Does the ranking of your school/university matter? [Archive]

Aedilred

2017-01-20, 07:22 AM

there are better universities in the same city!

I feel I should make the point that this is not, in itself, a barometer of quality. MIT, for instance is frequently listed as merely the second-best university in its home city, but is still a regular in the global top ten. Many cities contain multiple world-class universities.

That said, it doesn't sound like your tutor's is a winner.

All the same, there are reasons to be sceptical of such ranking measures. They tend to be subjective, and it's the norm for different review bodies to come up with different rankings. They change year by year, so the current ranking of a university may not reflect its quality at the time it awarded the degree in question. Because it tends to be an average measure, a university with some excellent faculties and some poor ones will look mediocre even though some of its degrees may be world-class: by extension, universities with a narrow focus can score highly even though they don't offer a full range of academic disciplines. That the rankings are international may make certain universities (and the individuals who attend them) look worse than, in practice, they are, since it will include expensive foreign universities which may simply not be possible - for reasons which have nothing to do with academic capability - for certain students to attend. And of course, it's a measurement, not a determiner.

Rankings tend to be of some importance to universities themselves, which rely on their reputations to attract students and funding. And it is to the advantage of a student to go to a university with a good reputation, because it will affect the way their degree is viewed by those to whom it's relevant. But that's about it.

Frozen_Feet

2017-01-20, 07:51 AM

Yes and no.

Yes, in the sense that other people and institutions give weight to them, justified or not. For example, many of the best students apply for high-ranked schools because of the prestige - creating a feedback loop where some schools get better and better students and hence better ranks (according to some metrics, at least) and better funding irrespective of the quality of teaching! This leaves the worse students to apply for less-ranked universities, and may create a feedback loop where a school is seen as less prestigious and gets funding and poorer rankins (etc.), again irrespective of the quality of teaching.

No, in the sense that the individual student and the individual teacher matter much more. The worst university of the world might have lucked out and have one real good math professor, and said professor might luck out and get a real good student who ends up becoming world class. And a real bright and motivated student might compensate for even a poor teacher, so you could get a great teacher from a really bad school with bad teacher.

It's just not very likely. All things considered, you probably are likely to get a better teacher out of a higher-ranking university. It's never a certainty either way, though.

Jon_Dahl

2017-01-20, 07:52 AM

Thank you, quality comments. I find your points very good although I tend to disagree with some of them.

All the same, there are reasons to be sceptical of such ranking measures. They tend to be subjective, and it's the norm for different review bodies to come up with different rankings. They change year by year, so the current ranking of a university may not reflect its quality at the time it awarded the degree in question. Because it tends to be an average measure, a university with some excellent faculties and some poor ones will look mediocre even though some of its degrees may be world-class: by extension, universities with a narrow focus can score highly even though they don't offer a full range of academic disciplines. That the rankings are international may make certain universities (and the individuals who attend them) look worse than, in practice, they are, since it will include expensive foreign universities which may simply not be possible - for reasons which have nothing to do with academic capability - for certain students to attend. And of course, it's a measurement, not a determiner.

Rankings tend to be of some importance to universities themselves, which rely on their reputations to attract students and funding. And it is to the advantage of a student to go to a university with a good reputation, because it will affect the way their degree is viewed by those to whom it's relevant. But that's about it.

This is an interesting point. I would say that a public university would not care that much about rankings, since they can receive all their funding from sources that couldn't care less about rankings. They can ignore 'petty rankings'. From students' perspective, the ranking can be very visible and easy indicator, although many will not care about it. Therefore it seems unlikely that a private university would have a disturbingly low International ranking (out of scale and in a major European capital!) and not care about it.

Jon_Dahl

2017-01-20, 08:02 AM

Yes, in the sense that other people and institutions give weight to them, justified or not. For example, many of the best students apply for high-ranked schools because of the prestige - creating a feedback loop where some schools get better and better students and hence better ranks (according to some metrics, at least) and better funding irrespective of the quality of teaching! This leaves the worse students to apply for less-ranked universities, and may create a feedback loop where a school is seen as less prestigious and gets funding and poorer rankins (etc.), again irrespective of the quality of teaching.

Don't you think that my university, which has a fairly good international rating, might get sucked into this negative feedback loop if it continues hiring Professor Blunders with MAs in Silly Sciences from the Mickey Mouse University?

Frozen_Feet

2017-01-20, 08:38 AM

Yes. What enterprise couldn't be dragged into the mud by continuous bad recruitment decisions?

Peelee

2017-01-20, 08:47 AM

Jon_Dahl

2017-01-20, 09:43 AM

Aedilred

2017-01-20, 11:55 AM

This is an interesting point. I would say that a public university would not care that much about rankings, since they can receive all their funding from sources that couldn't care less about rankings. They can ignore 'petty rankings'.
This depends. In fact a government - and consequently the public universities dependent on it - may care more about rankings than private donors or paying students do, and governments will often run their own ranking systems to assess the quality of universities within that country so they can adjust spending, kick bottom where necessary, and so on. The government doesn't want its money to be wasted, after all, and because governments tend to operate big bureaucratic institutions, ranking systems and the like might form a major part of how decisions get made. On the other hand a private donor or fee-paying student might not even bother to check the rankings list before investing in their university of choice.

To take the UK, for instance - which admittedly has a hybrid university system which is neither fully private nor public - the quality of its leading universities is one of the country's biggest selling points in the international market. If universities start to gain a reputation for being poor, or falling behind their international counterparts, this can lead to a "brain drain" where the best and brightest students head overseas for their education - and may not return. It's therefore important not only to the individual universities but to the government that this status is visibly maintained, which in measurable terms means it needs to have several universities placing highly in world rankings. If Cambridge, Imperial, UCL, the LSE etc. start dropping out of the global top thirty or so you can bet the government will start taking an interest and start talking about university reform. Given that most universities don't want to be reformed, it's therefore in their interests to maintain a high ranking.

Jon_Dahl

2017-01-20, 12:06 PM

Rockphed

2017-01-20, 01:18 PM

You make a convincing case, Aedilred. Could we agree that having an abysmal rating or ranking of any kind is a sign of weakness, whether the university is public or not? I'm trying to refocus the discussion here.

How many universities are there in the world? In the US alone there are between 100 and 1000 public universities (I.E. ones chartered by governments), and about twice that number of private Universities. Many of the public universities are of middling quality, focusing too much on sports and student life rather than academics, but if somebody with a PhD from any of them and a dissertation focusing on relevant topics sought a teaching job, they would be in the running. Some of the public universities in the US are world class. Some of them are pure dreck and should be defunded and disbanded. Most of them are somewhere in the middle.

A quick search shows that there are 154 universities in the UK. Another search yields on the order of 30 for France, at least 50 in Germany, about 50 in Spain, about 100 in Italy, and about 400 in Russia.

What I am trying to show is that having a world ranking of 700 is not, in and of itself, abysmal.

Another thing to note is that some universities get low overall rankings for reasons unrelated to graduates thereof: high campus crime and low graduation rates both feature in reasons for colleges being bad, yet after graduation they do not impact the graduate.

Vinyadan

2017-01-20, 01:47 PM

You don't actually need a university degree to teach at a university.

If your university is very good and takes very bad teachers, that's not a problem with the teacher's old university, it's a problem with your university (and, if the teaching quality isn't that high, how it's ranked as very good.) I hope it doesn't sound aggressive, but it's a better way to look at this.

The question, however, is: why is this teacher bad? Is she unprepared in her subject matter? Is she a bad explainer? Is she unjust when giving grades, or extremely slow? Without knowing where the "badness" lies, it's quite hard to give an answer. Universities also often have claims offices, if students notice that something is wrong.

Generally speaking, I don't think university rankings matter that much, because university teachers have a great freedom, and general quality can be very different in different faculties of the same university. However, if you can prove that you were a good student at a renowned university, then you have advantages. But a very good university actually usually gives its students chances to get to know people of that field to work with, build social networks of talented individuals, that sort of things. So a good university already has an implicit advantage over other universities.

There's also the problem of research vs teaching. A certain university (or, more likely, a certain faculty) can be great on researching, but put very little resources out for students. Other universities may do very little research and think about teaching instead. Depending on what you want, this can give extremely different results that are hard to rank in a chart.

Telonius

2017-01-20, 02:56 PM

I think the rankings "matter" most - as in, signify something important - if there's a wide chasm between two rankings when comparing institutions. It's really not going to be that much of a difference if a university is ranked 56th versus 57th; you're still getting a comparable education at either one. It's going to matter a lot more if a university is ranked 56th vs 570th. You can generally expect a much higher quality of education going on in the 56th-ranked school.

