U.S. News Program Rankings

The evaluation of a school by who it accepts as a student and not the content of its courses and the quality of its instruction seems a little bizarre to me.

I thought that education was about education, not just accepting students who could probably go to the library and learn by themselves. Is it really about only selecting the gifted student because they will pass or is it more about selecting the not so gifted student and educating them to pass? If it is about the former, then when should the exclusion start? High school, grade school or perhaps no schooling at all for not so gifted student. This way we would only have elite colleges and no diploma mills at all. We could also do away with accreditation and cut down on teachers and professors. Perhaps exclusion says more about the quality of the teaching at a school. If I was a poor teacher then I would want only the bright student so i could keep the pass rates up.

I hope that education really means more than that. If it isn't then it needs redesigning.

 

Student admissions standards are associated with nice, simple numerical values. Every entering student should have a GPA and an SAT/ACT score (assuming the school requires standardized tests). So you have hard numbers that are easy to average and easy to compare. The assumption is that the best schools are the ones that attract the best students.

It would make sense to rate schools by "course content" or "quality of instruction" -- but how do you put a hard number to those things? How would you objectively rate "quality of instruction" in a particular class -- isn't that awfully subjective ? And even if you could do it, universities commonly offer hundreds of very different classes per term -- so how would you get an overall score ?

In practice, college rankings often do attempt to rate teaching quality, using measures like "percentage of faculty that are full time" (where higher is better) or "average class size" (where smaller is better). But in general, the more selective traditional schools are going to score better than less selective non-traditional schools in those respects.

 

There are qualitative measures that could be considered for performance, not everything has to be reduced to the numerical symbolism. The fact that universities measure by who gets admitted and not by the programs and coursework is lazy. It is a little like fast food outlets getting measured for nutritional value by the numbers of people trying to buy their food or who they are prepared to sell their food to. Marketing is a big factor in university standing and they are selling exclusiveness as an indication of quality. I am not sure how that prepares people for the real world of heterogenous environments. Going to a homogeneous environment to prepare you to operate in a heterogeneous one? Interesting concept.

The issue of accreditation is supposedly a statement about the quality of the university. Presumably they have some ability to measure the quality of the institution otherwise why do they exist? Is it the case that the "better people" go to this school so if you get in you rub shoulders with the "right people" who have either money or access to money? Is it the case that money cannot get you into an elite school? I quite often see that people who have wealthy parents go to the same universities. They all must be incredibly bright or there is a glitch in the objectivity in the admissions process.

I do not care if they get in because they have money or the school only wants their version of the brightest person, but I don't think that the rest of us should accept this as a measure of their ability to teach or do anything else in the academic sense. Exclusiveness is just that exclusiveness, not a measure of anything else. If the measurements are not there, then perhaps, in this age, a few can be invented and not rely on 19th century class distinction of exclusiveness as a way of measuring quality.

 

In the US News rankings (which are the most widely recognized), student selectivity represents only 15% of the total score. So "who gets admitted" is a factor, but not the largest or most important one.

Accreditation agencies check to see if a school meets a certain minimum standard. If it does, then it gets accreditation. But some accredited schools may just barely meet that minimum standard, while other accredited schools may be far ahead of that minimum standard. So there can be significant differences between two schools, even if they have the same accreditation.

Universities (especially private ones) may bend their admissions policies for wealthy applicants, just as they might bend them for unusually gifted athletes or musicians. If you have lots of family connections to the school, that can also be a plus for admissions (whether you are wealthy or not). The top schools can maintain high average standards even if they bend them in some cases.

With literally thousands of colleges and universities in the US, it shouldn't be surprising that there is a market for ranking systems. But if you don't like the current systems, and want to develop an alternative, then you are free to do so.

 

You get your wish. US News has just updated their LIS rankings for 2013. The rankings in this field are based "solely on the results of a fall 2012 survey sent to the dean of each program, the program director, and a senior faculty member in each program."

SJSU has fallen from #22 in 2009 to #33 (of 51) in 2013.
Denver has risen from "unranked" (#45 or lower) in 2009 to #33 in 2013.
So they are now tied in the rankings.

