A little off topic...but it’s the off-season and it reminds me of the adage ‘if you ain’t cheatin, you ain’t trying’
https://www.inquirer.com/news/temple-fox...10416.html
A few years ago, Temple fired it’s long-time dean of the business school. Now the dean has been charged with fraud...manipulating data submitted to US News in order improve the schools’ rankings. The article is basically a tutorial on the scheme (a few confidants, knowledge of the data US News audits, a statistics professor to model simulations, etc.). Stories about manipulating these beauty contest rankings have been around for decades. A Federal indictment is new. Temple’s on-line MBA ranking improved from #28 to #1...creating the initial concern by the university president.
This is the delimna companies have bcoming up with any kind of performance based metric for employees as well. As soon as you come up with any metric for measuring performance, employees immediately figure out ways to game the system to increase their performance rating.
(04-17-2021 06:29 AM)Wahoowa84 Wrote: [ -> ]A little off topic...but it’s the off-season and it reminds me of the adage ‘if you ain’t cheatin, you ain’t trying’
https://www.inquirer.com/news/temple-fox...10416.html
A few years ago, Temple fired it’s long-time dean of the business school. Now the dean has been charged with fraud...manipulating data submitted to US News in order improve the schools’ rankings.
The real takeaway here is a refutation of those who, when US News rankings are mentioned around here, dismiss it by saying "nobody in academia cares about US News rankings".
Believe me, they do, which is why a Dean would risk his career to manipulate them.
I agree admins take rankings seriously. They get to brag when they have a good ranking. Helps student recruiting. Get to thumb your noses at rivals when you're higher too.
I Know App has used their rankings to market the university and has for 20 years. I grew up an hour away from Boone but we had two billboards in town with App's #1 ranking in one of the US News & Report categories. If admins didn't take it seriously, they wouldn't acknowledge it.
(04-17-2021 08:21 AM)quo vadis Wrote: [ -> ] (04-17-2021 06:29 AM)Wahoowa84 Wrote: [ -> ]A little off topic...but it’s the off-season and it reminds me of the adage ‘if you ain’t cheatin, you ain’t trying’
https://www.inquirer.com/news/temple-fox...10416.html
A few years ago, Temple fired it’s long-time dean of the business school. Now the dean has been charged with fraud...manipulating data submitted to US News in order improve the schools’ rankings.
The real takeaway here is a refutation of those who, when US News rankings are mentioned around here, dismiss it by saying "nobody in academia cares about US News rankings".
Believe me, they do, which is why a Dean would risk his career to manipulate them.
Yep. In this case the Dean was using the US News rankings to solicit donations and applications.
Down the road from Temple, you had Villanova semi-recently converting from a regional university tier to national university one, and landed around the top 50. I don’t think you make that jump unless you know whereabouts you’ll land.
And that some of the top university speciality programs decided not to even enter consideration for rankings, because they knew their product value took a nosedive during COVID? Yes, they care. They all care.
Semi-related, but there’s a Netflix doc on the admissions scandal that was done by that guy leaning on athletics programs to take wealthy parents’ kids...talks about the exclusivity thing. It’s intentional.
An added stinger in that Temple story, not unlike what happened at Penn State with Paterno and Spanier...all this going down, and Porat is still a tenured faculty member.
As if tenure is stronger than diamond.
It seems that academia cares about US News Rankings because it's the most reviewed ranking by the public. It may or may not be the most accurate but if tens of millions of people consider it when deciding on a college, then it becomes important to academia.
(04-21-2021 10:13 AM)BePcr07 Wrote: [ -> ]It seems that academia cares about US News Rankings because it's the most reviewed ranking by the public. It may or may not be the most accurate but if tens of millions of people consider it when deciding on a college, then it becomes important to academia.
Yes, the US News rankings are highly valued by the *consumers* (prospective students and their parents), so academia has to take them seriously regardless of their personal feelings about them (which are almost uniformly negative).
I've said this before, but part of why the US News rankings seem to have such traction is that they actually *do* make intuitive sense at least at the top level. The top 25 or so schools in the US News rankings generally are the toughest ones to get into admissions-wise, whereas some other rankings that use criteria that end up putting schools like Harvard and Stanford lower simply aren't taken as seriously since it doesn't reflect reality.
