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University Academic Rankings
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TomThumb Offline
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Post: #41
RE: University Academic Rankings
(11-03-2011 11:07 AM)ecumbh1999 Wrote:  Or in some cases, I'm going to F-up the other schools in the state, cause I can, see UF, UNC, NCSU, Ole Miss, Miss ST, Bama, and others pruposely giving schools like UCF, ECU, App ST., UNC Charlotte, USM, UAB, and others the lowest possible rating on those peer reviews to hurt those schools. At best schools shouldn't be allowed to rate a school in the same State.

Sounds like the coaches poll. 03-lmfao
11-03-2011 11:15 AM
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AtlanticLeague Offline
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Post: #42
RE: University Academic Rankings
(11-03-2011 11:13 AM)TomThumb Wrote:  Keep in mind these rankings are only for undergraduate education.

Graduate programs and research are arguably a bigger deal with college presidents in BCS conferences, but it's much much harder to rank per school.

That's why it's a bit deceptive. Wake Forest might be ranked above both Florida and Georgia, but AQ conferences would much rather have large state flagship research schools than small private schools.

For purely undergraduate rankings though, the US News rankings are the most in line with actual student preferences. The differences are minute enough within 10-20 spots, but a school ranked 50th will generally win the cross-admit battle with a school ranked 80th.

For graduate rankings, you would generally use ARWU: http://www.arwu.org/ARWU2010.jsp

The B1G generally destroys other conferences on this ranking because its about doctoral research, not undergrad liberal arts.
11-03-2011 11:38 AM
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TailGator Offline
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Post: #43
RE: University Academic Rankings
(11-03-2011 11:06 AM)TerryD Wrote:  
(11-03-2011 10:54 AM)mlb Wrote:  
(11-03-2011 10:31 AM)TailGator Wrote:  Thanks for starting this tread, I was getting frustrated with all the academic relevance banter in conference realignment. I was very close to starting a thread on this topic myself. Personally, I think the ranking systems are seemingly arbitrary and MANY schools chase these arbitrary criterion for marketing purposes. I don't have time to fully make my case at this moment. But I will revisit this thread later.

Don't forget, a large portion of the USN formula is based on "peer reviews." Talk about a system that is flawed... you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours.

Well, here is another academic metric:

"The Brainy Bowl

The schools that have the biggest percentage of varsity teams with perfect Graduation Success Rate scores:

This is a confusing metric to me. Sure, graduation is a good thing. But does that fact that everyone graduates mean that the teaching and students are better, or does it mean the classes and material are easier?
11-03-2011 11:40 AM
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Frank the Tank Offline
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Post: #44
RE: University Academic Rankings
(11-03-2011 11:13 AM)TomThumb Wrote:  Keep in mind these rankings are only for undergraduate education.

Graduate programs and research are arguably a bigger deal with college presidents in BCS conferences, but it's much much harder to rank per school.

That's why it's a bit deceptive. Wake Forest might be ranked above both Florida and Georgia, but AQ conferences would much rather have large state flagship research schools than small private schools.

For purely undergraduate rankings though, the US News rankings are the most in line with actual student preferences. The differences are minute enough within 10-20 spots, but a school ranked 50th will generally win the cross-admit battle with a school ranked 80th.

Agreed. Grad rankings are much different - those are what the Big Ten really focuses upon.

Your last point is what I was really getting at in terms of the "smell test". When you look at the US News rankings in terms of tiers (top 25, 25-50, 50-75, etc.), it generally correlates with how students choose schools and then employers see the same later on. Not *everyone* does it that way (as different students and employers have different needs that can't be compartmentalized into a single ranking), but when looking at the aggregate, the rankings by and large reflect the general academic perception of schools. Once again, that doesn't mean that the rankings aren't flawed (i.e. the recent inclusion of guidance counselor scores is pretty ridiculous), but when comparing the US News rankings to other rankings out there (such as the Princeton Review and Forbes), the US News rankings are much closer to what the real world thinks. That's why they get traction in a way that other rankings haven't. It might be a self-fulfilling prophecy in that sense. Students with top 50-caliber grades/test scores gravitate toward top 50 schools, so the rankings have been self-perpetuating themselves.
11-03-2011 11:45 AM
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TomThumb Offline
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Post: #45
RE: University Academic Rankings
(11-03-2011 11:38 AM)AtlanticLeague Wrote:  For graduate rankings, you would generally use ARWU: http://www.arwu.org/ARWU2010.jsp

