The Washington Monthly’s got a new college ranking system, with the tagline: “Other guides ask what colleges can do for you. We ask what colleges are doing for the country.” I like this idea, if not necessarily its specific implementation. But of course, I’m only writing about it because my Alma Matter came in first!
The premise is very good:
The first question we asked was, what does America need from its universities? From this starting point, we came up with three central criteria: Universities should be engines of social mobility, they should produce the academic minds and scientific research that advance knowledge and drive economic growth, and they should inculcate and encourage an ethic of service.
This may or may not be how you want to choose a college to go to, but it’s definitely a better way than looking at incoming SAT scores to evaluate its contribution to society. There may be a lots issues with the implementation — to name just one example, a good portion of the national service part of the rankings comes from ROTC participation, which would penalize colleges who have banned ROTC from campus due to its discriminatory elligibility requirements (still, I think a few of these schools are in the top 10 liberal arts colleges, so they must be making up for it in other ways).
I was slightly surprised to see MIT on top — the research component is obvious, since the main thing they weight is research funding and the production of science and engineering PhDs, and its always been way ahead of its peers on social mobility. This was one of the reasons I went there — I liked the idea of being in a place where everyone was there on their own merits, and not at a place full of legacy children. But I had never thought of MIT as being so good with the service — most people were into their work, and not so in tune with the outside world. Apparently this is a new development: in this arena, “MIT leaped from near the bottom of the pack three years ago to near the top today.” Happy to hear it.
August 26th, 2005 at 12:33 pm
Anyone read Augustine’s OpEd in July’s APS news? (Backpage).
There’s a throwaway comment on why the Kewl Kids in DC don’t like academia so much anymore. Apparently the “elite” universities don’t automatically admit the Beltway kids any more. Too many clever proles crowding them out.
It took time for that aside to sink in with me.
“I also found a certain unspoken reluctance by some legislators to support institutions which they view as elitist; institutions whose tuition, even after scholarships, grows at a rate considerably exceeding the growth in income of the general populace—and which rejects the sons and daughters of the Washington cognoscenti at a rate which does not go unobserved.”
Italics mine.
Oh, and it is our fault.
August 26th, 2005 at 12:55 pm
Wow…this is an interesting list, but an even more interesting essay surrounds it. Thanks for the link Risa!
(Of course, given the country’s vital role (!) of supplying entertainment to the world, surely USC -with its film school supplying the writers, directors, producers, etc, to so much of the industry, and its campus supplying settings for (it seems) almost every commercial and tv show- should be number 1, if this is a measure of service to the nation…right?…
)
Seriously though, it is nice to see recognition of some of the important cummunity work, support work, and valuable nation-building work that some universities (like USC – and several others mentioned in the essay) consider very valuable.
-cvj
August 26th, 2005 at 1:29 pm
It’s interesting enough, although I’m not sure that it should affect where anyone chooses to go. Mind you, I’m not convinced that undergrads should place too much faith in ratings that are heavily influenced by the quality fo the research done there, either.
Dare I say it, ranking universities at all based on some numerical scale seems like a pretty crappy idea. I’d rather stick to important rankings, like popular science books and physics textbooks.
August 26th, 2005 at 3:34 pm
Upon contemplation, I don’t think the premise is very good.
Something is missing here, in fact the most important role of universities: to teach people to think. I want my universities to help students approach ideas with an open mind, to understand logical arguments and fallacies, to evaluate evidence and competing claims, to see through rhetorical tricks and to express themselves in writing and speaking. It seems trite, but none of this is covered by the above three criteria.
I would love to see a system of college rankings based on that principle, although I have no idea how to do it.
August 26th, 2005 at 4:00 pm
Nah, the most important role of universities is to perpetuate themselves as a unit. Universities are adaptive self-perpetuating oligarchies.
First role, ensure their existence and generate new members; then the other useful stuff like critical thinking, scientific method, generate and preserve knowledge, professional training and socialization blah, blah etc.
Cynic? Me?
