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From: hooner@athena.mit.edu (Dave Ko)
Newsgroups: comp.edu
Subject: Re: rankings of colleges
Message-ID: <1507@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU>
Date: Mon, 28-Sep-87 10:04:27 EDT
Article-I.D.: bloom-be.1507
Posted: Mon Sep 28 10:04:27 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 29-Sep-87 04:27:28 EDT
References: <1503@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> <8359@shemp.UCLA.EDU>
Sender: daemon@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU
Reply-To: hooner@athena.mit.edu (Dave Ko)
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Lines: 44
Keywords: rankings, colleges

I don't know what Gourman report he was looking at, but
I've never seen anything but the "overall" figures for each 
school, not criterion-1/criterion-2 etc. And the fourteen
factors are things such as quality of grad school placement,
rigorous admissions standard, evaluation by peers (ie
most of the college professors in the field), quality of 
faculty, availability of resources, etc. Now even when 
you say that they're based on "faculty" and "library", that
doesn't discredit what Gourman does. I mean come on, the
quality of faculty is one of the biggest indications of how
good a school is. It's an interdependent cycle- quality
faculty attracts quality staff, which attracts quality
students, and both of which garner added funds for a 
program ... and "library" ratings are very important
too for liberal arts. When you're doing research in poli
sci or sociology, the availability of ample journal citings
and references is totally important in gathering knowledge.

I'll still stand by my statement that the Gourman reports
are the premier UNDERGRADUATE ranking in the country.
Maybe he missed that word, but Gourman does NOT rank 
grad schools. At least the book I'm talking about does not.
If they do, that could be poor ... but I'm solid behind
the undergrad rankings. I think that it's a VERY good
indicator of the best schools in the country in each field.
Of course, these rankings alone as they stand in the
bboard posting could be misleading, as I should have
caveated (sorry) ... for example, Stanford has a very good
comp sci program (although many of its students would 
disagree because they use undergrad instructors) but is not
even ranked in comp sci because their program is a subset
of their #2 EE program.

As for grad rankings, they are much more stable and less
subject to subjectivity than the undergrad. But they are
not from Gourman, they are from an educational journal.
I have seen many grad school rankings and they match almost
school by school every time. Notice that the rankings I
cited do not try to rank beyond the top 6 to 10, as going
beyond that would be much more difficult as ignorance
and other subjective factors would play more of a role. 

Dave
hooner@athena.mit.edu