In another (very different) sense, it probably won't "matter" at all to an individual student as long as the school is accredited. For a lot of positions, education is just a certification box to be checked. The hiring manager isn't going to care if you attended the 56th or the 570th ranked school. The job might not even really need its worker to have the skills that a diploma certifies that you have. The box is just there because the HR department said that it ought to be, usually as a "soft" screening mechanism. That's obviously not going to be the case for jobs that actually need particular skills and certifications (doctors and educators come to mind). But outside of those? A degree is a degree.

Jon_Dahl

2017-01-20, 03:35 PM

The question, however, is: why is this teacher bad? Is she unprepared in her subject matter? Is she a bad explainer? Is she unjust when giving grades, or extremely slow? Without knowing where the "badness" lies, it's quite hard to give an answer. Universities also often have claims offices, if students notice that something is wrong.

Ahh, I really don't know where to begin... Your question is like "explain the history of the USA" or "What is the meaning of life". What if I gave you an example?

We had a literature exam. It was one of the most extensive exams that I have done (with no prior warning that it would be like that!) and it included THREE essay questions. For us, this is a lot. The minimum word count for each essay was 250. I managed to write the essays, although I didn't meet the word requirements, and I knew that my essays were, in fact, very good. After the exam I spoke with a coursemate who told me that she hadn't written a single word of the third essay. So she wrote two out of the three required essays, and her word count in the last essay was zero out of 250.

My grade was 4 (out of 5), and her grade was 5 (out of 5). How is that even possible? I don't want to ask the teacher, I just want her to teach somewhere else and stop making me lose my mind. She is a tumor in my soul, an abscess in my mind, a bleeding wound in my life.

AdmiralCheez

2017-01-20, 03:58 PM

My grade was 4 (out of 5), and her grade was 5 (out of 5). How is that even possible? I don't want to ask the teacher, I just want her to teach somewhere else and stop making me lose my mind. She is a tumor in my soul, an abscess in my mind, a bleeding wound in my life.

Is it possible that it said to only do two out of three questions? Or perhaps her responses were so well written that it made up for the missing response? Hard to tell, but assuming all three were mandatory, it doesn't make sense to get a perfect score if a third of the answers are missing.

But if you find the teacher that awful, can you request a transfer to another class? When I went to college, we had the option of dropping a class and enrolling in a new one if we didn't like the teacher. Depends on how far into the semester you are, but it might be worth looking into.

Jon_Dahl

2017-01-20, 04:14 PM

Is it possible that it said to only do two out of three questions? Or perhaps her responses were so well written that it made up for the missing response? Hard to tell, but assuming all three were mandatory, it doesn't make sense to get a perfect score if a third of the answers are missing.

But if you find the teacher that awful, can you request a transfer to another class? When I went to college, we had the option of dropping a class and enrolling in a new one if we didn't like the teacher. Depends on how far into the semester you are, but it might be worth looking into.

They were all required, because they were in different sections in the exam with entirely different topics. She teaches some of the mandatory courses and she can't be avoided if you want to finish those courses without delaying your graduation. In my case my graduation would be delayed by a year.

AtlanteanTroll

2017-01-20, 04:35 PM

It matters if you want to go to grad school.

AdmiralCheez

2017-01-20, 05:39 PM

They were all required, because they were in different sections in the exam with entirely different topics. She teaches some of the mandatory courses and she can't be avoided if you want to finish those courses without delaying your graduation. In my case my graduation would be delayed by a year.

Ah, I see; well, never mind then. I had a few of those teachers too, where they were just unavoidable; luckily, they were actually decent. I guess my best advice would be to either ask about it, or learn how she thinks and try to deal with her. The class will soon be over.

Errata

2017-01-20, 06:45 PM

One thing that completing a university degree demonstrates is persistence. You will inevitably run into obstacles like these from time to time, but you stayed focused on the same goal over a period of years despite some difficult parts. Just survive your one bad professor in one course, and live to thrive in some other, better class. If her capriciousness is going to result in you failing, then you need to bring it to someone's attention, but if it's just a minor set back, don't let her derail you. I don't know your grading system, but I wouldn't think one 4 out of 5 on a test would jeopardize your grade too much in that class, much less your overall academic standing.

Scarlet Knight

2017-01-20, 11:21 PM

Ah, bad teachers. I had some terrible professors...knowlegable but with poor communication and social skills. Turns out the university wanted them for research and they were required to teach at least some. Good for the school, annoying for the professor, and for the students? Tough.

As for rankings, and whether they matter, it's very situational. I don't think school ranking went into the decisions for their appointment , but all the present US Supreme Court Justices just happened to go to Ivy League schools.

ForzaFiori

2017-01-21, 03:50 AM

You don't actually need a university degree to teach at a university.

Where is this true? Cause at least in the US, pretty much any college or university, even smaller technical or community colleges, want you to have a masters or PhD in your field to teach. with a bachelors you could be a TA or lab assistant, maybe teach if theres a big need or its a really small or crappy school.

As for the rankings, I have no idea where my alma mater comes in world wide. I know in the US, its typically just outside the top 20, and it has caused some annoyances for the students because of their huge push to break the top 20. For instance, part of your ranking is based on the scientific equipment you have. Having more equipment, as well as the latest stuff, ups your rating. However, no where does it ask if it actually work. So my university had all sorts of stuff, and was always buying more, but never repaired anything that broke. Nor did they buy things like flint and steel for bunson burners, or chalk for blackboards, because that wasn't what the rating people wanted.

However, like most americans (especially in the SE), I do care tremendously about my university's ranking when it comes to football. :smalltongue: and for the first time in 35 years were #1 and national champs :smallbiggrin:

Beleriphon

2017-01-22, 06:37 PM

Well, if your university is so highly ranked, and they thought that said teacher was good enough for them to hire, despite the low rank of the school she came from, then I would argue that your own school clearly puts little stock in those rankings.

There's also the fact that some universities hire professors for their research credentials, not their ability to actually teach students. I went to Trent University with a world class DNA/forensics lab and program as well as a world class sleep studies lab. The DNA portion is great for education, the guy running the sleep studies lab would rather spend is free time on research and only teaches (badly) because he has to.

Jon_Dahl

2017-01-23, 09:11 AM

Something incredibly funny happened today that was related to all this.

A teacher told us today never, ever to study in a private university of country X. We should always seek to study in a public university of the said country. She didn't tell us the reason, but it seemed obvious: all the private universities of the country X are crap.

This teacher is the closest colleague of the Bad Teacher. Country X is the country where the Bad Teacher had studied in a private university for five years.

Chen

2017-01-23, 09:48 AM

Is it possible that it said to only do two out of three questions? Or perhaps her responses were so well written that it made up for the missing response? Hard to tell, but assuming all three were mandatory, it doesn't make sense to get a perfect score if a third of the answers are missing.

Two good responses and an a very large curve could do it too. But assuming equal weighting that would mean even with two 100% answers the overall person's grade of ~66% would need to get curved up to 100%. It would imply that the OPs three responses would need to have resulted in a grade below 66% to have gotten curved lower than the person who only answered two questions.

Aedilred

2017-01-23, 11:52 AM

Honestly I think without actually seeing the paper the student in question turned in, it's pointless to speculate and difficult to tell how well-founded Jon's complaints/beliefs are.

It does seem strange that a student could get full marks without answering all the questions, but she may have been being modest when talking to Jon, or have made a mistake not on the paper itself but in her recollection of it (or a misunderstanding of the rubric which caused her to think she'd made a mistake when she hadn't). And he is in no position to judge the relative quality of their submissions.

There may be other issues with the teacher's performance but but I don't think we have enough evidence to pass judgment on the basis of the given example alone.

Peelee

2017-01-23, 12:43 PM

However, like most americans (especially in the SE), I do care tremendously about my university's ranking when it comes to football. :smalltongue: and for the first time in 35 years were #1 and national champs :smallbiggrin:
I have a love-hate relationship with the SEC. On the one hand, I don't care at all about it, but game days make work and shopping delightful, because everyone's at home or at the game. On the other hand, I don't care at all about it, but game days make travel through certain areas horrendous, because everyone is clogging up the roads to get to the game.

I am, of course, leaving off the "I care some, because it actively hurts schools, but I'm never going to win this argument because FOOTBALL," because FOOTBALL.

I went to Trent University with a world class DNA/forensics lab and program as well as a world class sleep studies lab. The DNA portion is great for education, the guy running the sleep studies lab would rather spend is free time on research and only teaches (badly) because he has to.
Hey, that's kinda cool. I usually joke about pulmonologists going into sleep disorders because of how it's just easy money. Hire some techs, tell patients they have the apnea, collect paycheck. I know there's a lot more than that for sleep labs, so it's cool to hear about people actually doing cutting edge research.

Liquor Box

2017-01-23, 08:42 PM

Ahh, I really don't know where to begin... Your question is like "explain the history of the USA" or "What is the meaning of life". What if I gave you an example?

