to bet that they all factor in the one-- and only-- area in which Harvard has truly unquestionable superiority over any other university in the US: reputation. That’s the key factor in US News, for example. What can beat Harvard for prestige? Nothing. And much as I prefer Yale and honestly believe it to be a better school, Harvard has an unmatched ability to get the most productive researchers in the world to teach there. It also has the largest university library in the world. None of that means that undergraduate education at Harvard is actually superior to that at Yale, Swarthmore, Ohio State, or Earlham, but it does mean that Harvard will very often lead rankings. Don’t worry about it!