The US News rankings actually have an even GREATER impact on law schools. There's a specific Top 14 tier (not top 15 - it's top *14*) of law schools that top law firms and prestigious judicial clerkships target. Why? It's because the composition of top 14 of the US News law school rankings have never changed in several decades up until this year (where UCLA pulled ahead of Georgetown to take the #14 spot). While schools might have shuffled positions *within* the top 14, this year was the very first year where a school from the outside of that group was able to break in. It became a self-fulfilling prophecy - the more that the top 14 became a clear distinguishing mark for law schools, the more top applicants applied to those particular law schools and the more they entrenched themselves within that top 14.
(04-21-2021 05:57 AM)The Cutter of Bish Wrote: [ -> ]Down the road from Temple, you had Villanova semi-recently converting from a regional university tier to national university one, and landed around the top 50. I don’t think you make that jump unless you know whereabouts you’ll land.
And that some of the top university speciality programs decided not to even enter consideration for rankings, because they knew their product value took a nosedive during COVID? Yes, they care. They all care.
Semi-related, but there’s a Netflix doc on the admissions scandal that was done by that guy leaning on athletics programs to take wealthy parents’ kids...talks about the exclusivity thing. It’s intentional.
‘Operation Varsity Blues’ is a great documentary...a classic first-world problem. Rich people have the money to corrupt the system, so college athletics becomes the vehicle for the corruption. Yale soccer and Stanford sailing coaches provide real faces to the ethics conundrum.
(04-21-2021 10:56 AM)Wahoowa84 Wrote: [ -> ] (04-21-2021 05:57 AM)The Cutter of Bish Wrote: [ -> ]Down the road from Temple, you had Villanova semi-recently converting from a regional university tier to national university one, and landed around the top 50. I don’t think you make that jump unless you know whereabouts you’ll land.
And that some of the top university speciality programs decided not to even enter consideration for rankings, because they knew their product value took a nosedive during COVID? Yes, they care. They all care.
Semi-related, but there’s a Netflix doc on the admissions scandal that was done by that guy leaning on athletics programs to take wealthy parents’ kids...talks about the exclusivity thing. It’s intentional.
‘Operation Varsity Blues’ is a great documentary...a classic first-world problem. Rich people have the money to corrupt the system, so college athletics becomes the vehicle for the corruption. Yale soccer and Stanford sailing coaches provide real faces to the ethics conundrum.
What's interesting is that I still don't think much of the general public quite understands what Operation Varsity Blues actually exposed, which is how much elite colleges have dedicated slots for admissions that are completely separate from grades and test scores and if you don't have the proper "hook", then your chances of getting in are slim-to-none even with a top tier academic record. For instance, it's really important to note that the slots at Stanford were *only* going to go to sailing team members. Obviously, the fact that there was a scheme to fraudulently lie about applicants' sailing, soccer or other athletic achievements (or lack thereof) was horrific and completely unjust, but the point is that it's not as if though a top academic student from an inner city public school (or even a wealthy suburb, for that matter) didn't get in because of the Operation Varsity Blues scheme. What actually happened is that legitimate sailing, soccer and other athletic recruits were passed over as a result of the scandal - those are the specific people that didn't get in (as opposed to the general population of smart hard working kids).
That's why the scheme worked in the first place. There is no better *guarantee* (not just a preference) to get into an elite school (even top Division III schools like the University of Chicago) than being a recruited athlete. You're legitimately better off being a recruited athlete than having your parents give a million dollar donation to a school when it comes to the Ivy League and other elite college admissions and this whole scandal reflected the current system. That hasn't changed at all and, frankly, colleges are even going to be more dependent on holistic admissions processes as they go to more test-optional (or even test-blind) admissions processes.
Further to that point, the people involved in the Operation Varsity Blues scandal were all rich... but not so rich that they could write an eight figure check for a donation to an elite college that is really the only way that you can *guarantee* admission (not just get a preference) for a student in the same manner as being a recruited athlete. Even a seven figure donation honestly doesn't get noticed by the Ivy League for admissions purposes at this point. This is also why the scheme worked for so long - these people could instead pay a six figure bribe for their kids to get athletic recruit status, meaning they paid a lot less than the massive legitimate donation required to get an elite school to notice you and that spot is effectively guaranteed as a recruited athlete.
