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March 28, 2008

'U.S. News' Releases 2009 Rankings of Graduate Schools

U.S. News & World Report released another of its ever-contentious rankings at midnight, this time picking what it says are the top graduate schools in various disciplines. Among the magazine’s listings:

• In business, Harvard and Stanford Universities tied for the No. 1 spot, followed by the University of Pennsylvania at No. 3. Sharing fourth place were the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Northwestern University, and the University of Chicago.

• In law, Yale University took the top spot, with Harvard and Stanford sharing second place. Columbia University came in fourth and New York University fifth.

• In medicine, Harvard was ranked No. 1 in research, followed by the Johns Hopkins University, Washington University in St. Louis, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of California at San Francisco. (The magazine also ranks medical schools according to the quality of their primary care.)

• In engineering, MIT was first, with Stanford second and the University of California at Berkeley third. At No. 4 was the Georgia Institute of Technology, and at No. 5 was the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

• In fine arts, the Rhode Island School of Design beat out Yale for the top ranking. In third place was the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, followed by the Cranbrook Academy of Art and, at No.5, the Maryland Institute College of Art. —Lawrence Biemiller

Comments

1. The 4th rank school in medicine is Univ of Pennsylvania, not Penn State.

   — Larry    Mar 28, 12:48 AM    #

2. Thanks for catching that — it’s fixed now.

   — Lawrence Biemiller    Mar 28, 01:27 AM    #

3. The absence of teacher preparation, in your short list, is deafening. Graduate schools in education apparently are not worthy of a category. Very enlightening. Fortunately US News finds teachers worthy.

   — Thomas J. Neuville    Mar 28, 07:03 AM    #

4. What a strange comment by Mr. Neuville. You do realize that only five disciplines were ranked, don’t you? Oh, I forgot, for some reason teacher preparation is at the top of everyone’s list.

   — me    Mar 28, 07:56 AM    #

5. I would like to see US News develop a rating system that is increasingly sophisticated and meaningful, for US. colleges and universities need to be forced to submit to external validation rather than continually self-asserting how wonderful they are, bolstering that image, as much as they can, by such misleading devices as creaming the best students. We need a system ( technologically feasible now) that tells the general public which institutions are REALLY making a national contribution and which are just putting on a great act. Our accrediting agencies do little more than help the education Sanhedrin puff itself up.

   — Don Erickson    Mar 28, 09:02 AM    #

6. Who cares – any honest administrator refuses to participate in these rankings!

   — TDD    Mar 28, 10:43 AM    #

7. It would be even more informative if there was one list for private colleges and universities, another for public/state universities and then a combined list.
   It is also apparent that in the area of Fine Arts, many colleges are listed on the basis of old reputations while many colleges and universities which are expanding the traditional lines of professional art and design education are completely ignored. Cutting edge art and design programs such as SVA and FIT/SUNY or Parsons in NYC, or U. Wisconsisn, U. Florida or WSU are rarely included while Yale, RSID and Cranbrook lumped together but of so different curricula) continue to make these lists with less and less justification.
   Clearly new methods of external evaluation need to be developed that transcend the amount of endowments, self proclaimed and self studies that are not ever verified or scrutinized.

   — Martin Zelnik    Mar 28, 10:43 AM    #

8. I still look for a ranking system based on sexual abuse, professional misrepresentation, employee harrassment, professional intimidation, fraud, embezzlement, corruption, nepotism, misuse of funds and dare I say it…lack of ethics, as perpetrated by faculty and administrators. I would venture a guess that many of these self-aggrandizing institutions would rank prominently on this list too. At every school I have worked, the scandals of abuse were and are consistently swept under the rug by the very slimy growing legions of lawyers that infest administration. Sign me Madison, WI

   — grace    Mar 28, 10:51 AM    #

9. Graduate Schools of Education were ranked. You just have to follow the link under graduate schools. You were too quick to criticize.

   — Lou    Mar 28, 11:14 AM    #

10. As usual, these ratings are good only for rolling one’s eyes; and the further down the lists one goes, the more absurd they become. Rutgers a stronger English programme overall than NYU or Iowa? Ohio State stronger in political science than either Cornell or Northwestern? UC-Davis stronger than Notre Dame, Washington/St Louis or Claremont in history? UC-San Diego ahead of Michigan, Caltech or Brown in economics? Does anybody in the real world seriously believe this to be the case? Perhaps more to the point, does any matriculating postgraduate?