August 26th, 2005 at 4:31 pm
Sean,
I think that it would be nice to have had the word “teach” in there somewhere, but I think that it is clear that they are talking about those three central goals being acheived through teaching. You teach people about how to do research. You teach people about driving economic growth through education and innovation, you teach people about social mobility, and also through education, they acheive social mobility, etc, etc. I believe a focus on service to society and community through an educational institution is an important and good thing, and I think they do too.
Cheers,
-cvj
August 26th, 2005 at 5:10 pm
I don’t see that a focus on teaching people to get involved in society is a good thing (or a bad thing, either). I wouldn’t feel easy about telling people to do that, or that I think that they ought to do that; I’d rather stick with the subject in question (physics, say). But maybe what we’re talking about is the establishment making it possible, or easy, to do it (if the student should so wish). That seems to be fair enough; it’s in the university’s interest to get involved in its local community, I’d say (if only to avoid the ‘town versus gown’ thing). It’s also in the University’s interest to get a high profile nationally, and internationally, for things that give people the warm fuzzies.
I don’t see any real point in putting this stuff into rankings, though; it should come with enough rewards for the institution in question. Teaching is what people (undergraduates I mean, who are, rumour has it, people) should care about, I think. Research is something that other people (like, surprise, researchers and, more important, people involved in funding decisions) should be concerned about. Then again, as I say, I don’t much like rankings anyhow; anyone interested enough should do the research and get the best qualitative information they can and then visit some of the place in question. Not only will rankings based on numerical scores fail to address all important aspects in the correct proportion, but they’ll push institutions to neglect the areas less well covered by the rankings as they attempt to get higher rankings, with the rewards that will bring.
August 26th, 2005 at 5:11 pm
So, yeah, I’m with Sean, except I’ve got no heart.
August 26th, 2005 at 5:37 pm
Coming up with a ranking system for universities again raises a question akin to “who created the creator?” query in ID. Which ranking system is the best? Also, how do you give a numerical score to certain qualitative measures as the institution’s success with implementing critical thinking skills (and motivating a love of learning)?
The next issue that comes to my mind is the way these rankings affect students’ choice of college. No choice in life can be based solely on some soulless number. Just because you live in the “best” city and have the “no. 1″ job doesn’t necessarily mean you will be fulfilled as a person.
I know because I attended a very high rank institution as an undergrad and didn’t really benefit from it. The profs were too busy with research to focus on teaching, for one thing. I attended two lower ranking colleges for my two grad degrees and was MUCH happier in those places. The teaching was WAAAAY better. I re-took some upper division classes and actually learnt something!
August 26th, 2005 at 5:43 pm
Yes. We are all agreed that rankings are oversimplistic crap. It’s one of the reasons I left the UK….it has taken over from reason and everything is ranked, and then people just pick the numbers.
But we live in this world, not an ideal one. If you are going to have ranking, then you at least want ranking of things that matter. All existing rankings are just based on things like research dollar. But there are other things out there that are worth counting. So I consider it positive that people are making the effort to count those other things.
So yeah, I’m with reality, not idealization.
Cheers,
-cvj
August 26th, 2005 at 5:46 pm
One way of getting back to the ideal situation (where instead of relying on a ranked list people take the time to consider all the qualities and make the decision based on a variety of criteria) is to have more and more lists based on several separate critieria. Then there’ll be so many lists that people will have to consider all the data anyway!
-cvj
August 26th, 2005 at 6:01 pm
It is interesting that the ranking system includes the importance of the quality that universities and colleges “should produce the academic minds and scientific research that advance knowledge and drive economic growth.” Produce is an unusual choice of a verb don’t you think?
1 : to offer to view or notice
2 : to give birth or rise to
3 : to extend in length, area, or volume
4 : to present to the public on the stage or screen or over radio or television
5 a : to cause to have existence or to happen : BRING ABOUT b : to give being, form, or shape to : MAKE; especially : MANUFACTURE
6 : to compose, create, or bring out by intellectual or physical effort
7 : to cause to accrue
Well certainly #4 should help Clifford feel good about the institution with which he produces minds. But i am wondering if that verb choice is too driven by economic theory rather than representing the tuning that university teaching can affect on what should very well be strong academic minds? After all the rankings are presented to some extent to provide resources for able minded students to choose a university for themselves.
