OT: GU slips to #25 in 2005 USNews rankings

[watsonry]

My friend saw the magazine today, it is online at www.usnews.com

[reformation]

A real carrot/stick should be put to university administrators re: the rankings.

Top admin needs to be held accountable for the university's performance. Even if the rankings are not "accurate" they definitely will affect student recruitment, fundraising, and performance in the long run.

[Jack]

reformation said:

A real carrot/stick should be put to university administrators re: the rankings.

Top admin needs to be held accountable for the university's performance. Even if the rankings are not "accurate" they definitely will affect student recruitment, fundraising, and performance in the long run.

Reformation- I am curious about what concrete steps you see as a way to move up in that particular ranking. It seems to me that those rankings are partly a measure of some the things you see it affecting (especially student recruitment), yet there are other areas the university administration has little control over where GU gets slammed every year (particularly "academic reputation").

Which administrators should be responsible? How much should we care about any rankings that actually place Washington University in the Top 10 and places like Emory and Notre Dame ahead of Georgetown? What about other rankings that show Georgetown is much stronger when factors like outcomes for graduates or popularity with high school students are taken into account?

[GIGAFAN1]

USNews rankings are not the measure by which we should judge performance. Reputation among high school students, alumni, graduate schools, and employers are the only reputations that matter. I find having other schools rank schools a ridiculous notion. Of course you get regional bias - the better your area looks the more attractive your school is by association. And also, what do presidents and deans have to do with schools outside their control? Nothing at all.

The methodology of USNews is bad. If it weren't Penn couldn't jump to #4 from #14 or whatever in a year. The top 25-30 remains a solid representation of top schools, but trying to "move up" a few spots is reserved only for schools that find this to be their best shot at publicity (Wash U has done a good job with this).

As for Georgetown, our ranking in USNews is not a goal and shouldn't be. Georgetown is beyond the point where people question its academics and prestige because of its "ranking." The key goal for Georgetown moving forward is to make the school more attractive to prospective students, reach out to alumni for fundraising, and get out of debt so they can make a bigger financial aid push for students(we currently calculate on the low end of expected need).

As an aside, campus has improved tremendously in just five years since I graduated. The new buildings are beautiful and the football field as a central part of the campus is fantastic. The quality of student I interview is higher than ever and they all got rejected. So the "Gigafan-Index" says Georgetown is up. I'm going with that rating.

[SoCalHoya]

I agree with Gigafan, but only to a certain extent. Generally, college admissions are getting tougher, so to say that HS senior interviews are getting better, the students brighter, might be attributable to rising competitiveness overall. I'd like to think that it is due to the quality education at GU, but I can't say that is the only reason.

Also, we know that the USNWR Rankings methodology is flawed. However, we can't ignore that they're read and often trusted. So, shouldn't we focus on improving the factors listed in the rankings that we ALSO believe are empirically beneficial to the university? Giving rates, etc.?

[reformation]

Academic reputation(peer assessment) is affected by the actions of administrators as they choose which professors to hire, research areas to focus on etc, so I do believe that there is something that the administrators can do about it--obviously this does not happen overnight but if you do not focus on specific goals it will never happen(I can offer some specifics if needed--a good exercise would be to look at Duke's strategic plan and GU's(both on websites) to provide some perspective on what I'm saying here.

I agree that the methodology of the survey is flawed, unfortunately, the effects of negative perceptions will have a real effect on student quality, ability to hire faculty etc.

On the positive side maybe this scare will give seniors at GU a wake up call to do something.

[GIGAFAN1]

I disagree with the "real impact" of any of this. Every year we've talked about Georgetown almost falling out of the top 25 and every year we've said our faculty and student quality is in peril. Yet we still get 15,000 applications from high-quality academic students and continue to get large amounts of graduates going to top professional schools, graduate schools, and into the job market.

We've been ranked top 25 in USNews for 17 straight years now. You'd think we'd have lost our inferiority complex by now being that even by a methodology that could easily exclude us, still places us among the elite schools in the nation. Georgetown should continue fundraising efforts and improving the quality of life on-campus for students. It should not decide courses of study or research based on these rankings. Rankings are nice, but they should not motivate our decisions as a university.

[reformation]

Agree with you that exact ranking may not matter that much,i.e., 20vs 25 e.g.. What concerns me is dropping out of the rankings altogether. Its a pretty big assumption your making that there would be no effect on the university if this were to happen.(I'm also not so sure that our admissions trend is positive vis a vis other top schools-its pretty hard to keep things steady state)

It is also definitely not true that universities pay or shouldn't pay no attention to rankings at all in allocating research, teaching and other resources.(I've taught at two of the ivies and have a pretty good handle on this) Virtually every university(good ones at least) have pretty specific goals about where they invest their $ to have a top 10 enlish dept, biology dept, or law school etc. . I'm sure GU's law and bschools pay a lot of attention to this stuff already and it definitely affects hiring practices, student recruitment etc. .


