US News Engineering Rankings

GoBlue81
Sat, 16 May 2009 01:20:57 +0000

The FSP Index is, as its name implies, a measure of the Faculty Scholarly Productivity for individual research university departments. It’s not necessarily equivalent to a measure of the overall departmental strength and prestige:

1) It’s more relevant to count ONLY publications and citations on prestigious journals and conferences; counting all publications weaken the impact of significant works.

2) FSP does not account APPROPRIATELY for the prestige and contributions of big name professors who are leaders in their own fields.

3) FSP counts only Federal grants; it fails to account for industrial grants and endowed chairs.

Scholarly productivity is not a good indicator of academic excellence. It’s certainly not intended as a guide for picking undergraduate/master programs … especially for engineering and other professional fields.

Let’s look at a couple examples:

CHEMICAL ENGINEERING (FSP ranking):

1. UC-Berkeley

2. Cal Tech

3. Wisconsin

4. UT-Austin

5. Stanford

6. Michigan

7. Penn

8. Delaware

9. UCLA

10. U of Washington

What is wrong with this picture?

Where are Minnesota and MIT, two of the four schools that’s been ranked as the top 5 chemical engineering programs for the past 30 years or more?

ACCOUNTING (FSP ranking):

1. Wisconsin

2. NYU

3. Emory

4. Kansas

5. Stanford

6. Michigan State

7. U of Iowa

8. Arizona State

9. Missouri-Columbia

10. Penn State

What is wrong with this picture?

Where are UTexas and UIUC, the perennial #1 and #2 accounting programs for this decade? In fact, this list is almost entire wrong. Compare it to the industrial standard - Public Accounting Report’s Annual Professor’s Survey:

Undergraduate Programs:

1. UTexas-Austin

2. UIUC

3. Brigham Young

4. Notre Dame

5. USC

6. Ohio State

7. Georgia

8. Indiana

9. Penn State

10. Texas A&M

Graduate Programs:

1. Brigham Young

2. UIUC

3. UTexas-Austin

4. USC

5. Michigan

6. Notre Dame

7. UNC-Chapel Hill

8. Texas A&M

9. Indiana

10. Georgia

Doctoral Programs:

1. Chicago

2. Stanford

3. Penn Wharton

4. UTexas-Austin

5. Michigan

6. UIUC

7. Cornell

8. U of Washington

9. U of Iowa

10. Harvard