Everyone involved in Operation Varsity Blues were completely horrible people. I just think the media reflexively went to a general "These rich people are taking away slots from *your* kids!" storyline when it's a lot more complicated than that here. Too many people don't understand the holistic admissions process that elite colleges use (and the ones that *do* understand it tend to be wealthy families as opposed to lower income families).
(04-21-2021 06:04 AM)The Cutter of Bish Wrote: [ -> ]An added stinger in that Temple story, not unlike what happened at Penn State with Paterno and Spanier...all this going down, and Porat is still a tenured faculty member.
As if tenure is stronger than diamond.
You dropped this:
https://www.inquirer.com/philly/business...ation.html
(04-21-2021 10:27 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote: [ -> ] (04-21-2021 10:13 AM)BePcr07 Wrote: [ -> ]It seems that academia cares about US News Rankings because it's the most reviewed ranking by the public. It may or may not be the most accurate but if tens of millions of people consider it when deciding on a college, then it becomes important to academia.
Yes, the US News rankings are highly valued by the *consumers* (prospective students and their parents), so academia has to take them seriously regardless of their personal feelings about them (which are almost uniformly negative).
I've said this before, but part of why the US News rankings seem to have such traction is that they actually *do* make intuitive sense at least at the top level. The top 25 or so schools in the US News rankings generally are the toughest ones to get into admissions-wise, whereas some other rankings that use criteria that end up putting schools like Harvard and Stanford lower simply aren't taken as seriously since it doesn't reflect reality.
The US News rankings actually have an even GREATER impact on law schools. There's a specific Top 14 tier (not top 15 - it's top *14*) of law schools that top law firms and prestigious judicial clerkships target. Why? It's because the composition of top 14 of the US News law school rankings have never changed in several decades up until this year (where UCLA pulled ahead of Georgetown to take the #14 spot). While schools might have shuffled positions *within* the top 14, this year was the very first year where a school from the outside of that group was able to break in. It became a self-fulfilling prophecy - the more that the top 14 became a clear distinguishing mark for law schools, the more top applicants applied to those particular law schools and the more they entrenched themselves within that top 14.
I thought there was one year that UT peeked in 14? I think it was 2018. Am I misremembering?
(04-17-2021 08:21 AM)quo vadis Wrote: [ -> ] (04-17-2021 06:29 AM)Wahoowa84 Wrote: [ -> ]A little off topic...but it’s the off-season and it reminds me of the adage ‘if you ain’t cheatin, you ain’t trying’
https://www.inquirer.com/news/temple-fox...10416.html
A few years ago, Temple fired it’s long-time dean of the business school. Now the dean has been charged with fraud...manipulating data submitted to US News in order improve the schools’ rankings.
The real takeaway here is a refutation of those who, when US News rankings are mentioned around here, dismiss it by saying "nobody in academia cares about US News rankings".
Believe me, they do, which is why a Dean would risk his career to manipulate them.
But it also shows that those of us who dismiss USNWR as easily manipulated were right as well...
Publishers "game" the NYT "Best Seller List."
More recently, it's been revealed that studios manipulate ticket sales for release dates by buying blocks of tickets and ratings through critics and websites like "Rotten Tomatoes."
So...Temple gets revealed trying to "game the US News and World Reports" evaluations. I'm pretty sure other schools do it as well. There has been scrutiny over Universities accurately reporting on-campus sexual assault and rape reports (ie. the McCleary Act) to make their campuses "look safer" than they actually are. Other Universities have been shown to jimmy their athlete's grades to help prop up their APR.
There are liars, damn liars, and then statisticians.
(04-17-2021 08:21 AM)quo vadis Wrote: [ -> ] (04-17-2021 06:29 AM)Wahoowa84 Wrote: [ -> ]A little off topic...but it’s the off-season and it reminds me of the adage ‘if you ain’t cheatin, you ain’t trying’
https://www.inquirer.com/news/temple-fox...10416.html
A few years ago, Temple fired it’s long-time dean of the business school. Now the dean has been charged with fraud...manipulating data submitted to US News in order improve the schools’ rankings.
