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An Investigation of the Facts Behind Columbia's U.S. News Ranking

math.columbia.edu

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Re: An Investigation of the Facts Behind Columbia's U.S. News Ranking

#21

Post by dehrmann »

wolverine876 wrote: post #13

General rankings have limited use. The value of data depends on the interests of the reader, which for college 'rankings' vary widely. For example, if you are interested only in the status of your college degree among the public, then the ranking itself over time and the credibility of US News are probably most valuable, regardless of how they are calculated. But if you are interested in the status of your degree wit…

> retention and graduation rates (35%)

That's a weird metric for judging education quality (which is at least what college rankings purport to do). I can see cases where either high or low values are markers of either good or bad education quality.

Re: An Investigation of the Facts Behind Columbia's U.S. News Ranking

#22

Post by pmyteh »

Leaving aside the suggestions of fraud, this is also a good demonstration of Goodhart's Law: "A measure that becomes a target becomes a bad measure".

There are good reasons to believe that, for example, selectivity of admissions or graduation rates are some kind of quality signal. But as soon as it becomes strategically important to 'score well' on those metrics it becomes well worth universities doing things that will improve the metric without improving the quality - such as rejecting qualified applicants or graduating those who ought to have failed. And now the quality signal is much less useful if you're simply trying to use it to understand what's going on.

Re: An Investigation of the Facts Behind Columbia's U.S. News Ranking

#23

Post by btheshoe »

I go to washu - which does decently well on the rankings. There's a tradition every fall for the incoming freshman class to read a selected book, and my year they chose Cathy oNiel's weapons of math destruction, which goes over instances of data being used for bad outcomes, including a chapter devoted to how gaming the university ranking system had become common practice. I found it a very interesting choice on the part of the uni.

Re: An Investigation of the Facts Behind Columbia's U.S. News Ranking

#24

Post by krisoft »

btheshoe wrote: post #23

I go to washu - which does decently well on the rankings. There's a tradition every fall for the incoming freshman class to read a selected book, and my year they chose Cathy oNiel's weapons of math destruction, which goes over instances of data being used for bad outcomes, including a chapter devoted to how gaming the university ranking system had become common practice. I found it a very interesting choice on the p…

It is important to remember that universities, like most organisations, are not monolithic entities. It is almost certain that the person who selects the book for the common reading program is not the same person who is responsible to optimise the university’s ranking.

Re: An Investigation of the Facts Behind Columbia's U.S. News Ranking

#26

Post by blagie »

lofatdairy wrote: post #17
robinjhuang wrote: post #2

This is an amazing takedown by one of Columbia’s own professors. Wow

I can't speak for the math department, but I've noticed that there are general contentions between Columbia's faculty and administration that seem somewhat unique to the school. Professor Martin Chalfie has noted how cramped and run-down his lab is in an interview, which seems like soft-spoken criticism at the way Columbia has failed to use its enormous endowment towards acquiring more research and teaching spaces. P…

In 2022, MIT is a cesspool of fraud and corruption. This wasn't the case a quarter-century ago.

The extreme competition seems to be overtaking all of the elites. MIT is the #1 university brand in the world, but it spent most of its integrity and soul to get there.

There's a fine line you need to walk to become a faculty member at elite schools.

You need to lie a little on grant applications to align when you want to do to what will be funded. You need to lie a little bit in publications so they have impact. You need to fight for credit, sometimes on work you didn't do. As these become normalized, winners do these more and more; otherwise, you won't get that faculty job.

The culture slowly trickles down. I think most grad students at MIT are still honest, but not the most successful ones (most of the ones who find faculty jobs are at least a little bit crooked). Second-tier school faculty slots are filled with graduates of first-tier schools.

MIT has a traditional hacking culture which emphasizes breaking rules. This worked well when this involved climbing on rooftops, but it works less well when the endowment is O($100M) per faculty member, and there's money to embezzle through complex corporate schemes and financial games.

Contentions don't exist too much between faculty and admin right now, but they definitely do between students and Institute. MIT grad students are working to unionize, and the Institute, to union-bust.

