University of Chicago v. University of Pennsylvania (CAS)

[6seasonsandamovi]

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Even the University of Chicago page to which YOU linked acknowledges that:

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<p>And regarding all your points about how the NRC is still considered the gold standard.</p>

<p>That page was from 1995. Things have changed since then, and few would acknowledge NRCs position as the gold standard of academic rankings. Especially not for undergraduate programs, which is what the author of this thread is concerned with. In fact, the NRC rankings for 2010 have actually been subject to a lot of criticism, from members of the NRC committee itself, especially since the ranking does not include ANY measure of reputational standing or perceived quality. For instance, the linguistics ranking puts UMass Amherst at 3rd and MIT at 9th, even though MIT is widely regarded to have the strongest linguistic program in the world (esp. for doctoral studies), something that the 1995 NRC rankings recognized, putting it first by a huge margin.</p>

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Again I ask regarding the bold, italicized language: based on what? Certainly not based on both the 1990s and 2010 NRC rankings,

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<p>I cited rankings from at least 3 sources, which make up the most widely cited of the national and international rankings today, (USNews, THE, and QS. ARWU would round the list out but they don’t have any rankings for the humanities). </p>

<p>Now, while you are correct, that in the NRC:</p>

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Penn consistently ranks higher than Chicago in 4 fields–English, Comparative Literature, Linguistics, and Romance Languages–essentially ties Chicago over time in 2 fields–Art History and Classics–and trails Chicago by less than 10 places in 2 fields–Music and Religion.

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<p>On the other hand, Chicago outranks Penn by a small margin in the humanities (even ignoring the social sciences component) in USNews, and outranks Penn by a landslide in the other rankings (sometimes by 3 digit numbers, but lets not go there). These rankings embody the same factors as the NRC, including teaching quality (esp USNews) and scholarly output (esp. THE), but most importantly, they include the reputation and perceived quality of an institution. </p>

<p>Instead, the NRC focuses on measuring scholarly output, but as a study on the NRC concluded, “We caution against using the 2010 NRC data or metrics for any assessment-oriented study of research productivity”. Furthermore, the NRC attaches weight to other criteria that it has been strongly criticized for, including diversity, aid, etc. and there have been reports of wild inaccuracies in their data. </p>