Interestingly, SJSU and Denver just happen to be the two schools that changed the most in the rankings between 2009 and 2013.

SJSU dropped by 11 slots, which was by far the biggest drop in the rankings. No other school fell by more than 6 slots.
Denver rose by 12 slots, which was the biggest gain in the rankings. No other school rose by more than 9 slots.

So apparently the deans, program directors, and faculty who rate library & information sciences programs for US News really like what Denver has done over the past few years. Conversely, it appears that they really dislike what SJSU has done. If I were to bet on this, I would put money on Denver moving ahead in the next ranking.

 

As a librarian, the director of a library and someone who has been on four hiring committees, the degree matters, not the school. That is my opinion. We have on our staff, folks with degrees from LSU, UNT, NCCU (me) and Pratt. YMMV.

 

Like some others I'd like to disagree with this statement. The accredited schools that you are describing (and they do exist) are essentially "open universities." This means that they'll give virtually anyone a chance. They know that if your GPA was 2.5 in 2001 that doesn't mean much in 2013. You are likely to be a very different person. So they give you a chance by letting you in despite a mediocre record. This, however, does not mean that there are no standards because once you are "in" you need to stay in and you can't do that by earning mediocre grades. You have to meet their regular grad school standards. One example is the Harvard Extension School. Anyone can get in. Just fill out the form and pay the money. But you're not admitted into a degree track unless your GPA crosses the right line. So you think HES is a degree mill? You really need to think three or four times before you say such things.

 

DU's MLIS program may in fact be superior but that doesn't make SJSU program a degree mill, and admitting 70% of applicants to a program is not selective.

 

Actually, that might be considered selective by MLIS standards. The University of Illinois is often regarded as the top LIS program in the country (they were ranked #1 by US News in both 2009 and 2013), and their acceptance rate is reportedly around 67%.

 

Thanks Cal, I did not realize that is a norm for MLIS regardless of what I think competitive for a grad program may be, but its interesting that SJSU admission rate is even lower at 43%.

 

Take a closer look at those SJSU numbers.

If you scroll down, you will see that 361 applicants were reported, with 158 accepted, for a 43% acceptance rate. Of those 158 accepted students, only 114 actually enrolled.

Yet a few lines up on the same page, it says that 437 MLIS degrees were awarded. But that's almost four times the number of students that were reported enrolling in the program. So something doesn't add up here.

I looked up SJSU's own numbers for MLIS degrees in another thread. They've been at or above the 400 MLIS degrees/year level since 2007. So they are accepting and enrolling far more than 114 students/year.

 

And I think I can guess what it is.

The SJSU library school was originally a full-time B&M program. Then they added a part-time DL option. The part-time DL option eventually became much more popular than the full-time B&M option. And so a few years ago, the B&M option was discontinued entirely. The program is now 100% part-time DL.

The page of interest says that 30% of students are full-time, and 70% are part-time. Since there are no full-time B&M students any more, the page is apparently a few years out of date. The 43% acceptance rate and the 114 enrolled students probably refer to the old full-time B&M program at SJSU, which has since been discontinued.

The old B&M program did have limited space, but the current DL program does not. I would suspect that SJSU's MLIS acceptance rate today is much closer to 100% than it is to 43%.

 

I definitely think the term "degree mill" or simply "mill" gets used WAY to much, especially around here. USF a degree mill? *rolls eyes* REALLY?

I like the rankings because it gives me a starting point for colleges I want to research more and consider. For me, I prefer tier 1. So I look at tier 1 schools and then research whether they have online programs, if their programs fit me and what I want, if the price is manageable, and if the school is an overall fit (yes, I care about mascot, school colors, school philosophy, reviews, etc...) So I think, if used correctly, the rankings can be a good tool and a great starting place for selecting a college.

 

That is a lot to extrapolate. I hope SJSU does not determine admission standards based on the availability of B&M space.

 

I agree, if one has the time, money and discipline for tier 1 programs, they should pursue the best education that is available to them. Sometimes there is not that much of a delta in cost but there is a difference in quality.