<p><a href=“http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2000/norc.html[/url]”>http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2000/norc.html</a></p>
<p>“1. The principal weakness of the current approach is that the weights used to combine the various measures into an overall rating lack any defensible empirical or theoretical basis.”</p>
<p>“2. Apart from the weights, however, we were disturbed by how little was known about the statistical properties of the measures or how knowledge of these properties might be used in creating the measures. For example, the simple correlation matrix among the variables has apparently not been computed. This would tell us whether some of the present measures are redundant, or whether some are contributing more to the discrimination among colleges and universities than others.”</p>