The B1G generally destroys other conferences on this ranking because its about doctoral research, not undergrad liberal arts.

For how much people complain about the US News undergrad rankings, I find all the graduate/research rankings way more subjective.

Besides Harvard always having the top spot, the rest of the lists always vary by a huge amount based on what criteria the ranking decides to focus on.
11-03-2011 11:50 AM
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AtlanticLeague Offline
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Post: #46
RE: University Academic Rankings
(11-03-2011 11:45 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  
(11-03-2011 11:13 AM)TomThumb Wrote:  Keep in mind these rankings are only for undergraduate education.

Graduate programs and research are arguably a bigger deal with college presidents in BCS conferences, but it's much much harder to rank per school.

That's why it's a bit deceptive. Wake Forest might be ranked above both Florida and Georgia, but AQ conferences would much rather have large state flagship research schools than small private schools.

For purely undergraduate rankings though, the US News rankings are the most in line with actual student preferences. The differences are minute enough within 10-20 spots, but a school ranked 50th will generally win the cross-admit battle with a school ranked 80th.

Agreed. Grad rankings are much different - those are what the Big Ten really focuses upon.

Your last point is what I was really getting at in terms of the "smell test". When you look at the US News rankings in terms of tiers (top 25, 25-50, 50-75, etc.), it generally correlates with how students choose schools and then employers see the same later on. Not *everyone* does it that way (as different students and employers have different needs that can't be compartmentalized into a single ranking), but when looking at the aggregate, the rankings by and large reflect the general academic perception of schools. Once again, that doesn't mean that the rankings aren't flawed (i.e. the recent inclusion of guidance counselor scores is pretty ridiculous), but when comparing the US News rankings to other rankings out there (such as the Princeton Review and Forbes), the US News rankings are much closer to what the real world thinks. That's why they get traction in a way that other rankings haven't. It might be a self-fulfilling prophecy in that sense. Students with top 50-caliber grades/test scores gravitate toward top 50 schools, so the rankings have been self-perpetuating themselves.

To Frank's point, it really is about tiers: top 10, 11-25, 26-50, 51-75, 76-100, 101-150, tier 3, tier 4, unranked. Within those groups, there isn't much difference. It's when you look at the difference between that it comes out.
11-03-2011 11:50 AM
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AtlanticLeague Offline
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Post: #47
RE: University Academic Rankings
(11-03-2011 11:50 AM)TomThumb Wrote:  
(11-03-2011 11:38 AM)AtlanticLeague Wrote:  For graduate rankings, you would generally use ARWU: http://www.arwu.org/ARWU2010.jsp

The B1G generally destroys other conferences on this ranking because its about doctoral research, not undergrad liberal arts.

For how much people complain about the US News undergrad rankings, I find all the graduate/research rankings way more subjective.

Besides Harvard always having the top spot, the rest of the lists always vary by a huge amount based on what criteria the ranking decides to focus on.

From ARWU wiki:
The ranking compares 1200 higher education institutions worldwide according to a formula that took into account:
- alumni winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals (10%)
- staff winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals (20%)
- highly-cited researchers in 21 broad subject categories (20%)
- articles published in the journals Nature and Science (20%)
- the Science Citation Index and Social Sciences Citation Index (20%)
- the per capita academic performance (on the indicators above) of an institution (10%)
11-03-2011 11:55 AM
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TailGator Offline
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Post: #48
RE: University Academic Rankings
(11-03-2011 11:38 AM)AtlanticLeague Wrote:  For graduate rankings, you would generally use ARWU: http://www.arwu.org/ARWU2010.jsp

The B1G generally destroys other conferences on this ranking because its about doctoral research, not undergrad liberal arts.

