'U' holds in grad rankings

Although the University did well in the U.S. News & World Report graduate school rankings released Friday, many deans feel uneasy about letting a ranking indicate the quality of a college's graduate program.

"We're always proud to see our institution recognized," said Provost Nancy Cantor, adding that factors such as "curriculum, innovation and quality of teaching" aren't taken into account by the study, which she said makes it less useful as a ranking system.

The College of Engineering rose in the rankings this year from seventh to fourth.

Engineering Dean Stephen Director said the program has improved during the last year, but warned against reading too much into the change of rankings.

"Schools don't change dramatically from one year to the next," Director said.

Many deans admit the rankings are important, especially for attracting applicants, but disagree with the way U.S. News measures program quality. The day before the rankings were released, deans from 164 law schools across the country, including the University's Law School Dean Jeffrey Lehman, publicly announced their dissatisfaction with the U.S. News ranking system.

"It was an open letter to all law school applicants to help them understand the rankings," Lehman said.

The letter said the rankings could be misleading and that "it would potentially be a self destructive mistake (to use them)," Lehman said.

Lehman said problems that specifically hurt public universities were among his main reasons for opposing the ranking system. Lehman said that since the University uses state funding without actually billing the state, the expenditure per faculty member at the University - which is one of the variables U.S. News uses to calculate rank - is recorded as being much lower than it actually is.

Director pointed out that every year, U.S. News changes its ranking formula, and that this alone is responsible for much of the shifting in the ranks.

The College of Engineering was tied for fourth with three other schools. Director said that if he were ranking the programs, U.S. News' top seven schools would also be his top seven schools, but not necessarily in the same order.

"The top seven are the top seven," Director said. But "among the very best schools, it's hard to make a distinction."

U.S. News bases its rankings on some objective measurements - such as average GMAT scores of new students and the amount of money spent on research per faculty member - and by some subjective measures, such as opinion surveys of college deans and corporate recruiters.

"We identify those who are most likely to hire new graduates," said Celeste James, U.S. News' director of media relations. Recruiters "would have different but very valuable views."

James acknowledged that the U.S. News ranking is the only one of its kind for graduate schools.

"It is the only independent, data-based ranking of graduate schools," James said.

LSA sophomore Talia Mitchell, who will be applying to law school, said she trusts the rankings.

"I think they're pretty accurate," Mitchell said. "I don't necessarily use it to determine where I want to go."

Director also said that "inertia" played a part in the rankings.

"MIT has been in first place for years (in engineering) and will probably continue to be the top," Director said, adding that the MIT engineering program is not clearly better than the University's.

"There are some areas that we have superior strengths, and some areas that MIT is superior in," Director said.

"Most of us deans think that people make too much of these rankings," Director said.

In the original draft of the law school rankings, U.S. News miscalculated the rank of Duke University.

U.S. News used incorrect figures for the rate of job placement when calculating the score for Duke Law School graduates.

Duke officials reported the mistake, and U.S. News revised its rankings. Duke is now rated eighth, tied with the University.

U.S. News and World Report's ranking of University graduate programs:
Business: 10
Law: 8
Engineering: 4
Education: 6
Medicine: 9
Public Affairs: 8

02-23-98