One interesting thing to come of these discussions - a lot of the problems with US News methodology arise from the attempt to push certain metrics from 90% to 100%. Class size, faculty with a "terminal" degree, class size, admissions rate. Many of these things are treated by the rankings as "the higher (or lower) the better." As an analogy, I'd use lean muscle mass percentage for elite athletes. Generally speaking, lower is better, and in many sports, all elite athletes are all under 10% body fat. But much below this starts to become harmful, and would eventually be fatal.
I think this is kind of what's happening with Columbia here. For example, Columbia claimed that 100% of the faculty had a terminal degree. Prof Thaddeus (if you read his full blog post) questioned this from two angles. The first was to say it can't possibly be true. The second (which I found more interesting) was: why would you even want this to be 100%? Seems like Columbia has valuable faculty who don't have a PhD or MFA or whatever is the "terminal" degree int he field.
The harm here isn't in wanting a terminal degree for a high percentage of faculty, it's trying to get this to 100%. I'd say that it probably is a good sign, overall, that most of the faculty has a doctoral degree, as this is the main training degree for research and teaching. But the way US news does it, you get more points for 95% than 90%, more points for 99% than 95%. Seems like a lot of harm comes from trying to wring out that last bit, since even if you do generally agree with the value of a PhD for research (or other terminal degree), it does seem like you'd build a stronger faculty overall with the ability to hire 1 in 10 or 1 in 20 based on some other credential.
So much else fits this pattern. Small class sizes.. kind of the same thing. Sure, it's a good sign, but they're only an indicator, not a goal in and of themselves. Low admissions rates, high test scores. All good metrics, but things that can become not just harmful but harmful and maybe even fatal to a university if pursued with a single minded intensity as if total purity in the metric is the goal.
Honestly, overall we just have to reject the US news rankings. I appreciate what Prof Thaddeus did here, and it was a useful and very well reasoned and sourced takedown. But now and then, I realized that there isn't much to be added, just new and interesting ways to say what everyone knows at this point - yousnoozeandworlddistort rankings are pretty well idiotic. I actually think college rankings in general can be useful if managed cautiously and read critically, but this one is just a turkey.
I think this is kind of what's happening with Columbia here. For example, Columbia claimed that 100% of the faculty had a terminal degree. Prof Thaddeus (if you read his full blog post) questioned this from two angles. The first was to say it can't possibly be true. The second (which I found more interesting) was: why would you even want this to be 100%? Seems like Columbia has valuable faculty who don't have a PhD or MFA or whatever is the "terminal" degree int he field.
The harm here isn't in wanting a terminal degree for a high percentage of faculty, it's trying to get this to 100%. I'd say that it probably is a good sign, overall, that most of the faculty has a doctoral degree, as this is the main training degree for research and teaching. But the way US news does it, you get more points for 95% than 90%, more points for 99% than 95%. Seems like a lot of harm comes from trying to wring out that last bit, since even if you do generally agree with the value of a PhD for research (or other terminal degree), it does seem like you'd build a stronger faculty overall with the ability to hire 1 in 10 or 1 in 20 based on some other credential.
So much else fits this pattern. Small class sizes.. kind of the same thing. Sure, it's a good sign, but they're only an indicator, not a goal in and of themselves. Low admissions rates, high test scores. All good metrics, but things that can become not just harmful but harmful and maybe even fatal to a university if pursued with a single minded intensity as if total purity in the metric is the goal.
Honestly, overall we just have to reject the US news rankings. I appreciate what Prof Thaddeus did here, and it was a useful and very well reasoned and sourced takedown. But now and then, I realized that there isn't much to be added, just new and interesting ways to say what everyone knows at this point - yousnoozeandworlddistort rankings are pretty well idiotic. I actually think college rankings in general can be useful if managed cautiously and read critically, but this one is just a turkey.