nzmorange
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RE: Will someone explain what the PAc sees in UC Boulder?
(04-22-2013 10:09 PM)ODUgradstudent Wrote: (04-22-2013 09:21 PM)nzmorange Wrote: (04-22-2013 08:55 PM)ODUgradstudent Wrote: (04-22-2013 03:38 PM)nzmorange Wrote: (04-22-2013 02:49 PM)ODUgradstudent Wrote: The Academic Ranking of World Universities had it at number 32 in 2010, I'll grant you one place as it slipped to 33 in 2012.
http://www.arwu.org/ARWU2010.jsp
http://www.shanghairanking.com/ARWU2012.html
ARWU is generally considered the best world ranking system, QS and the Times are very anglo-centric. US News, like QS and the THES are very much based on opinion. UC Boulder (which I have no affiliation with) is without doubt an excellent academic institution.
"ARWU uses six objective indicators to rank world universities, including the number of alumni and staff winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals, number of highly cited researchers selected by Thomson Scientific, number of articles published in journals of Nature and Science, number of articles indexed in Science Citation Index - Expanded and Social Sciences Citation Index, and per capita performance with respect to the size of an institution."
ARWU ranks on research, not academics. Like I said,UCt's academics are barely in the top 100 in the US. It's research might not be bad (apparently it its per capita ranking is pretty good)
You say that it has good research but not academics? The quality of research at an institution is one (if not the) mark of good academics. The job of most professors is not to teach.
By the way, the A in ARWU stands for academic.
The "A" can stand for whatever they want it to stand for, but all 6 of their criteria measure research efficiency/effectiveness and none of them measure teaching ability. Anyway, the organization that does the rankings is based in China, so that’s probably only a loose translation of its actual name.
And no, there is a HUGE difference between research and academics. There are plenty of organizations that do research, and many of them are public, but universities are unique, because they teach. Los Alamos does a TON of research, but I have never heard anyone claim that Los Alamos has good "academics" because it isn't an educational institution. THE (only) marks of having good academics are related to having students that effectively and eagerly learn and having students who are prepared for the world when they graduate. If you have ever taken a class taught by a research professor or actually done research, then I would bet my last dollar that you have seen the difference between research and academics.
Your ranking system measures research efficiency and nothing more. It does not measure academics and it actually doesn’t have anything to do with an institution’s attractiveness to a conference. Assuming that a conference wants to add a research institution, it makes MUCH more sense to add an institution that does a lot of research, whether or not it is efficient or not, as that would maximize the effect of collective purchases. Assuming that a conference wants to add a good academic institution, then research efficiency is irrelevant as it has nothing to do with teaching or learning.
We could go back and forth forever on the definition of academics. Usually I am open to people's opinions, but here, you have opinion and I have fact. Researchers at Los Alamos will publish their results (some of course will not as certain projects are secret) in an...wait for it...academic journal.
I do research, I have published papers. I have taken classes from professors and from teachers. I have taught classes. It amazed me when I had students come to me to ask me about class and they didn't know what it is that people in academia do. I know many professors that are great teachers and personally I love teaching, but if someone asks a professor (or in my case a graduate student) what they do, the answer will almost certainly not be "I teach at a university". Passing on knowledge is extremely important, it is where the next generation of academics comes from. Of course, as a public institution, both ODU and UC Boulder have an agreement with the state, which is basically "you teach our kids and we give you space and facilities to do your thing".
Here's a question. Harvard is the best university in the world. Very few people would dispute that. Yale has produced as many famous names in public service and many other areas of life. Amherst, Williams, Wellesley and Harvey Mudd (for example) would give you an undergraduate education equal to any Ivy League school. Why then is Harvard, well, Harvard? Why does it have the reputation that it has, despite the teaching being the same as (or worse than) any of the schools that I have mentioned? Why do people decide that Harvard is what it is? It's the fact that it has many world leading departments offering graduate degrees. Why are these departments world leading? Because the professors there are at the top of their fields, doing research. Berkeley undergrad isn't on the same level as these colleges, but its grad school is probably the only grad school in America that is Harvard's equal in the breadth and depth of their research and like I said before, it's top professors that make a top grad schools (the most important thing about grad school is who you work for; more top professors means a better school). As such, Berkeley is considered one of the best universities in America.
