TU, OU among top national colleges, OSU not

[MichaelC]

quote:Originally posted by okiebybirth

Oklahoma State ranked 86th on Washinton Monthly college rankings...
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2006/0609.national.html

Even the person that posted this thread originally...SHOULD know how insignificant these rankings are.

The Peterson Guides, probably the most in depth and respected rating system for colleges and universities, have OU, OSU, and TU all around 130 to 135 in National Research Univerities.  Every single year.

OSU is not "behind" either one of these schools.  And there isn't an "impressive" school in the state.

[Conan71]

quote:Originally posted by PonderInc

It's late, and I might be missing something...but from reading the first post on this thread, I see that TU, KU and Missouri are all ranked 88th.

Am I missing something?  Or is there a 3-way tie for 88th place?  In which case, TU wins hands down b/c I doubt there are many opportunities at KU or MU where freshmen get to enjoy being taught by PhD's with a class size of 10-20 students.

I recall an article about 15 years ago referring to TU as the "Harvard of the midwest".

[MichaelC]

quote:Originally posted by Conan71

I recall an article about 15 years ago referring to TU as the "Harvard of the midwest".

They lied.

Do you recall the USAToday article about 3 years ago claiming Oklahoma Christian U number 1 in the US in "Four Year Comprehensive Schools"?  Or the NYTimes article about 10 or so years ago claiming Okie State had the number 1 business school in the US (just ahead of Columbia)?  

These rankings are utterly worthless.

[okiebybirth]

quote:Originally posted by MichaelC

quote:Originally posted by okiebybirth

Oklahoma State ranked 86th on Washinton Monthly college rankings...
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2006/0609.national.html

Even the person that posted this thread originally...SHOULD know how insignificant these rankings are.

The Peterson Guides, probably the most in depth and respected rating system for colleges and universities, have OU, OSU, and TU all around 130 to 135 in National Research Univerities.  Every single year.

OSU is not "behind" either one of these schools.  And there isn't an "impressive" school in the state.

Here is a "scapel" taken to those rankings...

http://www.stats.org/stories/college_rank_Monthly_aug28_06.htm

I don't think anyone should put much significance behind these rankings, but it sure does get people bragging and boasting while others get rankled...  []

[SoonerRiceGrad]

I think for a private school as great as TU to be ranked with Kansas and Missouri, even Oklahoma, public schools... is just plain insulting. TU is often hailed as the best value in the South, I don't hear that about KU or MU for their respective geographic areas.

And everyone knows that you can get a much finer education at Baylor than any of the Texas schools. I think that this ranking took into account tuition, and is thus about value or cost over education, and thus simply worthless. There is no way you can tell me that going to a smaller private college is not worth higher tuition.

Texas A&M must have ranked highly thus because of all the free rides they give: all Eagle scouts in the nation are offered a free ride at A&M, plus all of their ROTC students (which I think both are great, but still not a reason for which A&M is better than OU or MU or some other of the 'finer public schools').

[brunoflipper]

quote:Originally posted by SoonerRiceGrad

... I don't hear that about KU...

then you are not paying attention... historically KU has had one of the strongest academic programs in the big 12 and the region...

[SoonerRiceGrad]

I really am not. Here's a real big confession: Who really cares about KU?

[brunoflipper]

quote:Originally posted by SoonerRiceGrad

I really am not. Here's a real big confession: Who really cares about KU?

who cares? you apparently do, you listed it as if it were some second rate university...

if i'm mistaken, please forgive me...
but are you not the self-proclaimed "psychiatrist" who was outed as a liar over a year ago?

let's go to the archives...

there it is... 9th post down, it all falls apart...
http://www.tulsanow.org/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=589&whichpage=2

i'll give you credit, you stuck around without a name change, which is more than most would do...

yeah, i get a little pissy when a charlatan starts casting collegiate aspersions...


/god bless the archives

[Cubs]

All I know is that President Bush spoke at OSU's graduation, so at least the smart people know that OSU is a good college.

[waterboy]

quote:Originally posted by Cubs

All I know is that President Bush spoke at OSU's graduation, so at least the smart people know that OSU is a good college.

Who poked you with a stick? Look up non-sequitor.

[troostman]

quote:Originally posted by SoonerRiceGrad

I think for a private school as great as TU to be ranked with Kansas and Missouri, even Oklahoma, public schools... is just plain insulting. TU is often hailed as the best value in the South, I don't hear that about KU or MU for their respective geographic areas.

And everyone knows that you can get a much finer education at Baylor than any of the Texas schools. I think that this ranking took into account tuition, and is thus about value or cost over education, and thus simply worthless. There is no way you can tell me that going to a smaller private college is not worth higher tuition.

Texas A&M must have ranked highly thus because of all the free rides they give: all Eagle scouts in the nation are offered a free ride at A&M, plus all of their ROTC students (which I think both are great, but still not a reason for which A&M is better than OU or MU or some other of the 'finer public schools').

What a bunch of BS. I don't know whether this guy is as dumb as he sounds but he is full of it.