Produce also has another synchronicitous turn today. This morning Paul Craig Roberts, a former assistant Secretary of the Treasury for the Reagan/Bush Administration published an essay on the inherent failing of the US to provide the future with US citizens skilled in advancing knowledge and stimulating economic growth. Woe be to those in the sciences and technology, who look forward to careers in their fields in the US, regardless of what ranked university one attends.
http://counterpunch.org/roberts08252005.html
August 26th, 2005 at 6:08 pm
Wow. You guys are taking this way too deeply for me. We can find negativity by omission anywhere we look if we put our minds to it. Maybe the report’s positive surface meaning is enough in this case?
(Before anyone else says it: Obviously I’m becoming a true Los Angelino….. Hurrah!)
-cvj
August 26th, 2005 at 6:49 pm
‘Negativity’ is bad, but at least you didn’t say ‘negative energy’.
August 26th, 2005 at 7:41 pm
Dude, you speak the truth, man….
-cvj
August 27th, 2005 at 12:58 am
I think the Washington Monthly should be thanked for finally discrediting the whole ranking game. When a ranking makes Urbana Champ look better than Princeton, you know the game is over.
August 27th, 2005 at 9:17 am
I’m not a fan of reality shows in general. But if any of you are in the mood for some mindless TV at the end of a brain bustin’ Tuesday, I suggest you watch “Tommy Lee goes to college”.
One of the incidents had me almost falling off the chair.
Tommy meets with his advisor, a PHYSICS prof(!)in his lab/office and is bedazzled by the apparatus.
“Dude, this is rad!” exclaims Tommy. The prof sternly responds with “Rad is a measure of angle” and proceeds to define the radian. Tommy leaves the lab mutterring “that dude is bananas”.
August 27th, 2005 at 6:13 pm
One problem with the methodology they use concerns the use of Pell Grants as a measure of social inclusion (that is, having people from different socio-economic backgrounds). Pell Grants are only available to Americans so universities that have a larger portion of international students would score lower on that measure since by definition those students are not eligible for Pell Grants. Foreigners in need of aid rarely go to state schools (at the undergrad level) since most aid at such schools depends on state funding for which international students are not eligible (whether in the form of grants or loans). I don’t have the stats to back this up, but I suspect top private univs and colleges have a considerably larger proportion of intl students than state schools so they would have been more influenced by this.
I realize the article was interested in what colleges can do for the country (that is, the US as opposed to the world) so they may not care about international students, but many international students end up staying in the US and contributing to this particular society so they are still relevant. (Plus I do wonder why they would favor focusing on just this one country as opposed to broader impacts in this day and age.)
So what we have here is a cover story critiquing others’ rankings, but in the end benefiting from people’s obsessions with rankings and drawing on some faulty methodology itself.
August 29th, 2005 at 5:26 am
I’m with whoever it was that said that seeing uiuc above princeton discredits the whole list. At least, it means it’s a list measuring something I’m not interested in. I’m also with Sean who said the purpose of a university is to teach you how to think. But I’m definitely not with Sean in thinking that MIT does a better job of this than Yale (if this is what Sean thinks). I don’t know how it was a decade or two ago, but I just graduated from Yale with many friends at MIT. From MIT, I heard about stress, cocaine, and scientific brilliance. At Yale, I relished each day my opportunity to go down to the dining hall and discuss over disgusting food issues in politics, science, philosophy, gender classification, ancient egyptian artifacts, african dance, whatever with many of the smartest, most thoughtful, most *interested* young minds in the country. Years ago Yale undergrad was most certainly a legacy-ridden rich man’s genteel education. Now it is a matchmaking and community-building service for young enquiring minds of as diverse interest and background as the admissions committee can muster.
And this environment teaches you how to think.
(forgive the idealism… at least I didn’t use the word ‘paradise’ for the place, as I often do these days.)
August 29th, 2005 at 9:20 am
And whatever university I’m involved with at any time is clearly the best. The ‘Adam Temporal Separation Ranking of Universities’ (ATSRU), augmented by the ‘People Adam Likes who are at Certain Universities’ (henceforth known by the somewhat inglorious acronym, PALCU) ranking shall be the definitive rankings from now on.