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The Grad School Rankings Are Coming Soon
Tweet Share on Facebook March 25, 2010 Comment (7)The new graduate school rankings are less than three weeks away.
Our new America's Best Graduate Schools rankings will be published online on April 15. Highlights of the graduate school rankings are scheduled for publication in the May issue of U.S.News & World Report, available for newsstand purchase on April 27, and in the America's Best Graduate Schools guidebook, on sale April 20. The most comprehensive version, including all the extended rankings and the most complete data, will be available only in the premium online edition at www.usnews.com.
What can you expect? We will have new rankings in the five largest professional graduate school disciplines: business, law, education, engineering, and medicine, and the various specialties associated with those disciplines.
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The College Peer Assessment Ranking Surveys Have Launched
Tweet Share on Facebook March 18, 2010 Comment (8)U.S. News already is already working hard on the upcoming 2011 edition of the America's Best Colleges rankings, scheduled to be published in August 2010.
This week we're in the process of mailing out the annual peer assessment surveys of undergraduate academic quality that will be used as part of the new America's Best Colleges rankings. The peer assessment surveys account for 25 percent of a college's ranking; 75 percent of a school's ranking is based on a formula that uses objective measures of academic quality such as graduation and retention rates, admission statistics, and financial and faculty resource data. U.S. News knows that peer assessments are subjective, but they are also important—a diploma from a distinguished college can help a graduate get a good job and gain admission to a top-notch graduate program, just as a high school's reputation can help or harm an applicant's chances of getting into a good college.
The 10 separate academic reputation surveys are mailed to schools in these U.S. News ranking categories: National Universities, Liberal Arts Colleges, Universities-Master's, and Baccalaureate Colleges. The latter two categories are divided into four geographic areas: North, South, Midwest, and West. Each school gets three surveys, and college presidents, provosts, and admission deans at about 1,420 colleges and universities should start receiving their individual surveys soon. Respondents have roughly eight weeks to return the surveys.
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Higher Education Falls Short in Efforts to Become More Accountable
Tweet Share on Facebook March 11, 2010 Comment (121)Higher education's two most visible voluntary initiatives to become more transparent and accountable have not been successful, Andrew P. Kelly of the American Enterprise Institute and Chad Alderman of the Education Sector say in a recent article, "False Fronts? Behind Higher Education's Voluntary Accountability Systems." The article provides a highly critical look at the University and College Accountability Network, or U-CAN, launched by the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities in September 2007, and the Voluntary System of Accountability, or VSA, started by the American Association of State Colleges and Universities and the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges (now known as the Association of Public Land-Grant Universities) in late 2007.
In summarizing the shortcomings of these two systems, the article concludes:
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Have the U.S. News Law School Rankings Been Game-Changers in Law School Admissions?
Tweet Share on Facebook March 4, 2010 Comment (13)The U.S.News & World Report law school rankings have had a substantial impact on law school admissions and law school diversity, say Michael Sauder of the University of Iowa and Wendy Nelson Espeland of Northwestern University in their recent article, "Rankings and Diversity." The article joins a rapidly expanding body of literature on law school rankings and the effect that the rankings have had on law schools, prospective students, legal employers, and alumni.
Regarding the ramifications of our rankings for law schools, the article notes:
