McGill vs Harvard

[TakeruK]

The paper that telkanuru linked has also been discussed in this other thread earlier this year: 

 

While I definitely agree that there is certainly some aspects of the hierarchies that cannot be explained by merit alone, I have some reservations about the way the authors of the study "measured" merit. I also do not think academia should be purely meritocratic and I do not think meritocracies are some kind of special ideal state. My main complaint about meritocracy is that we have no objective way to measure this and therefore it is impossible for us to evaluate people based on merit only. I wrote more about this in the linked thread.

[twentysix]

I think it's also important to point out that UBC and SFU are generally regarded as two different types of Universities. For example, Maclean's classifies UBC as "medical/doctoral" (i.e. what Americans might call "R1" research institutions) while SFU is a "comprehensive" school (what Americans might call "R2", but it's a category for schools that do have graduate programs but perhaps not in every field and they may not prioritize research as highly as teaching). In Astronomy, SFU does not really have a big graduate research program and many SFU astronomy undergraduates do their honours theses with UBC faculty. 

 

R1 means Very High Research Activity on the Carnegie Classification Scale. Lots of schools have a Med School or offer Doctorates and are not R1. There are 108 universities that are R1/VH.

 

http://carnegieclassifications.iu.edu/lookup_listings/srp.php?clq={%22ipug2005_ids%22%3A%22%22%2C%22ipgrad2005_ids%22%3A%22%22%2C%22enrprofile2005_ids%22%3A%22%22%2C%22ugprfile2005_ids%22%3A%22%22%2C%22sizeset2005_ids%22%3A%22%22%2C%22basic2005_ids%22%3A%2215%22%2C%22eng2005_ids%22%3A%22%22%2C%22search_string%22%3A%22%22%2C%22level%22%3A%22%22%2C%22control%22%3A%22%22%2C%22accred%22%3A%22%22%2C%22state%22%3A%22%22%2C%22region%22%3A%22%22%2C%22urbanicity%22%3A%22%22%2C%22womens%22%3A%22%22%2C%22hbcu%22%3A%22%22%2C%22hsi%22%3A%22%22%2C%22tribal%22%3A%22%22%2C%22msi%22%3A%22%22%2C%22landgrant%22%3A%22%22%2C%22coplac%22%3A%22%22%2C%22urban%22%3A%22%22}&start_page=institution.php

 

Is the list of all R1s, which are actually classified as VH [very high] or H [high] research activity. VH = R1 H = lower tier/not R1.

 

As an example, within North Dakota, North Dakota State University is an R1/VH and does not have a med school. The University of North Dakota on the other hand does have a med school, offers JDs, PhDs etc, and is not an R1.

Edited April 20, 2015 by twentysix

[dr. t]

The paper that telkanuru linked has also been discussed in this other thread earlier this year: 

 

While I definitely agree that there is certainly some aspects of the hierarchies that cannot be explained by merit alone, I have some reservations about the way the authors of the study "measured" merit. I also do not think academia should be purely meritocratic and I do not think meritocracies are some kind of special ideal state. My main complaint about meritocracy is that we have no objective way to measure this and therefore it is impossible for us to evaluate people based on merit only. I wrote more about this in the linked thread.

 

A couple things:

 

1) Your post in the other thread conflates faculty at top tier schools with doctorates from top tier schools. You talk about the former, the study only covers the latter, and thus other aspects---teaching, mentorship, etc.---are relative unknowns at the point of hire.

 

2) Your point about resources is well-taken, but I'm not sure I would separate resources from prestige.

 

3) I agree completely that meritocracies are not an ideal state and that academia shouldn't be meritocratic. However, academia either needs to admit that it is not meritocratic or to start behaving like a meritocracy.

 

4) The overall conclusion of the paper was that you should not take an offer from a school outside the top 20%, and I think that's a useful guideline.

 

This discussion got pretty good for a terrible troll thread followed by a Canadian pissing match

Edited April 20, 2015 by telkanuru

[lewin]

This thread wins the award for best discussion sparked by a trolling (or at least highly downvoted) post.

[TakeruK]

R1 means Very High Research Activity on the Carnegie Classification Scale. Lots of schools have a Med School or offer Doctorates and are not R1. There are 108 universities that are R1/VH.

 

As an example, within North Dakota, North Dakota State University is an R1/VH and does not have a med school. The University of North Dakota on the other hand does have a med school, offers JDs, PhDs etc, and is not an R1.

 

Agreed that I was oversimplifying it there. The link you provided is for US schools only right? My point of making the R1/R2 comparison was that UBC would be a R1 school if a similar scale was applied in Canada while SFU would be more like R2. I was using the Macleans magazine classifications because Canadians may be familiar with those terminology instead. I did not mean to imply that "medical/doctoral" and "R1" are synonymous.

 

A couple things:

 

1) Your post in the other thread conflates faculty at top tier schools with doctorates from top tier schools. You talk about the former, the study only covers the latter, and thus other aspects---teaching, mentorship, etc.---are relative unknowns at the point of hire.

 

2) Your point about resources is well-taken, but I'm not sure I would separate resources from prestige.

 

3) I agree completely that meritocracies are not an ideal state and that academia shouldn't be meritocratic. However, academia either needs to admit that it is not meritocratic or to start behaving like a meritocracy.

 

4) The overall conclusion of the paper was that you should not take an offer from a school outside the top 20%, and I think that's a useful guideline.

 

This discussion got pretty good for a terrible troll thread followed by a Canadian pissing match

 

Responding to (1): You are right, but I believe I only conflated these two groups in the last part, where I discuss resources. My main complaint against the authors' argument that meritocracy in the current system requires graduates from the top 10 units be 2-6 times more productive than graduates from the third 10 units. The authors' reasoning is that there are 2-6 times more faculty placed from top 10 schools than the third 10 schools. I do not think this is a fair way to assess merit because I don't think there should be a linear relationship between production and whether or not you get a faculty placement. Even if there is a meritocracy and we were magically able to rank everyone based on merit and hire say, the top 10% as faculty, I think the differences between those who get hired and those who do not would be marginal. 

 

(2): I definitely would not separate resources from prestige. Prestige is one very important way for the school to gain donors and thus resources for its scholars!

 

(3): Indeed, my preference would be to simply admit that academia is not meritocratic. Why do we need to be different from other work environments? 

 

(4): This was the guideline I used to apply to graduate schools. And this will be the guideline I follow when I apply for postdocs! At the start of my PhD application, we decided that given the way hiring decisions are made (easy enough to infer from the CVs of faculty at places I'd like to work; and from statistics like only the "top 10%" of people become professors) it's not worth investing ~10 years of our lives in grad school and postdocs if I'm not going to be at the top ~10% of places the entire time. 

[twentysix]

Yes UBC would easily be an R1 if it were in the USA. It does over $500million in research annually. I was just making clear that there is specifically a list of R1s, and having a med school does not make a school an R1. The low end of R1 universities is around $150,000,000 USD worth of research annually, SFU might actually make the cut to be one of the lower R1s (if it were an American university).

Edited April 21, 2015 by twentysix

[spunky]

i've always felt that up here in Canada we would benefit quite a bit if the Carnegie Foundation gave us some love and did some R1/R2 rankings of our unis. from experience in conferences and professional settings in the U.S. i've had people ask me more than once whether my uni would be an R1 or R2. i always say an R1, of course but i could see how making it official would make stuff like applying for jobs or post-docs a lot easier. you know, having a common metric and stuff...