All institutions tend to highlight rankings that they do well in and downplay those that they do not do well in,
I'm not suggesting that we run the University solely to maximize our USNW ranking but I don't think we should ignore the rankings just because we don't like the result.

[Gigafan1]

Professional schools are different than undergrad because there are largely more rankings that can be maximized based on a wide variety of factors. In the case of undergrad, USNews is pretty much the only nationally publicized ranking. So GU's business school can maximize Business Week, Forbes, The Economist, Financial Times, etc. based on both their methodologies and the school's goals. Also, their performance is more outcome-based than undergrad. The same goes for grad schools whose published works make programs.

Undergrad is a different animal and playing to rankings in the undergrad game is not necessarily the best course of action. I also disagree that we don't like the result. I think Georgetown has plenty of ammunition with reputation and location to recruit students. USNews is just one small part of a positive image of Georgetown. A top 25 ranking isn't negative and I don't think #27 is either. If we continued to fall, sure that would be of concern because it might show weakness in the overall university. Still I think #23 to #25 is not concerning. It's just how the numbers fell this year. Until we actually see a significant drop, I can't get worked up over this.

[thebin]

I agree with reformation that it is one thing to worry about vascilating from #17-23 over the years, but another thing altogether to fall off the top 25- and consequently into the the 2nd tier. There is no amount of methodology bashing that can mask the fact that that would be a catastrophe- even if any rankings that has Duke and Penn well ahead of Chicago is suspect.

[DFW HOYA]

Bin, as long as "peer assessment" continues to be 25% of the score, you can expect a downward move from 25 to the high 20's to even as low as the mid-30's at some point.

Why? The "peers" making these value judgements aren't aspiring attorneys, aren't recruiting for pre-meds or MBA's, and don't read the box scores. They are died in the tweed-wool academics, the kind of people that populate faculty at big schools nationwide.

When they see the scholar-focused statistics within the academic community ranking various schools from A-Z and everywhere in between, it's easy to see why, if they're not familiar with GU, they tend to undersell it.

The Unviersity of Florida has an EXTENSIVE report on this--over 300 pages in PDF format. Take four schools: Georgetown, Duke, Penn, and Virginia, and let's see how the rankings on these metrics check out. Granted, if you're a college freshmen excited about DC this doesn't mean much, but remember the audience that is "voting" in these surveys.

Thr categories represented included total research expenditures, Federal research expenditures, endowment assets, annual giving, National Academy memberships, doctorates awarded. postdoctoral appointees, SAT scores, and National Merit Scholars.

National Rank by Total Research:
Penn: 8th
Duke: 21st
Virginia: 75th
Georgetown: 102th
Brown: 110th

National Rank By Federal Research:
Penn: 5th
Duke: 22nd
Virginia: 50th
Georgetown: 66th
Brown: 96th

National Rank By Endowment Assets:
Penn: 10th
Duke: 15th
Virginia: 23rd
Brown: 25th
Georgetown: 69th

National Rank By Annual Giving:
Penn: 5th
Duke: 10th
Virginia: 12th
Brown: 53th
Georgetown: 57th

Rank By National Academy Of Sciences Members:
Penn: 7th
Duke: 21st
Virginia: 42nd
Brown: 45th
Georgetown: 88th

National Rank By PhD's Awarded:
Penn: 26th
Virginia: 37th
Duke: 52nd
Brown: 92nd
Georgetown: 145th

National Rank By Post-Doctoral Appointments:
Penn: 5th
Duke: 14th
Virginia: 34th
Brown: 99th
Georgetown: 110th

National Rank By SAT Scores
Duke: 19th
Penn: 19th
Georgetown: 25th
Brown: 34th
Virginia: 59th

National Rank By # Of National Merit Scholars:
Duke: 16th
Penn: 23th
Brown: 29th
Virginia: 56th
Georgetown: 71st
(only 34 members of the class of 2006 were National Merit scholars at GU combined with 123 in Durham.)

An academic that understands Georgetown and the kind of people it turns out is far less liekly to rely on stats to rank schools. Some psychology professor who's been living in the same cubicle at Berkeley since the Nixon administration sees numbers like that and asks why Geogetown is even in the top 75.

It's all subjective, but in the battle to win the hearts and minds of the liberal elite (sorry, I had to throw that in, Bin), Georgetown faces an uphill climb. Or, as Jack DeGioia put it, we're in with the big boys now.

[nychoya3]

Yep. I don't particularly care about cracking the lofty heights of the Ivys. But I do think it's important that we at least tread water in the bottom of the top-25. At some point, our drop could become self fulfilling, as, unfortunately, high schoolers (and their parents) do read these rankings and they take them into account to varying extents.

As for our faculty, I believe that GU's high proportion of adjunct faculty hurts our rankings as well. Which, of course, seems absurd to me, since nearly all of my best profs were not full time teachers. If you want to study government and policy, there's nothing better than having a real policymaker lead you down the path.