Re: An Investigation of the Facts Behind Columbia's U.S. News Ranking

#27

Post by 11101010001100 »

blagie wrote: post #26
lofatdairy wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't speak for the math department, but I've noticed that there are general contentions between Columbia's faculty and administration that seem somewhat unique to the school. Professor Martin Chalfie has noted how cramped and run-down his lab is in an interview, which seems like soft-spoken criticism at the way Columbia has failed to use its enormous endowment towards acquiring more research and teaching spaces. P…

In 2022, MIT is a cesspool of fraud and corruption. This wasn't the case a quarter-century ago. The extreme competition seems to be overtaking all of the elites. MIT is the #1 university brand in the world, but it spent most of its integrity and soul to get there. There's a fine line you need to walk to become a faculty member at elite schools. You need to lie a little on grant applications to align when you want to…

> I think most grad students at MIT are still honest, but not the most successful ones (most of the ones who find faculty jobs are at least a little bit crooked).

While this might be true, I suspect the statistics are not that different from the general population.

Re: An Investigation of the Facts Behind Columbia's U.S. News Ranking

#28

Post by blagie »

11101010001100 wrote: post #27
blagie wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 2022, MIT is a cesspool of fraud and corruption. This wasn't the case a quarter-century ago. The extreme competition seems to be overtaking all of the elites. MIT is the #1 university brand in the world, but it spent most of its integrity and soul to get there. There's a fine line you need to walk to become a faculty member at elite schools. You need to lie a little on grant applications to align when you want to…

> I think most grad students at MIT are still honest, but not the most successful ones (most of the ones who find faculty jobs are at least a little bit crooked). While this might be true, I suspect the statistics are not that different from the general population.

I don't think so. In my experience, most people are pretty decent and honest.

There's something which extreme competition does which breaks that, both by whom it selects, and by how it changes culture. MIT a quarter-century ago was much more honest than MIT today. Peer institutions -- one stop down -- are also still much more honest, although I suspect that will change in a decade or two.

The same change happened in several of MIT's peer schools.

Re: An Investigation of the Facts Behind Columbia's U.S. News Ranking

#29

Post by blaser-waffle »

11101010001100 wrote: post #27
blagie wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 2022, MIT is a cesspool of fraud and corruption. This wasn't the case a quarter-century ago. The extreme competition seems to be overtaking all of the elites. MIT is the #1 university brand in the world, but it spent most of its integrity and soul to get there. There's a fine line you need to walk to become a faculty member at elite schools. You need to lie a little on grant applications to align when you want to…

> I think most grad students at MIT are still honest, but not the most successful ones (most of the ones who find faculty jobs are at least a little bit crooked). While this might be true, I suspect the statistics are not that different from the general population.

Having worked at several F500 multinationals, I can say confidently that, yup, no different from gen pop. They were corrupt as hell.

Big SaaS providers offered us 40k each to get on board with some all-in Cloud offerings. I'd bet my hat some of the offshore IT companies we used were throwing kickbacks to Ops Managers.

Not speculation, either -- there were executives fired for such things. One set up a shell company and was billing it for consulting services to the tune of 400k per year. He got busted and probably faced charges, probably.

Re: An Investigation of the Facts Behind Columbia's U.S. News Ranking

#30

Post by sokoloff »

ericd wrote: post #20
lofatdairy wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't speak for the math department, but I've noticed that there are general contentions between Columbia's faculty and administration that seem somewhat unique to the school. Professor Martin Chalfie has noted how cramped and run-down his lab is in an interview, which seems like soft-spoken criticism at the way Columbia has failed to use its enormous endowment towards acquiring more research and teaching spaces. P…

I can tell you that the student body at MIT generally had a pretty dim view of the admins when I was there, always trying to kill the things that make MIT an amazing place, while building stupidly overpriced vanity buildings. Not to mention the incredibly shameful way they handled the Aaron Swartz case.

I think there were a mix of cases when I was there, with admins sometimes supporting the wonderful weird and other times not. Often when they did, it was because the weird was only a background level of annoying/risky and when they didn’t, it was often that the level of cacophony had exceeded that admin’s tolerance for it.
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