Here are the US rankings to make things clearer.
http://www.arwu.org/Country2010Main.jsp?...d%20States

In any case, I mentioned this in the other thread that ranks research universities with the leiden model. These two methods try to rank the same thing( research ) and still get different results.

http://media.leidenuniv.nl/legacy/leiden...ranje2.pdf

Anytime a university has publishing quotas for their professors, which most of these top ranked institutions do, the professors are more pre-occupied with getting published, than they are teaching. So it really comes down to what you value when you rank "academics". Is it the undergrad teaching, or the doctoral research?

As mentioned in the other thread also, how do you quantify the quality of the research?

Does any of this matter, since all of the instituions are researching different things? As a research student, you'll go to the school that specializes in your area of expertise and not who has the most publications for all-research.
(This post was last modified: 11-03-2011 12:19 PM by TailGator.)
11-03-2011 12:12 PM
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Post: #49
RE: University Academic Rankings
There's plenty of reason to question the accuracy of any academic ranking system, but in the context of choosing institutions to affiliate with in an athletic conference, what matters is perception, not reality. If most people think Boise State is the equivalent of Harvard, it doesn't matter if they're being complete idiots, because that won't affect the benefits of being associated with Boise. You're not asking them to do your research for you. You just want to hang out with the cool crowd. And in that sense, the USNWR rankings are useful because they're both heavily weighed towards perception through their use of peer surveys, and have a huge effect on public perception by being the most well-known source of academic rankings.
11-03-2011 12:58 PM
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Post: #50
RE: University Academic Rankings
(11-03-2011 09:40 AM)AtlanticLeague Wrote:  Research funding only accounts for ~10% of the USNews rankings so it will probably only move UMD 4 or 5 spots.

It's not exactly a straight 10% on the research. ""Financial resources are measured by the average spending per full-time-equivalent student on instruction, research, public service, academic support, student services and institutional support during the 2009 and 2010 fiscal years. The number of full-time-equivalent students is equal to the number of full-time students plus one third of the number of part-time students. (Note: This includes both undergraduate and graduate students.)

We first scaled the public service and research values by the percentage of full-time-equivalent undergraduate students attending the school. Next, we added in total instruction, academic support, student services, institutional support, and operations and maintenance (for public institutions only) and then divided by the number of full-time-equivalent students. After calculating this value, we applied a logarithmic transformation to the spending per full-time-equivalent student, prior to standardizing the value. This calculation process was done for all schools."

Here's its criteria (with % weight). source.

*Undergraduate reputation surveys (43% response rate) from peer reviews (15%)
*6-year graduation rate (16%)
*financial resources, average spending per student on instruction, research, student services, and related educational expenditures NOT including sports, dorms, and hospitals (10%)
*Undergraduate reputation surveys (13.4% response rate) from high school guidance counselors (7.5%)
*SAT (CR+M)/ACT Composite score (7.5%)
*performance on predicted six year graduate rate (7.5%)
*faculty salary, adjusted for cost of living (7%)
*proportion of classes with fewer than 20 students (6%)
*freshman in to 10% of high school class (6%)
*alumni giving rate (5%)
*freshman retention rate (4%)
*proportion of professors with highest degrees (3%)
*proportion of classes with 50 or more students (2%)
*applicant acceptance rate (1.5%)
*student faculty ratio (1%)
*proportion of faculty who are full time (1%)


Always know the methodology. And these weights are completely arbitrary. Are student:faculty ratio and the proportion of full time faculty really five times less important than what % of alumni donate? How do you even justify that? And it is fairly obvious why they started giving so much weight to high school guidance counselors last year.
(This post was last modified: 11-03-2011 02:45 PM by CrazyPaco.)
11-03-2011 02:43 PM
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