We've got nothing to be insecure about folks.

[GIGAFAN1]

Good points DFW. "Peer assessment" is the weakest part of the study and yet another reason why these rankings are not as important. We live in a society where we have to "rank" the top reality TV moments and so we have to rank colleges.

But there's one problem, the kids don't care and largely neither do their parents. When I interview kids for Georgetown I never hear USNews mentioned despite our place in the top 25 for 17 years. I do hear "city", "politics", "Washington DC". "academics", "prestigious", "international", and even "Catholic". Why?

Well people don't choose colleges like they choose stereos out of Consumer Reports. Georgetown has almost 200 years on USNews. So advantage Georgetown in that regard. Hopkins is an urban school just up the road ranked higher than Georgetown every year, but somehow Georgetown gets more than a third more applicants for the same number of spots.

Hey rankings are great, but Georgetown is not defined by its ranking. Georgetown recruiting travels with Harvard, Penn, and Duke. I don't know how three of the top 5 could associate with such a second-tier like Georgetown or why their applicant pools would overlap with ours. Maybe its because students choose schools, not academicians. And maybe it's because prestige is earned through years of excellence and not bestowed on a school by a mathematical formula.

[reformation]

Complacency is not a good strategy. Gtwn can do better!

As far as bias against GU by professional academics, there may be some, but ND and Duke(by no means favorites of the liberal elite) have steadily improved themselves in both the real and perceived(rankings) world, so it is not an impossible task.

[GIGAFAN1]

But what is better? Better facilities? The building boom on campus has been a step in the right direction. Better fundraising? Finally getting together a campaign like the third century is a good start.

I just think Georgetown is in way better shape now than it has been in recent years. Just a few years ago, Georgetown had not had any campus development and was hit with the medical center debacle.

Our financial resources are still low but I have faith that Augustini can straighten out our financial mess. I actually think we've bottomed out. S&P just hit us with a downgrade but I think that's it. With fundraising efforts and the continued campus improvements, I'm much more optimistic about GU now than I was just a few years ago. We have so many tangible issues to tackle with real estate and debt, I think playing to rankings is a low priority and should be.

[thebin]

Do the rankings account for tangible resources such as facilities? It would seem to me top quality labs, libraries, and even dorms and the like are more important than the unreliable "peer assesment." By that count GU could actually be ranked lower- certainly would have been a decade ago but has made a ton of progress in the last decade.

By the way, for those who have not seen the newest treatment of the new stadium on the official site- I think its outstanding in its current form- a huge relief because the last round of renderings a year ago or so were horrendus. I am very impressed- so much so that I fired off another small contribution the day I saw them. Some might find this crazy, but I genuinely believe that the presence of this stadium will pick off a small handful of eilte students who would otherwise be Ivy-bound because college campuses without college stadiums are just missing something- even if they can't put their finger on it. There is something about football in the fall which is uber-collegiate, even at the IAA level. Not going to increase our rankings, nor should it, but it will be a great addition to the GU experience and could I believe push the lax programs over the top in recruiting terms into national title land.

[reformation]

Nobody is suggesting that we just play to the rankings, the continuing med school fiasco reflects the real issues of poor mgmt and allocation of resources(money thrown away for second rate research) for which nobody seems accountable.

I think and hope that you are right and that we have turned the corner. The new bldgs on campus are nice and some improvements have been made but that is only part of the issue facing GTwn. Ihave real concerns about about how academic resources are allocated and the lack of accountability that permeates the mgmt of the place. Gtwn could help itself by simply adopting some best practices followed by its peers(not just a fundraising thing) instead of assuming that it is totally unique and in great shape and that the rest of the world just doesn't see it.

[GIGAFAN1]

bin, I have to say that when that MSF is done, campus is going to be sweet. I couldn't believe the difference when I was on campus recently (I was visiting a friend going to McDonough for her MBA). The MSF with its current design really gives campus community a focal point and along with the new buildings hides the hideous Harbin Hall!

I really think that the completion of the MSF is a big boon to Georgetown recruiting for sports and students. Imagine presenting to the class of 2010 an MSF and a schedule that assures seeing Yale, Penn, Cornell, Colgate etc. on that field from 2006-09. Love it. Great for Georgetown.

BTW bin, where's Mega? I can't reach that guy and he hasn't posted in forever. Also are you going to be at Fordham? I'm in CT now so I'm thinking of heading out. Know of anyone in New York who's going?

[thebin]

Giga- have been trying to reach Mega in vain for month or more. I guess he forgot to pay his cell again. (Mega- if you see this call me- 917-816-2500.) Anyway Giga- will almost certainly be at the Fordham game with many of my GU football alum friends. We should meet up for sure. Let's keep in touch about that- but I am 95% in for Fordham already. See you there?

[GIGAFAN1]

Yep, I'm in. Mega will be there too I bet. He might be in Scranton in tennis camp exile like he often is around this time. He'll resurface soon enough.