Garbage Rankings That Harm Profession Released

[AfricanusCrowther]

Behold.

The response rate of the surveys they send out to departments (on which the rankings are entirely based) for history was 15%. 

(Before you ask, my university's ranking went up. Still nonsense.)

Edited March 15, 2017 by AfricanusCrowther

[psstein]

These ratings are nonsense, and pretty much everyone in the field knows it.

Hopkins' HoS is one of the best programs in the country, especially for early modern. Harvard's HoS doesn't have an early modernist. You can't make a compelling case that Harvard is a better choice than Hopkins for someone who wants to do early modern science.

[Sigaba]

Precisely how do rankings in a national publication hurt a profession?

Are professional academic historians going to seek work at departments with higher rankings?

Do hiring committees focus on the reputation of where an applicant got her degree or the department ranking?

Are aspiring graduate students with the most potential going to use the rankings as a sole source resource for deciding where to apply?

Are publishers and periodicals going to pay any attention to the rankings? (A must read from a top professor at the #4 program in America!)

Are alumni going to stop making donations because they agree/disagree with the rankings?

[AfricanusCrowther]

I do know prospective graduate students who have made poor decisions based on this ranking. 

[nevermind]

2 hours ago, AfricanusCrowther said:

I do know prospective graduate students who have made poor decisions based on this ranking. 

I think one could also argue that it contributes to the perceived prestige of an institution that does have a determining factor in getting interviews, etc. However, there are so many other factors that matter more, as @Sigaba notes. Personally, my uni dropped from in the 20's to in the 40's, but that's life. It really has no bearing on how much research I produce. 

[psstein]

On 3/16/2017 at 1:24 PM, Sigaba said:

Precisely how do rankings in a national publication hurt a profession?

Do hiring committees focus on the reputation of where an applicant got her degree or the department ranking?

The rankings don't really reflect anything, because they're dependent on a survey that has a pathetically low response rate. Hiring committees look at reputation of a program, though rankings are related to the reputation of a program.

[dr. t]

On 3/16/2017 at 1:24 PM, Sigaba said:

Precisely how do rankings in a national publication hurt a profession?

Are professional academic historians going to seek work at departments with higher rankings?

Do hiring committees focus on the reputation of where an applicant got her degree or the department ranking?

Are aspiring graduate students with the most potential going to use the rankings as a sole source resource for deciding where to apply?

Are publishers and periodicals going to pay any attention to the rankings? (A must read from a top professor at the #4 program in America!)

Are alumni going to stop making donations because they agree/disagree with the rankings?

Alas that deans and other admincritters do indeed seem to care.

[NoirFemme]

Maybe the rankings are garbage (whatever is defined as garbage), but as a first-gen, low-income, nontraditional student of color, the satisfaction of being accepted into a highly-ranked program is considerable. And obtaining a degree from a highly-ranked program gives us POC students a boost when our presence in academia and our credentials are often marginalized, undermined, and viewed with skepticism.

Edited March 21, 2017 by NoirFemme

[OHSP]

40 minutes ago, NoirFemme said:

Maybe the rankings are garbage (whatever is defined as garbage), but as a first-gen, low-income, nontraditional student of color, the satisfaction of being accepted into a highly-ranked program is considerable. And obtaining a degree from a highly-ranked program gives us POC students a boost when our presence in academia and our credentials are often marginalized, undermined, and viewed with skepticism.

Yeah ditto this for first-gen, low-income, indigenous, lesbian -- especially given I might want to return to my home country post-PhD, in which case the rankings really do mean something to selection committees. At my current school (in Australia) the recent hires are graduates of Harvard, Columbia, NYU, USC and UNC Chapel Hill. 

[AfricanusCrowther]

1 hour ago, NoirFemme said:

Maybe the rankings are garbage (whatever is defined as garbage), but as a first-gen, low-income, nontraditional student of color, the satisfaction of being accepted into a highly-ranked program is considerable. And obtaining a degree from a highly-ranked program gives us POC students a boost when our presence in academia and our credentials are often marginalized, undermined, and viewed with skepticism.

While I appreciate this sentiment, it makes me wish that the rankings were based more on the actual merit of the departments in particular fields. Its ranking of NYU, for example, is totally off base -- a look at placement data suggests it should be ranked much higher. As a result of the USNWR ranking, disembodied "prestige" may at times be valued over the actual strength of the program, which can hurt underrepresented fields (I'm thinking of my own field, African history, where the best programs are not HYP).

Edited March 21, 2017 by AfricanusCrowther

[NoirFemme]

2 hours ago, AfricanusCrowther said:

While I appreciate this sentiment, it makes me wish that the rankings were based more on the actual merit of the departments in particular fields. Its ranking of NYU, for example, is totally off base -- a look at placement data suggests it should be ranked much higher. As a result of the USNWR ranking, disembodied "prestige" may at times be valued over the actual strength of the program, which can hurt underrepresented fields (I'm thinking of my own field, African history, where the best programs are not HYP).

First, it's not a sentiment it's a fact.

Secondly, if I'm not mistaken, the list is broken into sub-fields. And if you're in your field, you know, and others know, the prestige and merits of potential programs to which you will apply. When I was forming my list last year, my adviser knew which programs to cross off and which programs to which I should apply that I had no idea existed. When I had the opportunity to visit a campus, a prospective adviser looked at my SOP and told me where she saw me fitting in based on my research and also the faculty.

Sure, most are going to try HYP just to see if they can get the golden ticket, but if you have an excellent adviser, talk to other students, and do your own research, you know the programs to which you should apply. 

This list is a starting point for people who don't even know if they can aim that high. 

[AfricanusCrowther]

6 hours ago, NoirFemme said:

First, it's not a sentiment it's a fact.

Secondly, if I'm not mistaken, the list is broken into sub-fields. And if you're in your field, you know, and others know, the prestige and merits of potential programs to which you will apply. When I was forming my list last year, my adviser knew which programs to cross off and which programs to which I should apply that I had no idea existed. When I had the opportunity to visit a campus, a prospective adviser looked at my SOP and told me where she saw me fitting in based on my research and also the faculty.

Sure, most are going to try HYP just to see if they can get the golden ticket, but if you have an excellent adviser, talk to other students, and do your own research, you know the programs to which you should apply. 

This list is a starting point for people who don't even know if they can aim that high. 

Except that, given what I've seen from placement data, the sub field rankings are just as questionable. And given that, as you acknowledge,the best place for a student has to be considered in light of many different factors, a bad list like USNWR ends up skewing admissions toward the "top" schools in spite all of those other factors, which seems to me to harm the profession by reinforcing arbitrary credentialism. 

[ExponentialDecay]

On 3/20/2017 at 9:18 PM, NoirFemme said:

Maybe the rankings are garbage (whatever is defined as garbage), but as a first-gen, low-income, nontraditional student of color, the satisfaction of being accepted into a highly-ranked program is considerable. And obtaining a degree from a highly-ranked program gives us POC students a boost when our presence in academia and our credentials are often marginalized, undermined, and viewed with skepticism.

But if the rankings are commonly accepted as garbage, why should they reflect on the quality of your credentials one way or another? Similarly, what about the first-gen, low-income, nontraditional students of color who were accepted into highly respected schools that did not place well on these rankings? Should they feel as upset as you are satisfied? If so, doesn't it seem like a zero-sum game wherein everybody has a lot of emotions and nobody wins?