We had a literature exam. It was one of the most extensive exams that I have done (with no prior warning that it would be like that!) and it included THREE essay questions. For us, this is a lot. The minimum word count for each essay was 250. I managed to write the essays, although I didn't meet the word requirements, and I knew that my essays were, in fact, very good. After the exam I spoke with a coursemate who told me that she hadn't written a single word of the third essay. So she wrote two out of the three required essays, and her word count in the last essay was zero out of 250.

My grade was 4 (out of 5), and her grade was 5 (out of 5). How is that even possible? I don't want to ask the teacher, I just want her to teach somewhere else and stop making me lose my mind. She is a tumor in my soul, an abscess in my mind, a bleeding wound in my life.

I don't see a problem with this. Her one word essay may have been awesome - brevity is gold
http://www.seekeraftertruth.com/what-chair/

SaintRidley

2017-01-24, 12:55 PM

University ranking matters far less than program ranking, and even then due to the current climate in terms of academic job availability, unless your program ranks high (top ten) it probably doesn't matter at all how it ranks as long as the program and university are fully accredited and nothing shady was going on.

As others have noted, rankings are a good bit about advertising. Higher rankings tend to mean more funding for the university/program.

Knaight

2017-01-24, 01:42 PM

I am, of course, leaving off the "I care some, because it actively hurts schools, but I'm never going to win this argument because FOOTBALL," because FOOTBALL.

Are you also leaving out the "The NFL can fund their own minor league and the university system is under no obligation to provide it for them"?

Lemmy

2017-01-24, 02:20 PM

I had an interesting conversation the other day and I thought I'd bring it up here too, since my previous university-related thread was very informative. This thread is partly related to that one.

I have this really bad teacher, whom I have mentioned before, so I decided to google her. Her alma mater seemed a bit weird, so I found out more about it. I was shocked to see that her university was ranked 701+ in the global ranking (QS World University Rankings 2016-2017). The university's ranking is the lowest of her country; there are better universities in the same city! Her university is the highest ranked private university of her country while the (clearly) better ones are public universities. I spoke with my fellow students about this, but they said that university rankings are practically meaningless. I disagree. My university is ranked in the top 100 universities of world, and I feel worried that we have a teacher whose university's quality is considerably poor in comparison.

What do you guys think?
It matters very little, IME. A well-known and recognized university might give you and edge when they are reading your curriculum, since it attracts their attention in a positive way ("This guy went to Royal Whatever University! Let's put him in the 'for consideration' pile of candidates!") Most employers just care about three things:

- Are you legally allowed to perform the job? And for this, all you need is a diploma. Doesn't matter which institution gave it to you, as long as it's officially recognized by your government.
- Can you do a good work in that job? When your employers are considering this, experience and recommendations weigh much, much more than your university's name and ranking, I found.
- How much will you cost? No employer is willing to pay you twice a much as they'd pay for someone else, even if your university is indeed, twice as good as theirs.

Knaight

2017-01-24, 02:35 PM

It matters very little, IME. A well-known and recognized university might give you and edge when they are reading your curriculum, since it attracts their attention in a positive way ("This guy went to Royal Whatever University! Let's put him in the 'for consideration' pile of candidates!") Most employers just care about three things:

- Are you legally allowed to perform the job? And for this, all you need is a diploma. Doesn't matter which institution gave it to you, as long as it's officially recognized by your government.
- Can you do a good work in that job? When your employers are considering this, experience and recommendations weigh much, much more than your university's name and ranking, I found.
- How much will you cost? No employer is willing to pay you twice a much as they'd pay for someone else, even if your university is indeed, twice as good as theirs.

That "officially recognized by your government" caveat isn't quite the whole story. There are plenty of known diploma mills that are recognized by governments. For instance, right now the state of Colorado government is busy recognizing College America, with a form of recognition that involves the department of education aiming a lawsuit at them for fraud centered around the false promise of their degrees being at all useful. Being accredited by a legitimate source is a big deal.

Peelee

2017-01-24, 03:05 PM

Are you also leaving out the "The NFL can fund their own minor league and the university system is under no obligation to provide it for them"?

To be fair, there's really a lot I'm leaving out.

Lemmy

2017-01-24, 06:45 PM

That "officially recognized by your government" caveat isn't quite the whole story. There are plenty of known diploma mills that are recognized by governments. For instance, right now the state of Colorado government is busy recognizing College America, with a form of recognition that involves the department of education aiming a lawsuit at them for fraud centered around the false promise of their degrees being at all useful. Being accredited by a legitimate source is a big deal.Sure, but I thought my general point was pretty clear and presenting the details of every possibility was a bit too much for a quick bullet point. :smallbiggrin:

Knaight

2017-01-24, 07:34 PM

Sure, but I thought my general point was pretty clear and presenting the details of every possibility was a bit too much for a quick bullet point. :smallbiggrin:

Oh, for sure. I just think it's worth pointing out diploma mills and other fake colleges at every turn. The whole practice of taking tens of thousands of dollars from someone, having them do hundreds of hours of labor (mostly intellectual), and knowing the whole time it's useless is one of those things I disapprove of morally.

Anarion

2017-01-24, 07:37 PM

I think it matters broadly, but not specifically. That is, people in really top name schools are, as a heuristic, generally going to be in the group of smartest and hardest working applicants in a pool for a job. Using that isn't a substitute for actually figuring out if the person you're trying to hire is in fact smart and hard-working though. But if you're the hiring manager for a job and you've got the daunting task of reviewing 1,000+ applications, it can be helpful to use things like school ranking to narrow the pool so that you're looking at ones that are more likely than not to be good. People use other things for the same reason: specific certifications, language or technical requirements, and years of experience are all ways to narrow a pool of a very large number of people down to a more manageable number of people that have a high statistical likelihood to be a good choice.

Lemmy

2017-01-24, 07:39 PM

Oh, for sure. I just think it's worth pointing out diploma mills and other fake colleges at every turn. The whole practice of taking tens of thousands of dollars from someone, having them do hundreds of hours of labor (mostly intellectual), and knowing the whole time it's useless is one of those things I disapprove of morally.Me too. Hopefully people do some research before committing to spend all that time and money. :smallsmile:

ForzaFiori

2017-01-31, 10:37 PM

I have a love-hate relationship with the SEC.

Me too. :smalltongue: But that's because Clemson is ACC and I'm tired of hearing every single sports analyst in the country say that just being in the SEC makes any team amazing somehow.

I am, of course, leaving off the "I care some, because it actively hurts schools, but I'm never going to win this argument because FOOTBALL," because FOOTBALL.

Are you also leaving out the "The NFL can fund their own minor league and the university system is under no obligation to provide it for them"?

I'm kinda on the fence about this. I don't like alot of the ways the NCAA deals with sports, and they do tend to cause problems at schools, but having college level sports actually does do alot of good too. I know people who never could have gone to college without a sport scholarship, when the program is well known and doing good they can bring in tons of money for the school (most of the top football program in the US, for instance, bring in more in booster club earnings, ticket sales, etc, than they manage to spend on coaches and buildings, even with their outrageous prices), and that can allow for other sports or areas of the university to receive more funding. It also helps get the name of your school out - before 1981, Clemson University was a no-name regional school. When they won a football national championship however, it made interest in the school explode, and its been a fairly well known school on the national stage ever since. I'd also expect that this years national championship will again cause interest in the school to go up.

I do see the other hand though, the injuries, the way the schools (or even authorities) tend to allow players of big sports to cut corners or get away with things they shouldn't, the way it can draw money and focus away from the more important things at University, etc. But, I think over all, I feel they help more than harm. Plus, I've always been told (and believed) that going to college is more than just about learning. Yes, you're there to learn whatever your studying, but the social parts of college are also important, and sports (and the things that sports brings to a college) are a big part of that social life, and a easy and quick way to bring a student body together.

Peelee

2017-02-01, 09:35 AM

I'm kinda on the fence about this. I don't like alot of the ways the NCAA deals with sports, and they do tend to cause problems at schools, but having college level sports actually does do alot of good too. I know people who never could have gone to college without a sport scholarship, when the program is well known and doing good they can bring in tons of money for the school (most of the top football program in the US, for instance, bring in more in booster club earnings, ticket sales, etc, than they manage to spend on coaches and buildings, even with their outrageous prices), and that can allow for other sports or areas of the university to receive more funding. It also helps get the name of your school out - before 1981, Clemson University was a no-name regional school. When they won a football national championship however, it made interest in the school explode, and its been a fairly well known school on the national stage ever since. I'd also expect that this years national championship will again cause interest in the school to go up.

