The release of this year’s U.S. News college rankings has produced the usual meaningless attention to Princeton and Harvard jousting for the top spot despite the gnat-sized statistical differences between them. I’m on record with deep concerns about the way U.S. News creates strong incentives for institutions to act counter to public and student interests. The peer survey, which comprises 25 percent of each institution’s score, is clearly biased toward age-old institutions and thus feeds the mistaken and damaging idea that true excellence in higher education takes decades or longer to achieve. When it comes to the teaching and learning mission, I think that’s obviously untrue–indeed, being drenched in tradition might just as easily make it harder for institutions to adapt to changing developments in pedagogy, technology, and the nature of the modern college student.
That said, the peer survey is not without value. Which is why the actions of Aaron Brower, vice president for teaching and learning at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, make so little sense. When given the survey to fill out, Brower apparently gave Madison and the New School a “5″ (the highest score), Arizona State a “1,” and the other 260 institutions–including, I assume, Harvard & Princeton–a decidedly mediocre “2.” Brower says he didn’t know enough about the other institutions to rate them, which is surprising given that–unlike most of the people who fill out the survey–he’s a distinguished scholar of higher education who has made major contributions to studies like the National Survey of Living-Learning Programs, which has been administered to over 50 institutions and 100,000 students.
Perhaps the calvacade of “2′s” was a form of protest, an attempt to undermine the integrity of the survey itself. If so, Brower isn’t doing his employer any favors, because the peer survey is very good for the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
To understand why, you have to look at the rest of the rankings, the other 75 percent, which come down to two things: wealth and selectivity. Some ranking elements, like spending per student, are a straight measure of money, while others, like faculty salaries and class size, measure things that cost money to buy. Similarly, there are straight selectivity measure like admissions rates and derivative selectivity measures like SAT scores. These factors bestow an enormous advantage on rich, exclusive institutions, which is why Harvard and Princeton are always 1 & 2.
Madison, by contrast, is a public university. So while it boasts world-class researchers who rival those the Ivy League, it’s never going to be as wealthy and exclusive. And it shouldn’t be–the whole point of being a public university is to serve a large, diverse student body. And the one aspect of the U.S. News rankings that reflects that–the one counterweight to the wealth and exclusivity measures–is the peer survey.
The pattern is clear once you look at the numbers: Madison ranks 39th overall in the latest ranking. But its average peer survey score is 4.1. (The other respondents were a lot more generous to Madison than it was to them.) If you rank the universities just by their peer survey score, Madison moves all the way up into a tie for 20th, ahead of USC, Lehigh, Brandeis, Notre Dame, and a bunch of other wealthy private institutions. To various extents the same is true for UC-Berkeley, Michigan, UT-Austin, and other well-regarded flagship universities.
In other words, one effect of the peer survey is to give great public universities credit for being public. That’s not such a bad thing.
12 Responses to Defending the Indefensible: The ‘U.S. News’ Peer Survey Is Not All Bad
vfichera - August 26, 2009 at 11:59 am
[Off-topic comment removed by moderator.]
goxewu - August 26, 2009 at 2:08 pm
Tip: Write your comment in a word program first. Then copy and past it into the comment box. Save it if you must, but at least keep that window open until your comment is posted.
goxewu - August 27, 2009 at 2:23 pm
vfichera may have some points, but:a) he or she is engaged in a long back-and-forth with “civilian” on another thread, and seems to have no trouble getting comment after comment after comment after comment after comment posted there.b) i, too, had trouble posting comments in the immediate aftermath of the site’s redesign, and i posted a long, loud (lots of CAPS) complaint and e-mailed the complaint department CHE had set up. since then, i’ve had zero trouble posting comments. c) the chronicle is a for-profit private enterprise, not a state university or a community college. it’s under no obligation–save possible damage to its reputation as a venue for discussion about issues relevant to academe–to provide a completely free and open comment site to every electronic passerby.d) though i myself would prefer the old “brainstorm” (on looks alone; i really liked the lightning-in-circle logo and that red), it did drift perilously close at times to, say, AOL’s sports blogs + comments, where four-letter words and gratuitous invective are the order of the day. the registration system seems reasonable.”brainstorm” still has glitches, such as the comment number below the story not jibing with the actual number of comments (e.g., this one: [2] the number given and 3 the actual number of comments so far), no way (that I can find) for a commenter to use italics, and in the archive, the author’s names being left off and the comments no longer attached. the first doesn’t bother me much; it’s a small inconvenience to simply click on the comments and go right to the bottom to see what’s been added. as to the second, i tend to overuse italics for emphasis anyway; giving them up is good for me. as to the last: this is just a blog, meaning a passing amusement, not fodder for a footnoted book or sociology study.the “CHE needs to…” and “CHE MUST…” stuff is a little over the top. vfichera essentially is complaining that he or she is an exploited unpaid content provider who objects to it being made difficult for him or her to provide CHE with free content.
vfichera - August 27, 2009 at 6:57 pm
[Off-topic comment removed by moderator.]
vfichera - August 28, 2009 at 11:21 am
[Off-topic post deleted by moderator.]
vfichera - August 28, 2009 at 11:23 am
Dear Moderator (whoever you are — name please):Please email me my so-called “off-topic” comment (only the part below the ***** in the comment could possibly be so-described) so that I may have it for my own files. I spent considerable time and effort composing it and it described a CHE “community” of readers which this current action by a moderator undermines.I continue to be amazed at the capricious censorship policies of the CHE. If the moderator wishes to remove the ENTIRE discussion above as “off-topic” that would be far more honest and productive.”Community” of readers, beware!
