DL doctorates in top universities

Re: University of Illinois

I think people are savvy enough not to base their respect for a school on the school's particular spot in the rankings. Would you, for instance, have a lesser regard for a school that's ranked #7, versus one that's ranked #6? We all know that manipulating only one criterion among the items looked at can move a school from one spot to the next.

I think that for those who consider rankings very important, what should matter more is that the school is in the top group, along with the other heavyweights they compare themselves with. Whle UI Urbana-Champagne, for instance, is ranked by USN&WR below #1 UC Berkeley, #2 U Michigan and U Virgina, #3 UCLA, #4 UNC-ChapelHill, #5 C William&Mary, #6 U Wisconsin-Madison, and #7 UC SanDiego, I don't think it suffers from any inferiority complex and can take pride in the fact that not only is it in the top tier of the 300-or-so national doctoral universities, it's in the top ten of all public universities in the US. That's a big feat!

Also, that shouldn't stop the school from aiming for more prominence. While UCLA, for instance, is "only" #3 among these big state schools, it continues its dominance in being able to attract the most number of freshman applications of ANY university in the United States (I think for the eight or ninth straight year already) officially making it the most popular university in the US. Add to this the fact that UCLA products are marketed extensively outside the US -- in many countries in Asia such as the Japan, the Philippines, and Taiwan, for example, UCLA -- pronounced there as "ook-la" -- is more widely-known than Harvard, so with excellent academics combined with the right marketing, UIUC might also be able to reach that level...

 

Re: Re: University of Illinois

You'd be surprised. Over on the Business Week forum, people will be up in arms because their MBA program dropped "all the way" from #8 to #11. "Oh my g-d, what will I do? No longer top 10! Argghh!"

They'll then angrily accuse the schools who leapfrogged past them of cynically manipulating the system--which is probably true--while ignoring the likelihood that their school is manipulating the system as well, but just got outflanked by more clever manipulative techniques.

The fact is, rankings mean something, but not nearly so much as one would think based on the breathless reports of USN, BW, the Economist, WSJ, etc., whose primary motivation is not to provide an unbiased, statistically accurate ranking--if such a thing actually can exist--but rather to sell magazines or online subscriptions to their guides. Sometimes the magazines will even intentionally manipulate the data or change their methodology to move a previous darkhorse into a prominent position so as to generate controversy--and, of course, sales.

 

Re: University of Illinois

Interestingly, there was a book that came out last year (I think it was “College Rankings Exposed” by Paul Boyer) that described the controversy among the US News staff when the editor in charge of America’s Best Colleges for a particular year decided to change the weight distribution of the factors considered in the rankings (more specifically, the alumni giving factor) in the light of a “fairer” system. California Institute of Technology came out on top that year, causing all the other editors (graduates of Harvard, Princeton, and Yale) to get very upset; apparently, the original weights were meant to maintain the status quo (favoring the three Ivy League schools). The editor involved quit from her post afterwards.

If I were a UIUC student, however, I wouldn’t worry about public perception going down just because we’re #8 instead of #6 or #7. If I were a university administrator, it would probably be a bigger deal since I (like those in ALL other universities in the group) would feel it’s my job to make my school #1 in all respects and in all rankings, but if we were to follow what one university did (remember the case of the university official who was fired I think two years ago when she didn’t fill out the US News questionnaire and her school slipped, if I remember right, from top tier to second or third tier), that would mean putting undue importance on rankings (although university heads can argue that lowering their rankings = losing potential students = losing a lot of $$$ and therefore justifying firing people who don’t ensure that the school’s place in the rankings is, at the very least, retained)…

 

Re: Re: University of Illinois

It's all about perception, which quickly becomes reality as you point out. Harvard's B-school was left out of The Economist world rankings last year, I believe due to a spat and Harvard's obdurate refusal to to turn in the questionnaire: "We're the 'Big H', we don't need your stinkin' rankings."

 

Re: University of Illinois

<<Harvard's B-school was left out of The Economist world rankings last year, I believe due to a spat and Harvard's obdurate refusal to to turn in the questionnaire: "We're the 'Big H', we don't need your stinkin' rankings.">>

It would be interesting to see which other schools would be so defiant and brave enough to do the same thing...

I guess Harvard's in an excellent position to do that; it is, after all, Harvard