This might be an oversimplification of the issue, but a few points:
-
how is UChicago Med going to outrank a multi-billion dollar medical enterprise with the word “Cancer” in the title, and would it even be reasonable to do so?
-
Cleveland, Mayo, UCSF - and, locally, Rush - are dedicated Health Sciences academic institutions, not part of a diverse private research university.
-
Obviously NU, JHU,Duke and Stanford ARE diverse private research uni’s; however, with the exception of Stanford, all those med. centers are significantly larger than UChicago. Size matters.
-
Looking at the affiliated medical schools of the above: all are larger than UChicago in terms of enrollees (nearly 500 compared to under 400). A 25% difference - but that might be enough to affect things like having a critical mass of faculty for specialized research, etc. which would obviously impact the rankings of the medical center.
Not saying there aren’t administrative problems with UChicago’s Health Sciences division and affiliated entities. Just thinking that those rankings are kind of comparing apples to oranges. Unlike college rankings, which at least separate the LAC’s from research universities (and then have separate sub-rankings for public vs. private), the hospital rankings are lumping very different entities all together. That can result in less meaningful comparisons. This point has also been made upthread.