You asked what the Pac sees in Boulder and said that it has poor academics. The quality of Boulder's undergrad is not something that I know, however the university has a reputation for being excellent. If you don't think that research is important then that is perhaps why you don't see Boulder as being a good school.
I'll make another point. Many high school students in New Jersey (I know a lot of people in Jersey) don't want to go to Rutgers. I've told some of them that Rutgers is an amazing university and they are lucky to live in a state with such a great school. However I often get the same reply; "everyone goes there, it'd be the same people as high school". In fact, many of the brightest students in NJ go out of state, just ask anyone who has been to JMU. I wouldn't say that Rutgers is a bad school for undergraduates, but it's considered a great university (it, like Boulder is an AAU member) because of its strength in research.
You mean to imply that you consider Los Alamos an academic institution?* If anything that just highlights the b*stardization of the word. I freely admit that lost souls misuse words, but that doesn't make them right any more than your Chinese-based ranking system has anything to do with American collegiate athletic conference realignment. :)
And to answer your question about Harvard, much of its reputation comes from its size. Compare its law school with (insert random law school here) and compare its business school with (insert random school here). To imply that the professors at Williams are not at the top of their field is silly. Similarly, to suggest that Harvard has a reputation that is better than Williams is also silly, but admittedly true to some extent (weirdly enough). Harvard is certainly better known ( see size), but, amongst those who know what they are talking about, it isn't seen as being tangibly better than the universities that you named. Unfortunately for Williams et pals, many (who have no idea what they're talking about) look down on Williams and every other small New England college because there is a terrible (and untrue) stereotype that small liberal arts schools are somehow worse than big schools (aka degree factories) and their grads are unprepared for the real world. However, Williams grads still manage to get jobs, so I don't feel too bad for them.
I do not dispute that UC Berkley is a good school, and I do not dispute that Rutgers is a good school, but unlike UC Boulder, they have a measureable reputation for being good. Many complain about the way US News does its rankings, but I have yet to hear anyone, including you, claim that it wasn't at least a popularity contest that based schools on reputations. Rutgers is around #60 UC Berkley is around #20, Harvard is around #1, and UC Boulder is around #100. You might have a point if any one of those schools that you mentioned had a strong reputation but a weak ranking, but none of them do. Your logic argument (there's a better word, but it isn't coming to me) that “Cal, Harvard, and RU are all good schools and they all do a lot of research, therefore doing research makes a school good” isn't valid. It would be like me saying that Alabama, Tennessee, LSU, and Florida are all HUGE southern schools and field football teams that are more followed than Miami, a smallish private school. Therefore, for a school to have a substantial following, it must be in the south and it must be a HUGE public school. Furthermore, since UCF is in the south and HUGE, it must have a strong following. Obviously that reasoning doesn't hold water. UCF doesn't have a strong following and some small private schools in the north do (i.e. Notre Dame).
Being good at research might increase the likelihood of attracting professors who are at the top of their game, and being large might increase the likelihood of being good at research. However, neither size nor research efficiency guarantees that the school has cultivated an environment that is conducive to learning, which is what separates schools from R&D departments for large companies (whose employees also publish in the same academic journals as Los Alamos employees**)
Btw, I have no idea about NJ, but in PA kids go to JMU because it’s cheaper, not because anyone thinks that it's better than PSU or Pitt. To clarify, I don't mean "better" as in a better value. I would assume that 100% of the kids going to JMU over Pitt, PSU, or any other school feel that it is a better value, otherwise they wouldn't go there. They would go to the school that offers the better value.
*This isn't rhetorical. I ask because if you do, then we are arguing apples and oranges and there is no point in going on.
*Also if you want to play the name game, I can show you all kinds of "academic research rankings" that leave off all kinds of gov. research labs, so that is very much a two way street.
**I say this because, at least for a while, Los Alamos outscourced significant amount of (if not all of) its research to a handful of companies, like AT&T. Those guys writing in the academic journals in which you cited were really employees of an asset-less subsidiary of those companies (i.e. AT&T) and were working as part of a failed federally-sanctioned tax-avoidance scheme that involved research subsidies from the telecommunications industry in return for the fed’s help avoid state taxes on their R&D work. That’s the long way of saying that if you are going to base your argument on the use of the term “academic” in the name “academic journals,” then you better be prepared to explain how AT&T is an academic institution.
(This post was last modified: 04-22-2013 11:39 PM by nzmorange.)
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Will someone explain what the PAc sees in UC Boulder?