I do see the other hand though, the injuries, the way the schools (or even authorities) tend to allow players of big sports to cut corners or get away with things they shouldn't, the way it can draw money and focus away from the more important things at University, etc. But, I think over all, I feel they help more than harm. Plus, I've always been told (and believed) that going to college is more than just about learning. Yes, you're there to learn whatever your studying, but the social parts of college are also important, and sports (and the things that sports brings to a college) are a big part of that social life, and a easy and quick way to bring a student body together.
Actually, it's rare for college athletics programs to make a profit. Almost all operate at a loss, costing the schools money, which is usually recuperated by asking alumni for donations. Sure, some do operate in the black, but those are the exception rather than the rule. So instead of helping other departments, it's actually detrimental to other departments.

Did you know that the highest paid public employee in the country is Nick Saban? Whereas math professors, physics professors, accounting professors, etc get a relative pittance, even though they are literally helping form the new generation of scientists, accountants, and all other professionals who need university degrees. They also have to contribute to his retirement fund, because that's how the system works here. And lemme tell you, there's no small amount of resentment for a math professor to pay that guy to retire.

Then you have people who get scholarships. Now, I don't want to be insulting here. It's GREAT that anyone who can't go to college otherwise can get scholarships, no matter how. But it's also only great if they actually need to go to college. For instance, as has already been said, college provides free minor league teams for the NFL (an organization I also have huge issues with). Now, for the rare people who get athletic scholarships and then go pro, college rarely helps at all; it was just a way of getting to the big leagues, literally at the expense of someone who could have used an academic scholarship, but there's only so much money to go around (and again, usually less than they would otherwise have, due to those sports programs). And, regardless of whether they go pro, what are their degrees in? Michael Jordan had a bachelor's in Geography, for instance. Now, it's a lot more than just finding things on a map, but do you think that was really the best use of his time, or was it a blow-off degree do he could get that scholarship money? And that scholarship means a kid who wants to go to school to learn gets passes over, because she can't throw a ball a certain way.

I strongly dislike college headbrickfootball (http://www.smbc-comics.com?id=2778).

Knaight

2017-02-01, 02:48 PM

veti

2017-02-01, 06:28 PM

Oh, for sure. I just think it's worth pointing out diploma mills and other fake colleges at every turn.

If you want to make the point really general... I don't know what the position is in your homelands, but where I come from there's no legal requirement for a "diploma" for - well, anything I can think of.

Highly regulated professions, like medicine or law, have entrance exams, which may be waived if you have an accredited degree - but if you don't, you can still get your license to practice by passing the exams. (Plus, generally, fulfilling some work experience requirements, but that's beside the point.)

Which makes "diploma mills" kinda pointless.

Xyril

2017-02-02, 02:28 AM

I went to a formerly top ranked university for undergrad; now, after some years working, I'm in a top 50 graduate program at a school that as a whole ranked well outside the top 50. In my limited data set, ranking matters.

One thing to consider is that USA Today and the other popular lists in the U.S. take into account some concrete metrics, such as research funding and academic spending. Others raised a good point that how these different metrics are measured and weighed against one another can vary wildly, which contributes to differences in rankings. However, the fact that they consider these things at all mean that schools that try to do better for their students actually do better.

My undergraduate university was known more for scholarly research than for teaching, and some of the distinguished faculty obviously weren't picked for their stellar classroom skills, but they were willing to spend the money to make sure that the vast majority of classes, particularly larger lecture courses, hired enough teaching fellows so that everyone had structured sections of 10 to 20 people where you could have meaningful discussions about the material. Because the graduate programs shared the prestige of the university as a whole, they generally attracted very capable students who were very competent in their field, and because the jobs paid well and looked pretty good on a resume, they guys teaching sections generally beat out some other folks for the position, and they tended to be really good at teaching. If you're doing STEM or anything else involving a lot of quantitative reasoning, it was incredibly useful to have very approachable people willing to work through problems with you--I was someone who didn't have a lot of money to hire my own tutors, and I also learn much better from people teaching by example than from more abstract lectures, so this really saved my butt.

Also relevant to STEM fields, it's really nice when labs aren't run on a shoestring budget. In my current program, our lab manuals call for people to design, fabricate, and test circuits ourselves. However, because of costs, what we do instead is do individual designs in order to learn how, toss them out, then watch the TA fabricate his design, which we then copy and simulate.

Many lists also take into account things like class size and faculty:student ratio. Many of the less well known universities in the top 50 or 100 are there because they prioritize teaching. Their faculty may not be as distinguished, and the school may not be able to afford armies of graduate instructors and state of the art labs, but they focus their efforts on teaching. What money they do have is spent on hiring more faculty and keeping class sizes small, and while these professors aren't published in prestigious journals, being great at teaching is often how they earn their tenure.

Another consideration isn't the intrinsic value of schools so much as the feedback loop you get from the perceived value of the school. A school that is more selective has tremendous advantages in pacing its courses. Because my undergraduate degree program didn't quite meet the prerequisites for my graduate program, I had to take a half dozen undergraduate courses at my current school, which I did over the last couple years while still working full time. The difference was pretty extreme. Only the one largest lecture class offered a recitation section for people to get small group attention--only one session was offered a week in a 20 person room, and there was so much demand for help that some folks were left out, even though the TA was always nice and stayed 30 minutes longer than he was being paid to. STEM fields in particular build off previous course work. At my first university, at most a week was spent on review--if you somehow forget the relevant skills from the prerequisite courses, you were expected to relearn them yourself, or if the Professor were generous, get some help at office hours. In contrast, all of my recent undergraduate courses devote about 2-4 weeks to reviewing material that most people just learned the previous semester. This is probably why this school's three required semesters of calculus (for people who have passed AP Calc) covers slightly less material than my two semesters at my old school... and I took the lowest level I could have.

Similarly, another circular "this school is good because people think it's good" advantage: The alumni networks at your disposable can be a huge advantage, depending on your field. If your going into law, ibanking, or any other field where it's really hard to find a job on the strength of your academic record alone, particularly if you want to move far from school, or if you hope to go into business for yourself and might need some VC, this could be very important. In this case, if you're doing something like a STEM field, it's less of a consideration. So long as your academic record is strong and your program is reputable, and you want to go into an industry that knows how rare qualified people are, you can do just fine without a lot of networking (though networking rarely hurts.)

One more difference I've noticed is that while the lower ranked school was more worried about not leaving anyone behind in class (to the point of slowing the curriculum for everyone else), the higher ranked school was a lot better about not letting people fall through the cracks on the logistics. I've known guys who had last minute visa issues, problems with paying tuition, health insurance or class registration issues, etc. and the school was great about helping them through it. At my current school, you're pretty much on your own to fix these problems, so people have to be self-sufficient to survive. This isn't a bad lesson to learn, but I have met a few very smart people who had major setbacks because they didn't do a great job dealing with these problems.

Also, you should know that my first school was substantially smaller than my current one--it's quite possible that a lot of the differences I attribute to ranking might also correlate strongly to the difference in size, or the fact that I spent a few years as a part time grad student doing undergraduate courses. The list is a decent way to narrow your choices some, but in the end you really need to visit the schools and look at each one very closely. Different schools prioritize different things, and you should pick ones that share your priorities. If you're undecided on major, maybe consider a school without a single great program, but where most programs are solid. If you want to go into something like business or politics, go to a highly ranked school with a strong alumni network, or one located in an important city for your industry so that you can start building your network both on and off campus. If you want to have a lot of fun, pick a school with a well-subsidized student clinic.

ForzaFiori

2017-02-03, 07:46 PM

Actually, it's rare for college athletics programs to make a profit. Almost all operate at a loss, costing the schools money, which is usually recuperated by asking alumni for donations. Sure, some do operate in the black, but those are the exception rather than the rule. So instead of helping other departments, it's actually detrimental to other departments.

Did you know that the highest paid public employee in the country is Nick Saban? Whereas math professors, physics professors, accounting professors, etc get a relative pittance, even though they are literally helping form the new generation of scientists, accountants, and all other professionals who need university degrees. They also have to contribute to his retirement fund, because that's how the system works here. And lemme tell you, there's no small amount of resentment for a math professor to pay that guy to retire.

Then you have people who get scholarships. Now, I don't want to be insulting here. It's GREAT that anyone who can't go to college otherwise can get scholarships, no matter how. But it's also only great if they actually need to go to college. For instance, as has already been said, college provides free minor league teams for the NFL (an organization I also have huge issues with). Now, for the rare people who get athletic scholarships and then go pro, college rarely helps at all; it was just a way of getting to the big leagues, literally at the expense of someone who could have used an academic scholarship, but there's only so much money to go around (and again, usually less than they would otherwise have, due to those sports programs). And, regardless of whether they go pro, what are their degrees in? Michael Jordan had a bachelor's in Geography, for instance. Now, it's a lot more than just finding things on a map, but do you think that was really the best use of his time, or was it a blow-off degree do he could get that scholarship money? And that scholarship means a kid who wants to go to school to learn gets passes over, because she can't throw a ball a certain way.

