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U.S. News pulls Columbia University from its 2022 rankings

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Re: U.S. News pulls Columbia University from its 2022 rankings

#201

Post by btheshoe »

sam-2727 wrote: post #94

The beginning of the conclusion of the original study [1] is worth repeating: No one should try to reform or rehabilitate the ranking. It is irredeemable. In Colin Diver’s memorable formulation, “Trying to rank institutions of higher education is a little like trying to rank religions or philosophies. The entire enterprise is flawed, not only in detail but also in conception.” Students are poorly served by rankings.…

Here's the response:

Universities are mostly unimportant in terms of what they offer: class sizes, education, curriculum, etc... All mostly bs that doesn't matter.

The real role of universities is to gather together smart people as they develop. This requires mostly a sort of self-selection of applicants, who need to agree independently to go to the same university. Hence rankings, prestige, and all that nonsense.

Re: U.S. News pulls Columbia University from its 2022 rankings

#202

Post by lumost »

poulsbohemian wrote: post #98
lumost wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My undergrad was at Umass Amherst, and I currently attend GA Tech's OMSCS program. Professors love sharing info on why they chose to talk about one topic vs. another, and by and large were happy to connect with any student motivated enough to attend an office hours or talk to them after class. I knew same personal information about the professors I worked with in the lab, but I don't generally see how that would impr…

What I've heard anecdotal bears out what you are saying, IE: once you get through various mega weed-out classes, in many universities you still get the luxury of smaller class sizes and more direct access to professors as you reach those upper level classes. Where I was asking for clarification was on the idea that somehow people were getting better materials and a better overall experience in thee 500+ people lectur…

My point was that a large 500 person lecture on "Intro to ElectroMagnetism" will be about the same as a small 20 person lecture in terms of material. The variability will come from

- Honors sessions - Extra seminars - Quality of Material - Quality of student support groups

All of these things get better as the class size grows. In my last class at Georgia Tech, there were 900 students studying a niche topic from a particular professor. Due to class size, there were ~12 TAs and an extremely active slack discussion group where people could get support.

A smaller class just means the professor has limited resources to assist students.

Re: U.S. News pulls Columbia University from its 2022 rankings

#203

Post by lmm »

rayiner wrote: post #109
jseliger wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The gap between the schools' rhetoric and reality is pretty funny; I was just writing about it the other day: https://seliger.com/2022/07/06/nonprofit-boards-of-directors... : You can see a lot of hypocrisy that’s uncritically accepted by a lot of organizations, including nonprofits. Exclusionary higher education is a particular notable example, given the soaring rhetoric of “inclusion” spouted by some people involve…

It's truly mind-boggling. The Ivies were always bastions for maintaining the position of WASP elites. They still serve that function. Maybe there is a bit more wiggle room about skin color, but they still function to socialize the next generation of people to run WASP institutions like "JP Morgan Chase."

There's nothing inherently white, anglo-saxon or protestant about the oligarchy that these institutions preserve; they will very happily pass on to a new generation of westernised, college-educated liberals of all races and genders but no more variation in thought than the one they replaced. The cultural focus on such ephemera gives them a very useful fig leaf for excluding the demographic that it actually matters to exclude: the working class.

Re: U.S. News pulls Columbia University from its 2022 rankings

#204

Post by dragonwriter »

lettergram wrote: post #197
burlesona wrote: post #3

Per the article this came in response to questions raised by a Columbia faculty member critiquing the university's data. I thought that report[1] was actually more interesting than the original article. As per the quote at the top of the report: > Rankings create powerful incentives to manipulate data and distort institutional behavior for the sole or primary purpose of inflating one’s score... It would be shocking t…

I FOIA requested a lot of universities and man do they fight to keep their stuff secret. https://austingwalters.com/foia-requesting-100-universities/ Often I’d find the person in charge on linkedin and email them directly (work email obviously). And dig around until I found the particular person. UIUC put up a particular fight when I FOIA requested information about their post-graduate surveys. They’re definitely man…

> I FOIA requested a lot of universities

FOIA only applies to federal government agencies, universities (other than ones operates by the federal government, like the service academies) aren't subject to it.

