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US News 2024 Rankings (Wake #47)

Thank god my grad degree is from UNC and it's listed before Wake on my resume. Can't be leading in with a T2/T3 school.
 
Liquid Karma said:
Why good overall? Does it have to do with making larger, more affordable state schools more attractive to students?
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I'm curious about your rationale on this as well, @PhDeac - borrower debt and Pell and first-generation outcomes seem like good ideas to me, but I don't really get upping measures of publications and citations, as well as doing away with class size and terminal degree faculty if we're trying to measure quality of undergraduate education.
 
Why wouldn't they just leave class size and the faculty stuff, while adding the other criteria to get a better overall snapshot?
 
I've never cared enough to really dig into how these rankings are calculated, but it seems to me like, "How do graduates do once they leave this place, relative to the cost of coming to this place" should be the overwhelming weight in all of these rankings vs. second-hand stuff like, "How small is the classroom?"

Definitely some panic in the President's office this morning.
 
WFU03 said:
Taking out class size is insane. Even at Wake, on average, the large lecture classes I took did not offer as good an educational experience as the smaller classes.
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I agree completely. I have a child currently in college. He has two classes with more than 300 students and two with fewer than 20 students. The smaller classes are so much better from an educational perspective. The large class size introduces a bunch of logistical issues that take away from learning the material. His large classes have small breakout sessions, led by TAs. The quality of the TAs varies greatly, and the TAs often do not know simple things like assignment deadlines.
 
The previous rankings seemed heavily biased toward one type of education, small liberal arts schools with a heavy emphasis on PhDs teaching undergraduates.

The new rankings seem much more inclusive. Small classes aren’t universally better than large classes. Instructors with PhDs aren’t necessarily better than grad student instructors. Publications and citations are a much better measure of faculty prestige than simply terminal degrees as long as they’re not weighted too high.

birdman nailed it. Wake should feel fortunate to still be top 50 after these changes.

The main takeaway is the reminder than these lists are artificial. Weight them different ways to get different results. US News should probably generate different rankings with different goals in mind. At least they’re transparent about the statistics they use.
 
PhDeac said:
The previous rankings seemed heavily biased toward one type of education, small liberal arts schools with a heavy emphasis on PhDs teaching undergraduates.

The new rankings seem much more inclusive. Small classes aren’t universally better than large classes. Instructors with PhDs aren’t necessarily better than grad student instructors. Publications and citations are a much better measure of faculty prestige than simply terminal degrees as long as they’re not weighted too high.

birdman nailed it. Wake should feel fortunate to still be top 50 after these changes.

The main takeaway is the reminder than these lists are artificial. Weight them different ways to get different results. US News should probably generate different rankings with different goals in mind. At least they’re transparent about the statistics they use.
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US News does have different rankings. Wake is ranked in the "National Universities" category, which tends to get the most press. US News also ranks "National Liberal Arts Colleges," which is where Davidson, Williams, etc. are ranked. The Liberal Arts colleges ranking does not include faculty citation data and places slightly more emphasis on student:faculty ratio (though they also eliminated class size this year).
 
WFU03 said:
Taking out class size is insane. Even at Wake, on average, the large lecture classes I took did not offer as good an educational experience as the smaller classes.
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Terminal degrees of professors not being counted is pretty weird too. You'd get a better education from someone with a PhD here than learning through a TA at any of the huge state schools ahead of us.
 
PhDeac said:
Publications and citations are a much better measure of faculty prestige than simply terminal degrees as long as they’re not weighted too high.
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Having been around higher education for almost 30 years now, I would argue that faculty citation factors have nothing to do with teaching ability, and, in fact, probably negatively correlate with the education experience provided by the professor. There are always exceptions, but in general, the faculty that heavily focus on their research often put a lot less emphasis on their teaching.
 
Liquid Karma said:
It's a huge sign to me that larger schools paid for this change.
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The new methodology certainly favors large research institutions much than it did in previous years.

I would argue that Wake is a very unique school, and the rankings certainly were not altered to benefit a school like Wake. Wake is, by far, the smallest P5 school, so some might argue Wake should be in the Liberal Arts category. But, our professional schools match better with the National Universities profile, and I think that the National Universities list is a bit more prestigious. Wake used to be on the Liberal Arts list, but Hearn and company made the decision to go on the National List 30+ years ago, which I think was a good decision.
 
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