I've only just been made aware of Professor Leiter's evolving discussion of the NRC rankings of doctoral programs, so I have not read through it all yet. But I do note that he's had the good sense to re-post Ned Block's decisive (by my judgment) criticisms of the methodology. I look forward to reading the rest.
Of course, the administrators at my University are pushing the various departments ranked to study the report and include whatever spin-able data there are in upcoming recruitment. I just sent a note to my chair and webmaster to add the following sentence to our webpage:
The NRC Data-Based Assessment of Research-Doctorate Programs is demonstrably worthless. We have elected to ignore it, and urge you to do so as well.
I'll let you know how that goes.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comments:
I sent my Provost a similar note (a little more descriptive than yours). He wrote back, "I know." And he gave a couple of examples of how bizarre the methodology is ("If I published a book with Cambridge that would count for less than if I published an article in the worst journal in my discipline").
Yeah, he's an academic, not a career administrator. So that helps.
OMG. My verification word is "quiness"! He was married twice; I wonder which one is the quiness.
Post a Comment