Undergraduate Departmental Rankings

xiggi
Thu, 16 Feb 2006 13:50:58 +0000

Eadad, the closest thing should be The Gourman Report. However, I am not sure it is still worth a recommendation, especially since the 10th edition had a Princeton Review connection, which is almost synonymous to highly questionable value in light of the integrity of their other “surveys.”

Googling Amazon and Gourman will provide an update on availability.

I would suggest to scout the UIUC website. They maintain quite a list of various reports.

http://www.library.uiuc.edu/edx/rankings.htm

From sports to education, Americans are captivated by rankings. Everyone wants their favorite team to be the best, and every parent wants their child to attend the best college or university. While sports teams can compete on the playing field to determine who is better on a given day, institutions of higher education have no commonly agreed upon measures to allow for the comparison of teaching and research programs. The overwhelming variety in size and purpose of institutions makes the prospect of comparing colleges a daunting one for students, parents, and the colleges themselves.

For many years, various bodies have undertaken statistical and reputational rankings of colleges and attempted to provide information to prospective students. Increasingly, the importance and validity of college rankings is a hotly debated issue. Many universities, including highly ranked ones, are beginning to question both the data and methods used by some ranking services. Of special concern are the aspects of the rankings which deal with the difficult to measure concept of institutional reputation. At this site, you will find links to many ranking services, along with cautionary notes and a discussion of the ongoing controversy over rankings.

The listing of items on our site’s pages in no way constitutes an endorsement of a ranking service by the Education and Social Science Library or by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The purpose of our site is only to draw together and provide context to various ranking services. We hope the information found here will improve your knowledge about rankings in general and help you better use these services. Toward that end, we highly encourage you to peruse our Caution and Controversy page. Our College Rankings Bibliography provides numerous articles on the topic. In addition, the UIUC Office of Publications and Marketing has prepared a publication which lists the national rankings of the various UIUC departments.

Also, taking a peak at the manner UT-Austin presents its rankings is instructive: