Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!sun!decwrl!labrea!rocky!andy From: andy@rocky.STANFORD.EDU (Andy Freeman) Newsgroups: comp.edu,soc.college Subject: Silly survey season Message-ID: <706@rocky.STANFORD.EDU> Date: Wed, 28-Oct-87 18:04:24 EST Article-I.D.: rocky.706 Posted: Wed Oct 28 18:04:24 1987 Date-Received: Tue, 3-Nov-87 05:31:38 EST Reply-To: andy@rocky.stanford.edu (Andy Freeman) Organization: Stanford University Computer Science Department Lines: 52 Xref: mnetor comp.edu:744 soc.college:950 *U.S. News and World Report* surveyed 241 "engineering deans at national universities" but only 158 bothered to reply. I'll bet that the quality of the school correlates strongly with not replying. If 12 of the 158 people who replied don't think that MIT is one of the 10 best engineering schools in the US, that's pretty good evidence that the survey is garbage. 12 out of the 96 deans who replied to the law school survey didn't think that Harvard or Yale were top 10 law schools - should we take them seriously? "Little" known fact - 94 out of 204 of the college presidents surveyed didn't respond to the survey on undergraduate schools. Stanford's president said "It's a beauty contest, not a serious analysis of quality. [Over 35% of the people who reply didn't rank Stanford or Harvard in the top 10. I don't even reply to them.]" "His" school did very well on both the undergrad and grad versions, so a sour grapes claim is fairly weak. Regarding the 85 version of the business school dean survey, the dean of Stanford's, Professor Robert Jaedicke, said: "[these surveys] are a disservice to prospective students. "Business schools approach management education and research in different ways. These differences get glossed over in the rankings, which tend to weed out a lot of heterogeneity. "When surveys are done on schools, they tend to become the lead indicator. People who really need information about educational programs to make informed decisions may not dig deep enough. The Deans Council of the Association of American Medical Colleges urged their colleagues NOT to participate; only 56 out of 144 surveyed did. Dr. David Korn, dean of Stanford's med school said: "We Americans are much given to lists of the `best,' and, perhaps because of our 10 fingers, it is invariably the 10 best. Only a pedant would insist on the 10 better, and so it goes, the 10 best-dressed women, the 10 best movies, etc. "And now the turn of medical schools has come. The deans who responded to the questionaire from the 10 best editors of the *U.S. News and World Report* named the 10 top schools, but there is no mystery; the particular positions seem to have depended on how many deans answered the questionaire. "We are not surprised to see Stanford Medical School listed among the 10 best, but it's difficult to see anything useful as a consequence of these rankings. -- Andy Freeman UUCP: {arpa gateways, decwrl, sun, hplabs, rutgers}!sushi.stanford.edu!andy ARPA: andy@sushi.stanford.edu (415) 329-1718/723-3088 home/cubicle