    Mr Zelnik’s point is an excellent one, which applies no less strongly at the undergraduate level. I continue to marvel at US News’ apparently-successful effort to persuade students that it can determine which is “better”: Dartmouth or MIT.

    — Gustave    Mar 28, 11:22 AM    #

11. One cannot deny the marketing value of these studies – it DOES help the institution’s marketing to be highly ranked. Perception is very important, and therefore one needs to play this game.

    However, I feel like a friend of mine who sold cars for years commenting about Consumer Reports rankings. He said “I only pay attention to them when they say something good about a car I sell.”

    — Al    Mar 28, 12:28 PM    #

12. Why doesn’t the Chronicle develop a rating system based on a committee of subscribers who, after soliciting suggestions for a process in a blog, reach a consensus on a process. Let’s get something to attract attention away from USNWR

    — Lloyd    Mar 28, 03:56 PM    #

13. It is too easy to criticize the USN&WR rankings, yet we all pay attention to them and we all know that at the core, these rankings reflect quality programs that have sustained their reputations over a period of time.

    All of the criticisms are correct, and all of the top-ranked programs are excellent, and have been excellent for several years.

    — Droste    Mar 28, 04:17 PM    #

14. I agree with Gustave and Martin — these rankings are based on old reputations and are always flat out wrong. For example, in cognitive psychology (last ranked in 2005, I realize) lists CMU as the #2 program. Just before that ranking, it saw multiple top faculty leave…so that the cognitive area had very few faculty at all. There’s no way you’d rank CMU ahead of any of the other schools listed in the top 10 now. I also don’t think people would UCSD ahead of Berkeley, Yale, or Michigan in cognitive ranking. Any top cog psych student would realize this when applying and apply to the actual best programs instead of the ones listed highly here.

    — agreed    Mar 28, 04:23 PM    #

15. Amen, #s 5 and 14.

    — bearclaw    Mar 28, 04:37 PM    #

16. Have there been any formal studies on whether a bachelor degree from one institution, over the long haul, is worth more in the career market than from another institution? If this is about marketing, then USNWR ought to measure the dollar value of the final product.

    Turn about is fair play. Some university should rate news magazines.

    — froste1    Mar 28, 05:07 PM    #

17. I really more on what the professional academic societies state as the noteworthy graduate schools. They are the best evaluators. And then I refer to what current academics say about certain programs or faculty. USNWR is too simplistic and “market-driven”.

    — Caliban    Mar 28, 05:54 PM    #

18. I am glad that entry #8, Grace, focuses on the positive aspects of university and college life.

    — Matt    Mar 28, 06:07 PM    #

19. Right on Grace (#8). Too many of us unfortunately would agree with you and have the scars to prove it. But there will always be cheerleaders swizzling wine at the Roman arena. Thanks for your candor.

    — gm    Mar 28, 10:26 PM    #

20. I don’t mind so much that USNWR only listed the 5 areas. Those are all major programs with the greatest number of students, so we can’t be critical that Fine Arts (even though still represented on their site) didn’t get included.

    What makes me upset is that “Fine Arts” ONLY covers Art/Art History.

    So my question is, why did USNWR completely omit Performing Arts? Music, Drama, and Dance are just as important to a collegiate campus as any other program, and requires no less amount of serious study than other academic disciplines.

    (I scoured their site, and did not find it at all.)

    There are many campuses that separate Fine Arts and other areas of the arts. I have no problem with that either. There are many reasons why an institution would structure their Colleges/Departments in this manner.

    But to totally omit or not include Performing Arts (if consciously separated from Fine Arts) is disgraceful.

    — Colin    Mar 29, 03:06 PM    #

21. So, if thinkers like Alan Greenspan counted on corporate good behavior, whom do we have to thank for teaching young Wall Street the vertical way to plunder a free market economy, hijack half the worlds resources.. and send Americans fleeing from their homes…er..Would that be our most venerated and endowed tax free universities?
    If so. Oops!

    — Thomas    Mar 29, 04:58 PM    #

22. I like to remember U.S. News & World Report as the magazine I read growing up which—year after year—reported workers wages as the total labor cost of an employer. When I grew up and went to work, what a nice surprise that I wasn’t making the $30 an hour U.S. News put in its graphs, but $15 an hour for the same job. As a U.S. News reader, I thought the working class was fat and happy. Until I went to work. I wonder what nice surprises await those who enroll at a college on the basis of U.S. News data.

    — David A. McCullough    Mar 30, 11:00 AM    #

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