State universities might be covered by state sunshine laws that are similar to FOIA, and generally the laws and policies around those only require a request from the public and aren't too particular about form or citing a completely wrong and irrelevant legal basis, so in that case an “FOIA” request might actually have some legal effect. But most private universities would just see it as a particularly pompously written discretionary request.

Re: U.S. News pulls Columbia University from its 2022 rankings

#205

Post by skinnymuch »

ken47 wrote: post #190

What is the point of university rankings? To gratify the human need for someone to dumb down a complex system to a simplistic measure, just so we don't have to live with the "unbearable" uncertainty that one university may not be strictly superior to another? Once everyone starts optimizing for a metric, that metric ceases to be useful. It's only a matter of how long it takes people to realize that this has happened.

> just so we don't have to live with the "unbearable" uncertainty that one university may not be strictly superior to another?

Unfortunately, yes

> superior

Key word unfortunately

Re: U.S. News pulls Columbia University from its 2022 rankings

#206

Post by bluedays »

UncleOxidant wrote: post #112
dwater wrote: post #29

For context, U.S. News and World Report used to be a trusted periodical that reported national and international news. In the 80's they started ranking colleges and selling it as a separate publication, which turned out to be pretty profitable, so they repeated the trick by ranking hospitals (1990), cars (2007), and then states (2017). The news business went online only in 2011, then shuttered in 2015. Since then the…

U.S. News and World Report was a highly respected & trusted news magazine in the 70s-90s, but it's online incarnation now is just another clickbait site (similar for Newsweek).

They’re the #1 best rankings company.

Re: U.S. News pulls Columbia University from its 2022 rankings

#207

Post by rglullis »

alanfranz wrote: post #200
rglullis wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My uncle was a math teacher in Brazil - mostly test-prep course schools for university exams, later he opened some of his own private schools. He used to say two things: that he has estimated to have taught at least 100 thousand people in his life (seems just crazy boasting, but feasible when you are working in 5-8 different schools per semester and each class has 100-250 people) and that a teacher is always teaching…

And yet this seems a self fulfilling observation . How can somebody raise from the bottom 20% if they get subpar education?

First, why assume "subpar education"? One of the corollaries from my uncle's hypothesis is that there really isn't any secret held by some elite, nor there are special resources to be distributed to students during class. Simply put, the more a group is segmented, the more the class will be appropriate to them as a whole. If anything, you are increasing "utilization" of resources.

Second, there can be individual mobility. A poor performing student with otherwise potential to improve might receive help to overcome whatever is bringing them down, and get them to thrive again. Even in that case, it would help them to be in a smaller class, as it's much easier to identify who among the low performers who want to be helped, and those lost causes who are a drag for everyone else.

Re: U.S. News pulls Columbia University from its 2022 rankings

#208

Post by shalmanese »

bluedays wrote: post #206
UncleOxidant wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

U.S. News and World Report was a highly respected & trusted news magazine in the 70s-90s, but it's online incarnation now is just another clickbait site (similar for Newsweek).

They’re the #1 best rankings company.

According to US News and World Report

Re: U.S. News pulls Columbia University from its 2022 rankings

#209

Post by joe5150 »

Fomite wrote: post #195
hackyhacky wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your suspicion is correct. I've taught at several US universities, and it's an open secret that the administrative takes steps to manipulate numbers in order to secure better rankings. Typical example: a small, prestigious liberal arts college always has smaller class sizes in the fall semester than in the spring semester. Why? Because classes with less than 30 students are ranked higher by US News, but they only tak…

Similarly, at a large land grant university, we talk a lot about improving our rankings, but acknowledge that one of the major metrics (% of students not accepted) is something that's contrary to our mission. It was an open secret when I was in Boston that Harvard actively encourages people to "give it a shot" when they know full well they're not getting in to boost that metric.

"Recruit to deny" [1] has been getting more attention but still not enough.

1: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/29/us/harvard-admissions-rec...

Re: U.S. News pulls Columbia University from its 2022 rankings

#210

Post by fshbbdssbbgdd »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #152
unosama wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You add a simple and reasonable (until it gets abused) assumption to your model which allows a lesser data collection burden on thousands of universities. I wouldn't call it a restriction.

> which allows a lesser data collection burden on thousands of universities. How's it supposed to do that? Universities all already collect the data on enrollment for every class they offer.

Spoken like a software engineer! Now imagine every form is being filled out manually by an administrator with a calculator.
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