The real takeaway here is a refutation of those who, when US News rankings are mentioned around here, dismiss it by saying "nobody in academia cares about US News rankings".
Believe me, they do, which is why a Dean would risk his career to manipulate them.
They don't directly matter to status within academia, but they sure as hell matter to your enrollment. It's about marketing & tuition revenue.
But of course, the greater the demand for places, the more selective you can be in acceptances without turning back revenue, so it can also be used indirectly to juke the stats that do have an influence on your actual academic status.
Years ago, US News & WR had one Duke major/department ranked in the top ten.
The problem: Duke didn't offer that major and had only one professor teaching the subject matter.
(04-26-2021 01:54 PM)Sicembear11 Wrote: [ -> ] (04-21-2021 10:27 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote: [ -> ] (04-21-2021 10:13 AM)BePcr07 Wrote: [ -> ]It seems that academia cares about US News Rankings because it's the most reviewed ranking by the public. It may or may not be the most accurate but if tens of millions of people consider it when deciding on a college, then it becomes important to academia.
Yes, the US News rankings are highly valued by the *consumers* (prospective students and their parents), so academia has to take them seriously regardless of their personal feelings about them (which are almost uniformly negative).
I've said this before, but part of why the US News rankings seem to have such traction is that they actually *do* make intuitive sense at least at the top level. The top 25 or so schools in the US News rankings generally are the toughest ones to get into admissions-wise, whereas some other rankings that use criteria that end up putting schools like Harvard and Stanford lower simply aren't taken as seriously since it doesn't reflect reality.
The US News rankings actually have an even GREATER impact on law schools. There's a specific Top 14 tier (not top 15 - it's top *14*) of law schools that top law firms and prestigious judicial clerkships target. Why? It's because the composition of top 14 of the US News law school rankings have never changed in several decades up until this year (where UCLA pulled ahead of Georgetown to take the #14 spot). While schools might have shuffled positions *within* the top 14, this year was the very first year where a school from the outside of that group was able to break in. It became a self-fulfilling prophecy - the more that the top 14 became a clear distinguishing mark for law schools, the more top applicants applied to those particular law schools and the more they entrenched themselves within that top 14.
I thought there was one year that UT peeked in 14? I think it was 2018. Am I misremembering?
You are correct, it was in 2017 (which rankings are for the 2018 year).
https://abovethelaw.com/2017/03/is-t14-d...all-along/
(04-27-2021 10:12 AM)pjm.2021 Wrote: [ -> ] (04-26-2021 01:54 PM)Sicembear11 Wrote: [ -> ] (04-21-2021 10:27 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote: [ -> ] (04-21-2021 10:13 AM)BePcr07 Wrote: [ -> ]It seems that academia cares about US News Rankings because it's the most reviewed ranking by the public. It may or may not be the most accurate but if tens of millions of people consider it when deciding on a college, then it becomes important to academia.
Yes, the US News rankings are highly valued by the *consumers* (prospective students and their parents), so academia has to take them seriously regardless of their personal feelings about them (which are almost uniformly negative).
I've said this before, but part of why the US News rankings seem to have such traction is that they actually *do* make intuitive sense at least at the top level. The top 25 or so schools in the US News rankings generally are the toughest ones to get into admissions-wise, whereas some other rankings that use criteria that end up putting schools like Harvard and Stanford lower simply aren't taken as seriously since it doesn't reflect reality.
The US News rankings actually have an even GREATER impact on law schools. There's a specific Top 14 tier (not top 15 - it's top *14*) of law schools that top law firms and prestigious judicial clerkships target. Why? It's because the composition of top 14 of the US News law school rankings have never changed in several decades up until this year (where UCLA pulled ahead of Georgetown to take the #14 spot). While schools might have shuffled positions *within* the top 14, this year was the very first year where a school from the outside of that group was able to break in. It became a self-fulfilling prophecy - the more that the top 14 became a clear distinguishing mark for law schools, the more top applicants applied to those particular law schools and the more they entrenched themselves within that top 14.
