Talk:U.S. News & World Report

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This page definitely needs more expansion. I marked it as a magazine stub. --Koblentz 12:50, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

Richard Roy University doesn't seem real to me.

Are there international editions of U.S. News & World Report in different languages? =) Jumping cheese ^Contact 05:40, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Contents 1 Correction 2 Media Bias 3 Criticism 4 College rankings

[edit] Correction

The new editor is Brian Kelly not Brian Duffy. Source -> http://www.usnews.com/usnews/usinfo/staff.htm

[edit] Media Bias

I'm curious to know where US News and World Report Falls on the media bias contiuum.

71.208.200.101 19:02, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Criticism

This material is unsourced. It needs references and citations before being restored back to the article. -Classicfilms 20:55, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

---

Critics claim that annual fluctuations in rankings are driven by the magazine's desire to generate news and increase circulation, and not by real changes in the quality of a given institution. Moreover, twenty-five percent of each institution's ranking is based on a peer assessment survey completed by college presidents and administrators. While U.S. News asserts that this "allows the top academics we contact to account for intangibles such as faculty dedication to teaching", it is unclear what basis college presidents and administrators have for making these assessments for more than a handful of institutions. Regardless of the basis for these administrators' assessments, this process reflects what colleges and administrators think of institutions. However, the U.S. News survey does not measure employer satisfaction with newly minted college graduates.

Because the U.S. News rankings measure an institution's educational practices and curricular offerings indirectly at best, alternative survey instruments have been developed to identify institutions that routinely provide enriching educational and social experiences and environments for their students. An example of such a survey is the National Survey of Student Engagement. This survey currently is used at a relatively small number of colleges, however, and many of those that use it do not make their results public.

A few institutions, most notably Reed College, have refused to cooperate with U.S. News's data-gathering efforts because of concerns about the ways that such ratings schemes lead institutions to distort their priorities and resource allocations in order to boost their rankings.^[1] U.S. News has come under fire for its rankings of graduate programs as well. Almost all of the deans from American Bar Association-accredited law schools signed a letter sent by the Law School Admissions Council (LSAC) decrying the ranking methodology. Detractors of U.S. News say their rankings rely too much on "subjective" factors. Regardless, U.S. News continues to rank law schools down to the 4th tier, despite only ranking the top 50 schools in other professions, such as medical schools or MBA programs.

Supporters of the U.S. News college rankings argue that they condense a wide variety of useful information for prospective students and their families. One by-product of the rankings' increased profile has been the development of standardized definitions of many of the quality indicators that U.S. News and other guidebooks publish. The most notable of these is the Common Data Set, a data template devised by several guidebook publishers to standardize their annual collecting of data from college and university institutional researchers.

In addition to the newsstand issue, the rankings are elaborated in America's Best Colleges, a college guide published by U.S. News in print and online. The commercial success of the U.S. News rankings has spawned similar efforts at other publications, including Newsweek, the Atlantic Monthly and the Times Higher Education Supplement. Although an explanation of methodology accompanies the rankings, U.S. News has not revealed the formula it uses for determining them. Much of the raw data used in the rankings is provided by institutional researchers at colleges and universities.

The magazine also ranks hospitals annually in various specialties.

[edit] College rankings

It seems like a disproportional amount of the page is devoted to the college rankings. Actually, only the intro section is not about college rankings. I suggest that the college ranking sections to be edited down or expand on the history and current status of U.S. News. Jumping cheese 19:18, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Yes, seeing as there is already in article devoted to college rankings, this section is far to long and should be dramatically reduced or even removed.- thank you Astuishin (talk) 19:25, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Ok, I removed some material - if I removed something that you think should be there, go ahead and restore. -Classicfilms 19:30, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

I took out the table of rankings but it was restored by another editor - so perhaps that should stay. If it does, the formatting needs fixing.-Classicfilms 19:36, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Personally I'd cut the whole ratings thing down to one short paragraph, since it is not proportional to all the magazine is and does, which should be on this page. If the rankings are really that notable, put them in their own article and {{main}} over to it. --J Clear 20:12, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

That's a good idea - the magazine is known for its rankings, and the criticism is current news (which makes it notable) so mention of both subsections should appear as short paragraphs - and both have {{main}} links already . As for the table, maybe it should be moved to another page for tables related to rankings. -Classicfilms 20:21, 24 June 2007 (UTC)