I strongly dislike college headbrickfootball (http://www.smbc-comics.com?id=2778).

That the scholarship system was broken to accommodate college sports isn't really a point in their favor. Would changing things from the current state involve restructuring how college is funded? Yes. Does that need to happen anyways? Also yes. How to fix it gets political, that the system is all sorts of screwy is pretty much universally acknowledged at this point.

I wasn't saying that there weren't problems with it - Just that it can have good effects. Even better ones if we ever actual make colleges not screw over everyone just to make money.

also, as for players who dont go pro, you'd be surprised at what majors they have. The vast majority are some form of social sciences (which, despite Peelee's hate, are fairly useful.), followed by business, communications (useful for those who want to become sports journalists), and sports related (usually sports medicine, or something to get into coaching and similar things). Believe it or not, most of those majors can get you pretty good jobs. You act like the people playing college sports dont realize that even at that level, their chances of making millions going pro are low. They play sports to help offset costs, to keep in shape, and to have fun at college, and do that while planning for a future.

Does the system need work? sure. Get the saleries of coaches and trainers under control, fix the scholorship problems, and get the colleges in check, and I bet that would help the problems with revenue too. But it's something that, shoud it get fixed, can do good. We've just let it get out of control, like tends to happen with... WAY to many things

Jon_Dahl

2017-02-04, 01:40 AM

I went to a formerly top ranked university for undergrad; now, after some years working, I'm in a top 50 graduate program at a school that as a whole ranked well outside the top 50. In my limited data set, ranking matters.
*snip*

Thank you, Xyril! Great post! Everything you said reflect what I have always suspected. Like I said, it's certainly worth asking about universities in the Playground :) Thank you once more.

Peelee

2017-02-04, 04:56 PM

I wasn't saying that there weren't problems with it - Just that it can have good effects. Even better ones if we ever actual make colleges not screw over everyone just to make money.

also, as for players who dont go pro, you'd be surprised at what majors they have. The vast majority are some form of social sciences (which, despite Peelee's hate, are fairly useful.), followed by business, communications (useful for those who want to become sports journalists), and sports related (usually sports medicine, or something to get into coaching and similar things). Believe it or not, most of those majors can get you pretty good jobs. You act like the people playing college sports don't realize that even at that level, their chances of making millions going pro are low. They play sports to help offset costs, to keep in shape, and to have fun at college, and do that while planning for a future.

Does the system need work? sure. Get the saleries of coaches and trainers under control, fix the scholorship problems, and get the colleges in check, and I bet that would help the problems with revenue too. But it's something that, shoud it get fixed, can do good. We've just let it get out of control, like tends to happen with... WAY to many things

First, I'll readily admit that I am biased against many of the social sciences, and I am aware that this is an unpopular and highly controversial belief.

Second, do sports journalists really need four year degrees? Can they not get by on two year associate degrees? This is a serious question, I don't know. I just assume that there shouldn't be a terribly high bar to pass to be able to play on the same field as John “usually the team that scores the most points wins the game” Madden. Sport journalism, coaching, these things just don't seem like they need academia to have a meaningful impact on their performance. Meanwhile, again, other people who need scholarships so they can attend higher education and meaningfully contribute to society are blocked by money being funneled to the athletic program, so colleges can try to "buy" the best athletes they can. I actually have a lot of issues with the costs of higher ed in general, but without really getting into that, the least the NFL could do would be to have an actual minor league that's not university-sponsored, while still having university teams, so that the insane competition wouldn't be a factor and people who actually wanted to attend college for non-sports reasons could while the more sports-minded people could still go play for teams without taking up seats in classes they don't care about.

And then there's health issues. There are a lot of ways to keep in shape. Running, swimming, basketball, etc. Full-contact sports are one of the worst ones. Fun fact, when boxing gloves were introduced to the boxing world, head injuries started skyrocketing. Turns out, the head has a lot of very hard, very oddly-shaped bones, and the hand breaks easily. But add gloves in, and you can go for the head way more, because you don't have to worry about immediate injury. Football helmets and pads help protect the players when they're hit, but they also make it more likely for the player to be hit, which causes more long-term damage. And the NFL, kindly souls that they are, has constantly tried to influence and fudge concussion research that might make people take a second thought about the value of full-contact sports.

Chen

2017-02-04, 08:24 PM

Thank you, Xyril! Great post! Everything you said reflect what I have always suspected. Like I said, it's certainly worth asking about universities in the Playground :) Thank you once more.

You do realize his entire post was with regards to the experience being a student at a high ranked school, not in terms of judging the capabilities of someone who comes from a high or low ranked school.

veti

2017-02-05, 03:00 AM

Second, do sports journalists really need four year degrees? Can they not get by on two year associate degrees?

I'm pretty sure there is no statutory requirement for a "sports journalist", or any other kind of journalist for that matter, to have any degree at all. In the USA, at least, such a requirement would clearly violate the first amendment (which says, government can't pass rules about who is or isn't allowed to publish stuff).

So this question can only be decided by the journalists' employers.

(Trivia question: what do Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Richard Branson and Michael Dell have in common? None of them ever graduated from college.)

FinnLassie

2017-02-05, 07:25 AM

Thank you, Xyril! Great post! Everything you said reflect what I have always suspected. Like I said, it's certainly worth asking about universities in the Playground :) Thank you once more.

So wait, this one post weighs out all of the others to you? Even if they had very good and valid arguments?

Peelee

2017-02-05, 03:35 PM

I'm pretty sure there is no statutory requirement for a "sports journalist", or any other kind of journalist for that matter, to have any degree at all. In the USA, at least, such a requirement would clearly violate the first amendment (which says, government can't pass rules about who is or isn't allowed to publish stuff).

So this question can only be decided by the journalists' employers.

(Trivia question: what do Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Richard Branson and Michael Dell have in common? None of them ever graduated from college.)

Gates and Zuckerberg were in Ivy League schools, and they and Dell all dropped out specifically to pursue business interests they reasonably expected would serve them better than finishing their degrees. So even here, if someone can drop out of freaking Harvard because they believe they can do better, they don't really serve as an ideal example for a given person to follow. There are also untold thousands who do the same thing, with less fortunate results. This is incredibly massive selection bias here.

Second, there are no statutory requirements for "scientist" to have a BS either, even though there's no U.S. constitutional amendment that prohibits it. All questions on degree relevance can only be determined by the prospective employers, technically. I'm not looking for technicalities, I'm looking for practicalities.

Aedilred

2017-02-05, 04:15 PM

So wait, this one post weighs out all of the others to you? Even if they had very good and valid arguments?

We live in a world where feeling validated is more important than being right. The one person who agrees with you is therefore more significant than the dozens who don't.

FinnLassie

2017-02-05, 05:20 PM

We live in a world where feeling validated is more important than being right. The one person who agrees with you is therefore more significant than the dozens who don't.

Yeah. Cherry picking is something I hate.
I just feel like I'm seeing a pattern.

veti

2017-02-05, 08:20 PM

Gates and Zuckerberg were in Ivy League schools, and they and Dell all dropped out specifically to pursue business interests they reasonably expected would serve them better than finishing their degrees. So even here, if someone can drop out of freaking Harvard because they believe they can do better, they don't really serve as an ideal example for a given person to follow. There are also untold thousands who do the same thing, with less fortunate results. This is incredibly massive selection bias here.

Many people in this thread seem to take it as axiomatic that you need a degree to get certain jobs. I don't think that's normally true. You need to convince an employer that you'd be good at the job. A degree is one way to do that, but only one. There are others.

And there are also untold thousands who did finish their degrees, whether at Harvard or the humblest community college - and went on to lives of disappointment and obscurity.

I'm not saying a degree is worthless, but it's not nearly as important as college recruiters would like you to believe. "What, if any, school you go to" is a much less important predictor of success than merely "Knowing what you want to do with your life".

Peelee

2017-02-05, 10:32 PM

Many people in this thread seem to take it as axiomatic that you need a degree to get certain jobs. I don't think that's normally true. You need to convince an employer that you'd be good at the job. A degree is one way to do that, but only one. There are others.

And there are also untold thousands who did finish their degrees, whether at Harvard or the humblest community college - and went on to lives of disappointment and obscurity.

I'm not saying a degree is worthless, but it's not nearly as important as college recruiters would like you to believe. "What, if any, school you go to" is a much less important predictor of success than merely "Knowing what you want to do with your life".

