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From: andy@rocky.STANFORD.EDU (Andy Freeman)
Newsgroups: comp.edu,soc.college
Subject: Re: Silly survey season
Message-ID: <724@rocky.STANFORD.EDU>
Date: Tue, 3-Nov-87 19:29:59 EST
Article-I.D.: rocky.724
Posted: Tue Nov  3 19:29:59 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 7-Nov-87 08:24:54 EST
References: <706@rocky.STANFORD.EDU> <492@mit-caf.UUCP>
Reply-To: andy@rocky.UUCP (Andy Freeman)
Organization: Stanford University Computer Science Department
Lines: 47
Xref: mnetor comp.edu:760 soc.college:972

In article <492@mit-caf.UUCP> jtkung@mit-caf.UUCP (Joseph Kung) writes:
>How does a person chose where to go to school if that person is an R.
>P. Feynman or a future Dirac? He choses based on quality of faculty
>and facilities.

This answer is very incomplete.  First the faculty and facilities
have to be relevant to the student's interests.  A strong OS faculty
is of little use to a CS theory student.  Almost as important is
the school's "style".  Both CMU and Stanford are very good schools,
but some students will thrive at one and not the other.

>And this usually gets reflected in a good survey (Gorman Report). ... As
>for the question of surveys (specifically the one in US News and World
>Report), I would compare that with the Gorman Report, which is not
>based on Deans' opinions, but on tangible things such as faculty,
>facilities, research money, etc. The two reports parallel each other,
>though not perfectly, but close. There is a definite usefulness in a good
>factual suvey.

Ah, the famous Gorman report.  Yes, Gorman labels his criteria "faculty
quality", "facilities", and the like, but how does he measure them and
combine these measurements?  Once again, let's use MIT's CS department
as an example.*  The most recent Gorman report said that it was one of
the top 5, but in ones before that, it didn't even make the top 10.
Since CS departments don't change that fast, Gorman was blatantly
wrong either originally or now.  I'd say the former, but that doesn't
mean the current results are worth anything.  I think the numbers are
being cooked to match preconceptions and therefore are useless.

BTW - There are lots of problems with the Deans survey (in U.S. News
and World Report) that haven't been mentioned.  The most critical is
that we don't know what definition of "best" was used.  (I doubt the
surveyers thought of this either.)  Was it "does best research"?  How
about "trains best researchers" or even "trains best engineers"?  There
are lots of possibilities and the rankings depend on which "best" was
used.

-andy

ps - I'm using MIT as an example because most of the postings praising
the surveys seem to come from there.  Even so, MIT is one of the five
best engineering schools in the world by any reasonable standard.
-- 
Andy Freeman
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ARPA:  andy@sushi.stanford.edu
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