3 ms·

I definitely agree with you. I wasn't trying to explain how I think the article is flawed; rather, I was just trying to argue that its conclusions can be dismis

I definitely agree with you. I wasn't trying to explain how I think the article is flawed; rather, I was just trying to argue that its conclusions can be dismissed immediately. In particular, I believe that your (3) describes what I see as the biggest flaw with their methodology; that (at least for elite colleges) what they are largely measuring the proportion of students that choose to go into high-paying professions.

jldugger 11y ago
I just find your kneejerk response of "Anything that rates my school poorly is wrong" and pocket dismissal is counterproductive to actually rating school performance. Selection bias is an actual demonstrable problem in school rankings, and coming up with some way of separating the effect of a school's selectivity from it's educational results is critical if we wish to improve the productivity of educated professionals. I actually don't think that 3 has much explanatory power. Rather, I think the bulk of the variance is beyond 10 years. Yale's strongest suit is likely professional programs like law and medicine. These are high paying professions, but they require additional years of education beyond a 4 year bachelor's, and that subtracts earning years from the 10 year cutoff. I don't know much about Rice, but I suspect it's particular problem is being a highly selective school in a low cost of living area. If an average Rice CS student randomly selected into other schools with comparable SAT scores, they'd be going to a much more expensive region, and their controlling for location may not sufficiently model how a CS degree differs from community college nursing.
- impendia 11y ago
  > I just find your kneejerk response of "Anything that rates my school poorly is wrong" and pocket dismissal is counterproductive to actually rating school performance. I see what you are saying. If their methodology ranked my school in the middle of the pack (instead of in the top 2%, which I believe it deserves), saying in effect that the advantages of a Rice education were those that its students brought with them, then I would be annoyed but I can see how that could be fair. But the bottom 0.5%? I went there and I know better. (And as an academic I know a lot about how universities work and how they differ from each other.) I do feel that I am justified in calling bullshit immediately.
  - jldugger 11y ago
    > instead of in the top 2%, which I believe it deserves You would have to know how undergraduate education works in far more institutions than the average academic attends to have experiential data affirming that hypothesis. This is a problem in consulting academics about undergraduate college rankings, they know the researchers far better than the graduating classes, and generally rate one another that way. > an academic I know a lot about how universities work and how they differ from each other Which means you helped bring the average down, because grad school is 4 or 5 years of crap earnings.

jldugger 11y ago

I just find your kneejerk response of "Anything that rates my school poorly is wrong" and pocket dismissal is counterproductive to actually rating school performance. Selection bias is an actual demonstrable problem in school rankings, and coming up with some way of separating the effect of a school's selectivity from it's educational results is critical if we wish to improve the productivity of educated professionals. I actually don't think that 3 has much explanatory power. Rather, I think the bulk of the variance is beyond 10 years. Yale's strongest suit is likely professional programs like law and medicine. These are high paying professions, but they require additional years of education beyond a 4 year bachelor's, and that subtracts earning years from the 10 year cutoff. I don't know much about Rice, but I suspect it's particular problem is being a highly selective school in a low cost of living area. If an average Rice CS student randomly selected into other schools with comparable SAT scores, they'd be going to a much more expensive region, and their controlling for location may not sufficiently model how a CS degree differs from community college nursing.

impendia 11y ago
> I just find your kneejerk response of "Anything that rates my school poorly is wrong" and pocket dismissal is counterproductive to actually rating school performance. I see what you are saying. If their methodology ranked my school in the middle of the pack (instead of in the top 2%, which I believe it deserves), saying in effect that the advantages of a Rice education were those that its students brought with them, then I would be annoyed but I can see how that could be fair. But the bottom 0.5%? I went there and I know better. (And as an academic I know a lot about how universities work and how they differ from each other.) I do feel that I am justified in calling bullshit immediately.
- jldugger 11y ago
  > instead of in the top 2%, which I believe it deserves You would have to know how undergraduate education works in far more institutions than the average academic attends to have experiential data affirming that hypothesis. This is a problem in consulting academics about undergraduate college rankings, they know the researchers far better than the graduating classes, and generally rate one another that way. > an academic I know a lot about how universities work and how they differ from each other Which means you helped bring the average down, because grad school is 4 or 5 years of crap earnings.