You're not wrong, but the average salary for those with a degree vs without a degree does heavily indicate that degrees do tend to net a better life, as well as tending to have more favorable working conditions. For instance, plumbers don't require degrees, make loads of money, are highly skilled and knowledgeable, can easily run their own company, and play pretty vital roles in society. I don't think anyone could reasonably look down on plumbers, but I wouldn't want to be one, because I don't want to have to go under crawlspaces in dirty, muddy areas, occasionally dealing with rats and snakes, with getting literally crapped being a standard working hazard. Conversely, I can easily imagine people who wouldn't want to be scientists, due to having to intensively study the specific field, along with all the upper-level maths that accompany it, and spend their lives doing monotonous, repetitive experiments to confirm results, write up lengthy and technical papers to publish, jump through hoops trying to get grants, and likely get paid less than what they could get in other career tracks.

College isn't for everyone, and that's perfectly alright. Plumbers, electricians, carpenters, truck drivers, and so many other blue-collar jobs are essential to a well-functioning society, and simply don't need high-level academia. And there's nothing wrong with that. Professional football players don't need degrees, and scholarships that are based on getting high-value sports players to fund a minor league for the NFL for free take opportunities away from other people who desire careers that do need degrees but cannot afford higher education and are in need of scholarships.

Also, are there college recruiters? It's been a long time since high school, but the prevailing opinion in America for the last twenty years has been, "if you need a good job, you need to go to college," (an opinion I heavily disagree with), so it seems like recruiters' jobs would be done for them. Except maybe to convince kids to go to their college over another one, and that's not really "you need a degree" so much as it is "you're going to get one anyway, so why not get it from us?"

Jon_Dahl

2017-02-06, 12:12 AM

So wait, this one post weighs out all of the others to you? Even if they had very good and valid arguments?

Well, to be honest, I didn't read all the posts.

Lacco

2017-02-06, 01:58 AM

So wait, this one post weighs out all of the others to you? Even if they had very good and valid arguments?

And this is the reason why I distrust school rankings and consider characteristics of the people, not schools they went to. Because even good school can produce a person that seeks validation instead of truth and will ignore all other opinions in favour of the one that proves them correct.

Well, to be honest, I didn't read all the posts.

Scientific approach of proud student of "university ranked in the top 100 universities of world" at its best :smallwink:.

Jon_Dahl

2017-02-06, 04:22 AM

Sometimes I just can't be bothered.

Vinyadan

2017-02-06, 09:50 AM

Ceaon

2017-02-07, 05:27 AM

Sometimes I just can't be bothered.

Your honesty is appreciated. However, asking a question and then not caring about the responses people have taken their time to type seems to me quite rude and more importantly, not the best long-term strategy.

Jon_Dahl

2017-02-07, 07:09 AM

Your honesty is appreciated. However, asking a question and then not caring about the responses people have taken their time to type seems to me quite rude and more importantly, not the best long-term strategy.

I have read most of them. And I care very much about the responses, it's just extremely rare that I read more than two-thirds of the responses of any thread, and that's because I just can't be bothered. I see my slight-to-average laziness as a charmingly boyish imperfection, and not as rudeness by any means.

Ceaon

2017-02-07, 07:29 AM

Ah, I may have slightly misinterpreted your post, then. Apologies.
Still, the point made by FinnLassie stands.

Jay R

2017-02-08, 04:29 PM

The specific ranking doesn't really matter. Nobody much cares about the difference between #6 and #7, or between #86 and #87. But the reputation of the university in the field where you are looking for a job matters a great deal.

I once accidentally discovered that the Vice President four or five levels above me knew of me as "the Rice grad in Systems Engineering".

Having said that, the reputation of the school can certainly help get you a job - or at least an interview. But only your own work will get you a promotion.

Jon_Dahl

2017-02-10, 03:27 PM

I don't know whether to agree or disagree with Jay R so as not to cherry-pick and thus further aggrieve sister FinnLassie. Very difficult. Can someone advise, please?

FinnLassie

2017-02-10, 03:55 PM

I don't know whether to agree or disagree with Jay R so as not to cherry-pick and thus further aggrieve sister FinnLassie. Very difficult. Can someone advise, please?

Dude, you're sounding really passive aggressive here.

Jay R

2017-02-10, 07:28 PM

I don't know whether to agree or disagree with Jay R so as not to cherry-pick and thus further aggrieve sister FinnLassie. Very difficult. Can someone advise, please?

Oh, you don't need a school with a high ranking to cherry-pick. Farm workers don't usually have degrees at all.

Flickerdart

2017-02-10, 07:37 PM

There's a ranking for everything! Including salary (http://www.payscale.com/college-salary-report/bachelors). There's also one I'm trying to find where programs are ranked by how much more a graduate makes than an average person in that field. I've seen it before but it was ages ago.

Edit: I think I found it (http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2015/10/value-university)

Chen

2017-02-13, 09:36 AM

I don't know whether to agree or disagree with Jay R so as not to cherry-pick and thus further aggrieve sister FinnLassie. Very difficult. Can someone advise, please?

Well since we can't read your mind to determine if you agree or not with his post, I guess my advice is to stop being a jerk.

Xyril

2017-02-13, 11:39 AM

I don't know whether to agree or disagree with Jay R so as not to cherry-pick and thus further aggrieve sister FinnLassie. Very difficult. Can someone advise, please?

You might as well just state your opinion, which could kick off some interesting discussion on whether other folks agree or disagree. This message itself will probably irk someone.

Xyril

2017-02-13, 12:15 PM

So even here, if someone can drop out of freaking Harvard because they believe they can do better, they don't really serve as an ideal example for a given person to follow.

Something else to keep in mind, Mark met the entirety of his initial team during his first year at Harvard. I'm not saying he wouldn't have done as well on his own, or by meeting other capable people somewhere else, but I would argue there was substantial value in his attending Harvard, even if there wasn't any in him finishing the CS program.

Even ignoring rankings, I think there are surprisingly few universities where talented CS people end up intermingling with with business-minded/entrepreneurial people. My current school has decent CS and business programs, but for some reason that sort of mixing doesn't seem to happen naturally, and as I understand that--in order to push this into happening more--they've been setting up student tech-business incubator programs modeled after ones they have at MIT and some of the west coast schools.

Second, there are no statutory requirements for "scientist" to have a BS either, even though there's no U.S. constitutional amendment that prohibits it.

There's no amendment that prohibits it, but I would argue that the Commerce Clause (one of the non-amendmenty parts of the Constitution) pretty much prohibits the federal government from doing it.

At the state level, regulation of the more white collar professions tend to be more indirect. Doctors and lawyers, for example, are licensed and regulated by their own professional organizations. The government recognizes them by lending them some authority, but it's the state bar or the state medical board that actually sets criteria for getting a license, and in both cases, earning the relevant degree is a major requirement for the easiest path in, but it's not the only way. California, for example, has a famously terrible Bar Exam passing rate because they make it very easy to qualify to sit for the exam through work-experience, rather than earning a JD at an accredited school.

Xyril

2017-02-13, 12:47 PM

So wait, this one post weighs out all of the others to you? Even if they had very good and valid arguments?

As the guy who wrote that one post, I'm probably biased, but I feel like I made a decent post for reasons beyond agreeing with OP. IIRC, among the posts that were made up to and including my own, mine was the only one that drew illustrations from personal experience. Granted, two data points don't make a conclusive data set by any means, but two is still more than zero. Mine was also the only post that specified some often-cited rankings, went into specifics as to some of the metrics that go into those rankings, and gave concrete examples of how differences in those metrics can translate into differences in your educational experience.

Also, a large chunk of the posts before mine were about athletics rankings. Athletics usually factor in to a school's general ranking, but the athletics rankings don't match the general "prestige" rankings that OP was asking about. I'm not complaining--I enjoyed reading the discussion and learned a few things--but you really shouldn't be too bothered that OP didn't take the time to respond to or praise posts that weren't responsive to his original question.

Yeah. Cherry picking is something I hate.
I just feel like I'm seeing a pattern.

Speaking of cherry-picking, I should point out that you're doing the same thing. You point out my post as an example of how OP only responds to/praises posts that confirm his preconceptions, and yet right there on the first page, you see a great post by Aedilred that OP not only responds to, but praises as a good post despite noting that he disagrees.

Thank you, quality comments. I find your points very good although I tend to disagree with some of them.

I am guessing Aedilred didn't feel that his dissenting opinions were ignored or dismissed merely because they didn't confirm Jon Dahl's preconceptions, since they both continued to respond to one another.

Peelee

2017-02-13, 01:54 PM

Something else to keep in mind, Mark met the entirety of his initial team during his first year at Harvard. I'm not saying he wouldn't have done as well on his own, or by meeting other capable people somewhere else, but I would argue there was substantial value in his attending Harvard, even if there wasn't any in him finishing the CS program.

Oh, I'll never say that there's no value in attending Harvard, even if just for the networking aspects alone. But if someone is attending Harvard and chooses to drop out to pursue business interests, that person is either already wealthy enough or smart enough to very likely succeed with those business interests. It's still not a good model for John Smith over at the University of Iowa.

Red Fel

2017-02-13, 02:23 PM

Jumping in late:

I'd say that the ranking matters less than the school itself (more specifically, the program) and its reputation - ranking is simply a reflection of reputation, after all. Almost any school ranking you might find - there's no truly "official" one - is pretty heavily subjective and influenced by reputation of schools, programs, and faculty. Some schools, for example, are low- or un-ranked, and yet have a great reputation within a region; others are high-ranked nationally, but suffer known problems academically.

A common illustration of this occurs in law schools. Most states or regions have their "regional school," a school that's well-respected in that general vicinity, but is either low- or un-ranked nationally. Many also have "national schools," again well-respected around the country. But many "national schools" are frequently criticized. For example, again among law schools, Harvard, Yale, and Stanford are preeminently respected; their graduates get positions in the best firms and the highest courts. However, it's also understood that students frequently graduate from a school like Harvard with little or no practical skill; local firms, as opposed to big national ones, may actually prioritize hiring from "regional schools" simply because those students have a reputation for practical skill.

Taking it a step further, with very few exceptions (e.g. Harvard, MIT), once you've been in a professional environment for several years, your school becomes almost irrelevant. Once you're a professional, people care more about your professional experience and achievements than where you spent four years drinking. (Again, unless you were drinking at Harvard. Everyone cares if you drank at Harvard.) Once you graduate and start working for a company, or what-have-you, people are more interested in looking at your professional resume than your academic resume. Assuming you can find an opportunity, it is possible to make up for going to a lower-ranked school by demonstrating competence and excellence professionally. The challenge is the first job.

Ifni

2017-02-13, 05:11 PM

Taking it a step further, with very few exceptions (e.g. Harvard, MIT), once you've been in a professional environment for several years, your school becomes almost irrelevant. Once you're a professional, people care more about your professional experience and achievements than where you spent four years drinking. (Again, unless you were drinking at Harvard. Everyone cares if you drank at Harvard.)

As a side note: in academia, at least in my field (physics), I don't think anyone even cares if you were drinking at Harvard, once you get through your first post-Harvard position - what matters is what you've done, and to some degree, where you are now. In fact, since rising trajectories are impressive, sometimes the strongest applicants are those who started out at a not-so-great institution: "I did my undergrad degree at Podunk University, won a full scholarship to my state university for graduate school, and then was hired into the best-in-the-world lab at Harvard" says far more positive things about your intelligence, skills and determination than "I did my undergrad degree at Harvard, went to my state university for graduate school, and now I work at Podunk University".

(That said, part of the reason the first one is so impressive is that it's much easier to get your first post-PhD job at Harvard if you did your graduate training at a top-tier institution - as Red Fel says, it does matter for getting your first job.)

In my field, if I met a professor whose alma mater doesn't have much of a reputation, working at a much more famous place, my usual interpretation would be that the person did something fairly impressive to get hired - it would make me think more highly of them, not less. (Universities' reputations are largely built on their research; to a good approximation, nobody cares about where their faculty did their training.)

If said professor is a lousy teacher, then (again, in my field - may be different in the humanities) I would guess they were hired for doing something impressive research-wise, and they happen to be a bad teacher. It probably doesn't have much to do with where they trained.

Once you graduate and start working for a company, or what-have-you, people are more interested in looking at your professional resume than your academic resume. Assuming you can find an opportunity, it is possible to make up for going to a lower-ranked school by demonstrating competence and excellence professionally. The challenge is the first job.

So yes, this.

Errata

2017-02-13, 09:28 PM

There's also one I'm trying to find where programs are ranked by how much more a graduate makes than an average person in that field. I've seen it before but it was ages ago.

Edit: I think I found it (http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2015/10/value-university)

That's a very interesting table. I'm curious about what's up with Yale. -$9.5k is a big outlier. One of the very worst on quite a large list, and by far the biggest name on that end of the list.

Flickerdart

2017-02-13, 09:37 PM

That's a very interesting table. I'm curious about what's up with Yale. -$9.5k is a big outlier. One of the very worst on quite a large list, and by far the biggest name on that end of the list.

Yale is on the first page for expected earnings, and second for median earnings. Its alumni hardly do badly - but for their SAT scores, they could be doing a lot better. The article mentions that Yale graduates might be more likely to go into (lower-paying) public service jobs, and has a lot more to say about the methodology.

Xyril

2017-02-14, 03:01 AM

(That said, part of the reason the first one is so impressive is that it's much easier to get your first post-PhD job at Harvard if you did your graduate training at a top-tier institution - as Red Fel says, it does matter for getting your first job.)

Preferably a different top-tier institution. Many of these schools make a deliberate effort to hire people who spent most, if not all, of their education somewhere else. It makes sense to do so--unless some PI put a lot of effort into training his PhDs to support specific research and really wants to keep them around, it's generally good to bring in people with diverse perspectives and to avoid institutionalizing certain lines of thinking.

Xyril

2017-02-14, 03:22 AM

Yale is on the first page for expected earnings, and second for median earnings. Its alumni hardly do badly - but for their SAT scores, they could be doing a lot better. The article mentions that Yale graduates might be more likely to go into (lower-paying) public service jobs, and has a lot more to say about the methodology.

The article also noted that CalTech did rather poorly, which to me implies a similar phenomenon at work. People who go into academia and aren't adept at moving into an administrative position tend to do poorly compared to those who go into the private sector. This could be an even bigger gap depending on how they measure income--some of the more financially successful professors I know do well because they do a great job earning grants and finding consulting work, which may not be counted.

Also, the study said it only considered the first ten years after receiving an undergraduate degree, but I am not sure whether those lean years spent in graduate or professional school are permitted to drag the averages down. Even if the generally lower income concurrent with education (residency, fellowships, etc.) is ignored, the ten year limit means that when we examine someone finishing a doctorate or an MD, we're only looking at their first couple years of "real" employment, and many people will accept first jobs with lower earnings if they believe those jobs provide professional experience that will pay off later.

Organizations like Teach for America recruit heavily from the top schools--their pitch is basically "Make nearly nothing for a few years, feel good doing something good for a while, and put it on your resume for when you make a run for the Presidency or whatever."

Jon_Dahl

2017-02-14, 08:33 AM

As the guy who wrote that one post, I'm probably biased, but I feel like I made a decent post for reasons beyond agreeing with OP. IIRC, among the posts that were made up to and including my own, mine was the only one that drew illustrations from personal experience. Granted, two data points don't make a conclusive data set by any means, but two is still more than zero. Mine was also the only post that specified some often-cited rankings, went into specifics as to some of the metrics that go into those rankings, and gave concrete examples of how differences in those metrics can translate into differences in your educational experience.

Also, a large chunk of the posts before mine were about athletics rankings. Athletics usually factor in to a school's general ranking, but the athletics rankings don't match the general "prestige" rankings that OP was asking about. I'm not complaining--I enjoyed reading the discussion and learned a few things--but you really shouldn't be too bothered that OP didn't take the time to respond to or praise posts that weren't responsive to his original question.

Speaking of cherry-picking, I should point out that you're doing the same thing. You point out my post as an example of how OP only responds to/praises posts that confirm his preconceptions, and yet right there on the first page, you see a great post by Aedilred that OP not only responds to, but praises as a good post despite noting that he disagrees.

I am guessing Aedilred didn't feel that his dissenting opinions were ignored or dismissed merely because they didn't confirm Jon Dahl's preconceptions, since they both continued to respond to one another.

I would say that you don't read the forum here that often, otherwise you'd know that I'm wrong by default unless otherwise proven. It has already been agreed in this thread that I cherry-pick and I'm a jerk, so any further conversation about this off-topic seems futile. I don't agree or disagree with you in any way. Let's just talk about university rankings, and I will try to keep my mouth shut and observe this interesting conversation, please.

Red Fel

2017-02-14, 09:19 AM

Preferably a different top-tier institution. Many of these schools make a deliberate effort to hire people who spent most, if not all, of their education somewhere else. It makes sense to do so--unless some PI put a lot of effort into training his PhDs to support specific research and really wants to keep them around, it's generally good to bring in people with diverse perspectives and to avoid institutionalizing certain lines of thinking.

Actually, this is an interesting point. In my experience - and yes, I did pursue a career in academia, unsuccessfully - most programs would prefer to hire educators who are not their alums, but it's not "to bring in people with diverse perspectives and to avoid institutionalizing certain lines of thinking." In many instances, programs want to institutionalize certain lines of thinking. Those institutional lines of thinking are what they believe allows them to run a successful and recognized program.

Insert yet another dig on Harvard. Moving on.