I thought there was one year that UT peeked in 14? I think it was 2018. Am I misremembering?
You are correct, it was in 2017 (which rankings are for the 2018 year).
https://abovethelaw.com/2017/03/is-t14-d...all-along/
I stand corrected!
(04-22-2021 12:01 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote: [ -> ] (04-21-2021 10:56 AM)Wahoowa84 Wrote: [ -> ] (04-21-2021 05:57 AM)The Cutter of Bish Wrote: [ -> ]Down the road from Temple, you had Villanova semi-recently converting from a regional university tier to national university one, and landed around the top 50. I don’t think you make that jump unless you know whereabouts you’ll land.
And that some of the top university speciality programs decided not to even enter consideration for rankings, because they knew their product value took a nosedive during COVID? Yes, they care. They all care.
Semi-related, but there’s a Netflix doc on the admissions scandal that was done by that guy leaning on athletics programs to take wealthy parents’ kids...talks about the exclusivity thing. It’s intentional.
‘Operation Varsity Blues’ is a great documentary...a classic first-world problem. Rich people have the money to corrupt the system, so college athletics becomes the vehicle for the corruption. Yale soccer and Stanford sailing coaches provide real faces to the ethics conundrum.
What's interesting is that I still don't think much of the general public quite understands what Operation Varsity Blues actually exposed, which is how much elite colleges have dedicated slots for admissions that are completely separate from grades and test scores and if you don't have the proper "hook", then your chances of getting in are slim-to-none even with a top tier academic record. For instance, it's really important to note that the slots at Stanford were *only* going to go to sailing team members. Obviously, the fact that there was a scheme to fraudulently lie about applicants' sailing, soccer or other athletic achievements (or lack thereof) was horrific and completely unjust, but the point is that it's not as if though a top academic student from an inner city public school (or even a wealthy suburb, for that matter) didn't get in because of the Operation Varsity Blues scheme. What actually happened is that legitimate sailing, soccer and other athletic recruits were passed over as a result of the scandal - those are the specific people that didn't get in (as opposed to the general population of smart hard working kids).
That's why the scheme worked in the first place. There is no better *guarantee* (not just a preference) to get into an elite school (even top Division III schools like the University of Chicago) than being a recruited athlete. You're legitimately better off being a recruited athlete than having your parents give a million dollar donation to a school when it comes to the Ivy League and other elite college admissions and this whole scandal reflected the current system. That hasn't changed at all and, frankly, colleges are even going to be more dependent on holistic admissions processes as they go to more test-optional (or even test-blind) admissions processes.
Further to that point, the people involved in the Operation Varsity Blues scandal were all rich... but not so rich that they could write an eight figure check for a donation to an elite college that is really the only way that you can *guarantee* admission (not just get a preference) for a student in the same manner as being a recruited athlete. Even a seven figure donation honestly doesn't get noticed by the Ivy League for admissions purposes at this point. This is also why the scheme worked for so long - these people could instead pay a six figure bribe for their kids to get athletic recruit status, meaning they paid a lot less than the massive legitimate donation required to get an elite school to notice you and that spot is effectively guaranteed as a recruited athlete.
Everyone involved in Operation Varsity Blues were completely horrible people. I just think the media reflexively went to a general "These rich people are taking away slots from *your* kids!" storyline when it's a lot more complicated than that here. Too many people don't understand the holistic admissions process that elite colleges use (and the ones that *do* understand it tend to be wealthy families as opposed to lower income families).
There was a funny explanation of the college admissions process, by the lead character, in the documentary:
1) There is the "front door"...he describes normal admissions as unlikely because the criteria is holistic and students need to stand-out from an overwhelming volume of applicants.
2) There is the "back door"...he estimates that impacting Ivy League admissions would require a $50M+ donation. Boasting that children of legacy students who are donating seven figures sums to the university would never get preference.
3) There is the "side door"...this is mechanism were kids with exceptional talents, such as athletes, are admitted. His forte was understanding (and corrupting) the process of the "side door" admissions at elite universities.