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Dear vfichera, There’s a place to talk about the redesign and that’s at redesign@chronicle.com or in the forums. If you have a question or a concern, feel free to contact us privately or post a message in this thread or this thread. Please don’t hijack article or blog discussions to complain about the redesign or to complain about mistreatment by the moderator. And if you do, don’t be surprised to find your comments removed. There’s a place for you to register your concerns, so please use it. Thanks.
-moderator
vfichera - August 28, 2009 at 6:37 pm
http://crookedtimber.org/2009/02/23/you-know-about-inside-higher-ed-right/Right….
vfichera - August 29, 2009 at 12:29 pm
@ the second goxewu comment abovegoxewu, this just isn’t like you. I’ve read your well-wrought commentaries on the Bauerlein blog and, well, you use capital letters on the word “I” and when starting paragraphs. You use numbers rather than letters when enumerating your points. You, like me, have a penchant for prolixity and would likely not be a pot calling a kettle black, so to speak. Indeed, you have a quick wit and a sense of humor.The second goxewu uses CAPS to indicate that s/he went “over the top” when having similar experiences with the redesign and even posted an “off-topic” rant about the redesign. But the second goxewu doesn’t recount that the comment was deleted — and I know that you would have shared that with us. I just know it.So, goxewu, the real goxewu, come back to us. We miss you.
goxewu - August 30, 2009 at 1:58 pm
I’m sorry, but I’m not a party-liner. I calls ‘em as I sees ‘em.In the comment to which vfichera objects, (a) and (b) are simply facts, and (d) should be noncontroversial. (c) is a fact of life–perhaps not me cuppoa (the 2nd Ammendment isn’t me cuppa, either)–but nevertheless a fact of life until, as some are still naive enough to think can happen, the “people” own all means of production and everything is open to everybody.That a blog is a passing amusement and not a scholarly archive seems a reasonable assertion. And as to vfichera complaining simultaneously that he or she is an unpaid content provider and that the Chronicle is censoriously making it inordinately difficult for vfichera to provide that unpaid content, the irony of that is, at least to me, self-evident.
vfichera - August 30, 2009 at 8:59 pm
N.B. I realize in hindsight that the original version of the posting above contains two paragraphs which are unnecessary to my argument and which might be perceived as unnecessarily argumentative. My self-expurgated substitute version follows:goxewu, is it really you? ;-) Welcome back. I appreciate the opportunity for a form of “closure.”First of all, let me clarify: I do NOT object to your posting — not one word of it. I only object to the fact that it was allowed to stand when mine, to which it refers in detail, were not. The possible reasons behind that “editorial” decision are, to say the least, “interesting.” If the rule is “off-topic” then “off with your head,” why the discrepancy?Indeed, much of your posting is, in many ways, a mirror-image of mine: it is equally “off-topic” by being about the redesign and my comments about the redesign. Additionally, as you attest, you have also engaged in a heated posting, similar to mine, in these fora: you “posted a long, loud (lots of CAPS) complaint.” Yet, you report no public chastisements from moderators, no censorship.The CHE is dedicated to chronicling higher education yet the majority of its staff have historically not been faculty or academics themselves. The tradition of academic freedom upon which higher education depends is understood by faculty to be the sine qua non of true academic debate — and it alone offers the freedom to follow an idea wherever it leads. The freedom from retaliation and capricious censorship is essential to pure argument aka dialogue in the search for truth.A publication staff which comes from the profession of journalism, used to being “edited” and “censored” within a hierarchy, likely has no real idea of the effect on faculty of their “moderating” academic discussions in a high-handed manner. Indeed, insofar as the CHE sees its main content (as opposed to advertising) audience as administration rather than faculty — let alone students — this probably “makes sense” to the staff, as a conscious or unconscious act of “identification” with higher education administration.Faculty and students are the two stakeholder audiences who make use of the CHE and its archives for scholarly purposes while administrators generally do not. The forums to which the Web Producer referred me are replete with laments from disappointed readers who want access to the archived articles and their comments, for their teaching and research.Whatever irony obtains concerning my comments as expressed in the final sentences of your last two postings pales in comparison to the ironies operative in the CHE’s treatment of our exchange.One can only hope that, in light of the discussions above, the CHE will recognize that to censor my postings yet again would be counter-productive to its enterprise — for the chronicling of higher education should enable all stakeholders to boldly declare, “I calls ‘em as I sees ‘em.”Thank you for your comments.
goxewu - August 31, 2009 at 8:54 am
“goxewu, this just isn’t like you. “That sure doesn’t sound like a) you don’t object to anything in my comment, or b) your only objection is to the Chronicle letting it stand while yours was deleted (in which case you would have said, “Chronicle, this is just like you”). You do have a point about the seeming arbitrariness concerning which “off-topic” comments are deleted by the moderator, but this exchange is getting tedious.
vfichera - August 31, 2009 at 9:19 am
goxewu, I believe you misunderstand me. I was simply noting the clear stylistic differences in the presentation of the comments in your second posting (especially when compared to your first comment here and others at other threads) and jokingly suggesting that your identity might have been “hijacked,” so to speak, by another user/moderator. I was also hoping that, as you did, you would return to dialogue and assist me to closure.For that, again, I thank you.