In my experience, the reason that many programs don't hire their own alums, very simply, is reputational. Programs want to hire the "best and brightest." That means either hiring people who have made significant achievements professionally, or - as is more often the case - those who demonstrate a strong propensity for heavily-cited publication. "Publish or perish" is very much still a thing in academia. When a program hires its own alums, it looks like they can't bring in the best and brightest. It's that unsavory cross between the appearance of nepotism - the idea of hiring your own - and the appearance of a lack of merit - the idea of hiring your own because you can't get anyone better. Frequently, for an alum to get a faculty position, I've found that they either (1) have to work in administration, in which case they may get a courtesy class to teach; (2) have to have such an astonishingly narrow skill set that nobody else can teach it; or (3) have achieved such greatness that they're the sort of individual a program boasts as "one of ours."

Reputation is everything to these programs. When you think MIT, for example, you're automatically thinking of some of the finest science and engineering programs in the country. When you think Harvard, you think Harvard Law, the Supreme Court, and the biggest law firms. That's their reputation, earned or not, and they guard it jealously. Rankings are reputational. Hiring is reputational. The decision as to where to locate the campus is reputational. Everything is reputational.

Liquor Box

2017-02-14, 06:04 PM

The answer to whether the question of whether the ranking of your school or university matters, is that it does if it matters to some (even a minority of) potential employers. It seems from this thread that it does matter to potential employers to some extent at least.

My own experience (and I am not from USA, so my experience probably is vastly difference from some others) is that it is the Universities reputation (not ranking) that matters, and especially so in some professions such as competitive professions with a partcular required qualification like law, medicine or engineering.

I do know though, that the better Universities in my home country take the rankings seriously and seek to improve their ranking.

Whether or not it should matter to those potential employers, or is an accurate indicator of the student's ability is another matter. It probably is.

Ifni

2017-02-15, 02:26 AM

Actually, this is an interesting point. In my experience - and yes, I did pursue a career in academia, unsuccessfully - most programs would prefer to hire educators who are not their alums, but it's not "to bring in people with diverse perspectives and to avoid institutionalizing certain lines of thinking." In many instances, programs want to institutionalize certain lines of thinking. Those institutional lines of thinking are what they believe allows them to run a successful and recognized program.

Insert yet another dig on Harvard. Moving on.

In my experience, the reason that many programs don't hire their own alums, very simply, is reputational. Programs want to hire the "best and brightest." That means either hiring people who have made significant achievements professionally, or - as is more often the case - those who demonstrate a strong propensity for heavily-cited publication. "Publish or perish" is very much still a thing in academia. When a program hires its own alums, it looks like they can't bring in the best and brightest. It's that unsavory cross between the appearance of nepotism - the idea of hiring your own - and the appearance of a lack of merit - the idea of hiring your own because you can't get anyone better. Frequently, for an alum to get a faculty position, I've found that they either (1) have to work in administration, in which case they may get a courtesy class to teach; (2) have to have such an astonishingly narrow skill set that nobody else can teach it; or (3) have achieved such greatness that they're the sort of individual a program boasts as "one of ours."

Amusingly, Harvard is one of the few places I know of that really doesn't care about the "nepotism" thing (again, modulo my field), and thus has a reputation for hiring its own grad-school alumni - they send them away for postdoc training, but then hire them back as faculty. I've attended a Harvard graduation, where all the faculty dress up in their academic regalia (robe color indicates your PhD institution), and the fraction of crimson robes was extremely high. The mostly-but-not-entirely-tongue-in-cheek reasoning I've heard (from Harvardians) is "well, obviously the best people in the field are going to be the same people we admitted as students".

Having lived in a country where most universities worked very hard to hang on to their best alumni, and now in the US where (as you say) people are mostly encouraged to move between institutions, I do feel that the latter system is beneficial for the research community as a whole. It means most people have contacts at several places by the time they're a decade or so into their career, which helps build networks for collaboration and communication.

Xyril

2017-02-15, 02:27 AM

Actually, this is an interesting point. In my experience - and yes, I did pursue a career in academia, unsuccessfully - most programs would prefer to hire educators who are not their alums, but it's not "to bring in people with diverse perspectives and to avoid institutionalizing certain lines of thinking." In many instances, programs want to institutionalize certain lines of thinking. Those institutional lines of thinking are what they believe allows them to run a successful and recognized program.

I'm curious if you could elaborate on this. Certainly, universities probably believe that they're doing well because they're doing something right, and they want to keep doing things right, and you can consider that a desire to institutionalize some lines of thinking. However, I don't see how, for example, a top research institution such as MIT would fail to realize that having professors who were all MIT graduates who were taught by the same professors who were all MIT graduates might stifle the sort of innovation that--theoretically--makes them a top institution to begin with.

Insert yet another dig on Harvard. Moving on.

In my experience, the reason that many programs don't hire their own alums, very simply, is reputational. Programs want to hire the "best and brightest." That means either hiring people who have made significant achievements professionally, or - as is more often the case - those who demonstrate a strong propensity for heavily-cited publication.

But isn't this predicated on the assumption that none of their own alums would be among the "best and brightest"? That doesn't seem like a sound assumption. It seems likely that the most capable and the most hardworking engineering students want to go to MIT, and assuming that the school doesn't make them all decidedly lazier and less talented, one would assume that they would eventually comprise a disproportionate number of those "best and brightest" from among whom a reputation-conscious school would want to hire. In my experience, these graduates are instead underrepresented.

Red Fel

2017-02-15, 09:58 AM

I'm curious if you could elaborate on this. Certainly, universities probably believe that they're doing well because they're doing something right, and they want to keep doing things right, and you can consider that a desire to institutionalize some lines of thinking. However, I don't see how, for example, a top research institution such as MIT would fail to realize that having professors who were all MIT graduates who were taught by the same professors who were all MIT graduates might stifle the sort of innovation that--theoretically--makes them a top institution to begin with.

Simply put, a given university isn't interested in innovation as an explicit goal. If it occurs, it's a happy accident, an incidental side effect.

The university wants teachers who teach a certain way - the university's way. They want teachers who publish prolifically. If their publications are innovative, that's great. But when it comes to the classes they teach, and the way in which they teach them, the university wants it done the way that's proven to work - that is, the way for which they have a reputation.

It's why, for example, so many law schools use the Socratic method - that is, asking the students to read the cases, and then asking them to interpret the cases, before actually teaching them the cases. That's a method that is generally accepted to work. Schools that have a reputation for classes where professors are particularly cruel may wish to cultivate that reputation, and encourage that behavior among the teachers, if they think it will benefit them.

They don't want professors who will say, "Hey, what if we did this differently?" They want teachers who will keep their heads down, follow the rules, and publish lots and lots of articles to improve the school's academic standing.

But isn't this predicated on the assumption that none of their own alums would be among the "best and brightest"? That doesn't seem like a sound assumption. It seems likely that the most capable and the most hardworking engineering students want to go to MIT, and assuming that the school doesn't make them all decidedly lazier and less talented, one would assume that they would eventually comprise a disproportionate number of those "best and brightest" from among whom a reputation-conscious school would want to hire. In my experience, these graduates are instead underrepresented.

See Ifni's Harvard example. If your school is recognized as one of the best in the country/world, then yes, hiring your own isn't so outlandish an idea.

But most schools aren't Harvard or MIT. Even if they have confidence in their students, they know that their reputation isn't the best. I'm not talking Podunk University, here - even a good school is reluctant to hire its own. They want to hire people with pristine resumes, the kind that vastly outshine their own students. If a school has a choice between two equally-qualified candidates, one an alum and one not, they'll choose the not, for the reasons I gave above.

The fact is, in many instances, when you hear of schools hiring their own alums, it presents an image that, "Oh, I guess some of their graduates can't get real jobs, so the school takes pity on them." Schools are viciously critical of one another, and rankings are as well; a perceived flaw like this, actual or otherwise, will be made out to look bad. And it's a flaw you can't see if they hire a non-alum.

Again, your Harvards and MITs can hire their own, because they claim to be the "best and brightest" anyway. But barring that, everyone else is left picking at the scraps. I was in an academic program that was thrilled to have a Harvard graduate in a teaching position. This shocked me, because this program was heavily focused on practical skills, not academic information, and Harvard is more known for the latter than the former. Additionally, this program was regional, focusing on practice within the state, and this program was not in Massachusetts. But the program was hiring this guy for the reputation, the prestige that he brought. That's despite the fact that this program has many accomplished graduates in its practice area, with both communication skill and practical knowledge and experience, quite a few of whom apply for positions there. The program, which prides itself on practical skills, would rather bring in a Harvard academic for his resume than local experts for their practical skill, knowledge, and appreciation for the program's mission statement.

That's the point. It's about appearances.