Very interesting interview in this month's Boston Magazine with former Boston University President John Silber. He goes postal on the US News & World Report college rankings, saying they're "based on utter ignorance", and that he wanted to file a lawsuit against them. For good measure, he calls the deans & presidents of other schools "utter ignoramuses". John Silber Interview
Yeah, sure Here's an open letter signed by virtually every law school dean in the country decrying the U.S. News rankings and saying that they are meaningless. www.lsac.org/LSAC.asp?url=lsac/deans-speak-out-rankings.asp But I have to tell you, these selfsame Deans crow mightily when their school advances in the rankings!
Re: Yeah, sure Dormant member Dave Yamada is a Professor at Suffolk University Law School (one of the schools that signed that list), and he said Suffolk has spent millions in an attempt to get past Tier 4 in the rankings.
Silber calling someone else an ignoramus after his horrible and pathetic gubernatorial bid in 1990, with his Silber shockers, is almost comical. Heck, it is comical.
The Silber Shockers were actually quite entertaining, but they most likely torpedoed his campaign. He blew his stack during a televised inteview the night before the election, and that was the last straw for a lot of voters.
Big Red (Weld, who has reddish hair, and is quite tall) has as much chance of being elected NY Governor as I do. He's (Weld) actually a very likeable guy, I've met him several times. He just has an issue with.....how shall I say this nicely......adult beverages.
The funny thing about US News & World Report college rankings is that HR Departments use it as reference to the overall quality of a particular school. So it's relevance probably has less to do with it's accuracy and more to do with it's availability. Also, when they fall to the bottom you see them shaking in fear. The year I was supposed to graduate UD Law it came dead last in the list. That was the only time I am aware of that the dean got summons to the University President's office. To discuss what is a mystery. But we can always guess.
Looks like most of the interview is about politics, both academic at BU and state in MA. Regarding the USNews rankings: Well, in USNews' defense, they are supposed to be undergraduate rankings. The problem is that USNews separates doctoral research universities from all the non-doctoral schools, implying (without actually saying) that research universities are the only real universities and the best choice for undergraduates. I mean, if these were really truly undergraduate rankings, then Harvard would have to compete head to head with Amherst and Williams, while Georgia Tech would have to compare itself with Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. I'm not familiar with BU. But I know that Daniel Dennett has been on Tufts' philosophy faculty for years. He's one of the biggest international names in the philosophy of mind and cognitive science. That despite Tufts only offering an MA program in philosophy. Tufts has been called the best philosophy department in the United States that doesn't offer a doctorate. The absence of a doctoral program might actually increase the likelihood that undergraduates would be able to study with with stars like Dennett, who might spend most of their time teaching graduate classes elsewhere. But yeah, I agree with Silbers' point. It's like gossip column celebrities: schools have good reputations to some extent because they have good reputations. It's self-reinforcing. If somebody who isn't really familiar with the details is asked to name top schools, he or she will name the famous ones, the "usual suspects". Which keeps them at the top of the charts and justifies the original choice. The fact that the whole process was circular isn't even noticed. I know for a fact that some schools that boast astronomical average SAT scores simply don't average in the bottom 20% or so, which represent "special admits" such as minorities admitted under affirmative action programs and in some cases children of alumni, big contributors and celebrities. So they are really saying "Our students have these wonderfully high SAT scores (except for all of our students with lower ones.) I'd really like to see graduate rankings based on that kind of stuff. But again, it would probably have to be field by field, since science and engineering departments are going to be getting more grant money and will have much higher research budgets than humanities departments.
I am just a foreigner but wouldn´´t it be "ignorami" instead of "ignoramuses"? It just sounds terrible.....
No. "Ignorami" would be a hypercorrection. "Ignoramus" the English word is based on a Latin verb form "ignoramus" which means "we are ignorant" and is already plural. You might um singularise it and refer to one person as an "ignoro" and keep the current form as a plural "ignoramus", but it would be better, unless you are referring to yourself (!), to use third person forms "ignorat" and "ignorant". But then you run into the problem of the English adjective "ignorant", unless you work from the participial stem and speak of an "ignorant" and "ignorants" or even "ignorantes". So perhaps it's best to stick with "ignoramus" and "ignoramuses". I dunno.
Also means "We don't know," hence, "ignoro" can also mean "I don't know." To bad Latin is a "dead" language. It's the only language I have ever really enjoyed studying and I have studied Spanish, Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic, Akkadian, Ugarit, and German in addition to Latin.
OK, thanks, I thought Ignoramuses sounded terrible, and that there would be a more elegant form to say it. "Ignorami" (I kind of thought it wasn´t right) I got it from comparing the suffix of another anglicized Latin word, nucleus (sing.) and its plural, nuclei. Still that Dean should have chosen another word.....
Just for the sake of argument, I have found "ignorami" in the Merriam Webster Online. http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=ignoramus I don´t completely sure whether this dictionary is reputable or not, but there it is ....
It seems that John Silber went absolutely postal about Kepler College (see this thread) as well: http://www.keplercollege.org/media/boston_01.html In point of fact, Kepler is simply authorized by the state to grant degrees. It isn't accredited and doesn't claim to be. (They do say that they intend to pursue accreditation and I would like to see them do so.) One would think that a university president would be aware of that distinction. Silber swerves into a little swipe at DL: But the real focus of Silbers' wrath is the fact that the State of Washington approved Kepler. Last I heard, Boston University had a divinity school. His own university openly prepares practitioners in a subject that has no empirical basis and which is derived from ancient mythology. Maybe the opinionated Dr. Silber would like to explain that little anomaly. Silber actually thinks that the Washington education officials' reason for authorizing Kepler was their own "deeply held beliefs" in astrology? Where in the world did that come from? Besides, if the vast majority of people in Washington really did believe in astrology, wouldn't that alleged fact justify some academic interest in the subject in and of itself? Here in California at least, the courts have ruled on academic freedom grounds that the state can't base approval decisions on program content. The state can only consider whether schools have competent teachers, suitable finances, require a proper number of credit hours and so on. I'm not sure if the same thing is true in Washington, but I wouldn't be surprised. Again, one would expect a university president to be cognizant of those kind of issues. Finally, Silber's little rant doesn't even address the idea of teaching the history of astrology, its influences and its place in the wider context of religious thought. Though Kepler appears to have the only program in the United States dedicated to the subject, there are many scholars in history, philosophy, religion, classics and literature departments who have written on astrology. (I wouldn't be surprised if some of them were at BU.) It's not without a literature. All in all, if Silber really wants to rail against "utter ignorance" and call the deans and presidents of other schools "utter ignoramuses", then he really needs to look squarely in the mirror because I think that he just made a total fool out of himself.
Same I checked My Dictionary and found ignoramuses = dumb-assesi. I only have a few dozen pages My Dictionary. Thanks for the assist. When partying with a retrograde Mercury, until this past weekend, one requires a designated driver/speaker. I'm surprised he could pronounce ignoramuses. Gotta scoot, missing my alchemy class.