I graduated from TU with a BS and MS in engineering and joined a large oil company in TX shortly thereafter. I was thrown in with many engineers from Texas A&M as well as U of Tx, Rice and others from various parts of the country (MIT, U of Michigan, UCLA etc). I can tell you from experience that for a while I was playing big time catch up. TU's programs (at least in Chemical Eng) were seriously out of date. I can also tell you that the graduates from Texas A&M were very well trained and on a par with those anywhere and better than most.

The jerk that posted this note knows nothing and shows it. I know a lot of Rice graduates and he does not seem like one to me.

[MichaelC]

quote:Originally posted by troostman

I don't know whether this guy is as dumb as he sounds but he is full of it.

Yes on both counts.  We just stopped saying it out loud.

[jne]

Friday, September 22, 2006

Researcher Proposes Basing College Rankings on Different Criteria

By ERIC HOOVER

Colleges and universities have the raw materials with which to build a better rankings system, but many institutions do not want to abandon the current model. As a result, commercial guides to colleges continue to thrive, even though they provide little useful information to students.

So concludes a new report on college rankings scheduled to be released today by Education Sector, a nonprofit research group based in Washington. The report, "College Rankings Reformed: The Case for a New Order in Higher Education," calls for a more sophisticated way of measuring how well colleges educate their students. The system would emphasize the quality of teaching and would put institutions' graduation rates in context, assessing not only what students learned in college but also their success after earning their degrees.

The "student based" rankings would provide prospective college applicants with better measures of quality than those that U.S. News & World Report uses to compile its annual college guide, which rewards institutions for their "fame, wealth, and exclusivity," says Kevin Carey, research and policy manager at Education Sector, who wrote the report.

He believes that his system would also create more incentives for colleges to improve undergraduate instruction and would reward institutions that succeeded in doing so.

In his report, which is to be posted today on the Education Sector Web site, Mr. Carey argues that several recent trends give colleges the information they need to quantify the seemingly unquantifiable in terms of learning and postcollege success. One such factor is the growing popularity of the National Survey of Student Engagement, which provides data on the quality of teaching and learning at some 1,100 participating colleges in the United States and Canada.

That survey, known as Nessie, has the potential to provide the framework for a more meaningful rankings system, one that would better reflect the achievements of colleges instead of confirming their reputations, says Mr. Carey.

A Different Scale

Consider Miles College, in Alabama, and Jackson State University, in Mississippi. Both of those historically black institutions score low in the U.S. News rankings, in part because they serve many financially needy students, who score lower on standardized tests than their more privileged peers do, and because the two institutions spend relatively little on each student.

In the Nessie survey, however, Mr. Carey found that both Miles and Jackson State scored well above the national average in several key categories, including those that measure the frequency of outside-the-classroom discussions of course work among students and professors, and the promptness of feedback that students receive from instructors.

"Conventional measures," his report says, "rank Miles and Jackson State below par; Nessie tells exactly the opposite story."

Mr. Carey proposes basing one-fifth of a college's ranking on its quality of teaching, as measured by its score in Nessie's five main categories: academic rigor, the prevalence of "active and collaborative learning," the quality of interaction among students and faculty members, opportunities for enriching educational experiences, and the supportiveness of the campus environment.

The other components of Mr. Carey's theoretical rankings are:

   * Learning. This measure is based, in part, on the results of the Collegiate Learning Assessment, which hundreds of colleges use to test students on their ability to write long essays, analyze documents, and assess arguments. The test, which compares the scores of freshmen with those of seniors, measures how well students develop their analytical skills in college. (By contrast, existing rankings rate colleges according to the standardized-test scores of incoming freshmen.) Other components of this ranking include the results of outcome-based accreditation processes and of "culminating projects" that reveal students' mastery of a given subject.

   * Retention and graduation. Mr. Carey proposes ranking institutions according to the difference between their actual retention and graduation rates and their statistically predicted graduation rates, so as not to penalize institutions that enroll large numbers of needy and first-generation college students, or students from underperforming high schools.

   * Life after college. Instead of measuring alumni-donation rates, as U.S. News does, Mr. Carey proposes measuring the success of students who go on to postgraduate education; the financial earnings of a college's graduates in a particular field compared with typical earnings in that field; the percentage of students who get jobs in their field of study and pass professional-licensure examinations; and the satisfaction of alumni as revealed by studies like the Collegiate Results Survey, which asks graduates a range of questions about their occupations, job skills, physical fitness, and civic engagement, among other things.

As Mr. Carey concedes, one hitch in discussing alternative ways of evaluating colleges is that many institutions have refused to publicize data from Nessie, the Collegiate Learning Assessment, and alumni surveys. And higher education as a whole has resisted rankings-based accountability, which would require every college to reveal specific information about itself. Given that, he believes that an educationally sound way of measuring college quality is not possible unless the federal government were to create a vast, centralized rankings system -- like the controversial proposed "unit record" data system -- through legislative action.

"The biggest obstacle to liberating higher education from the tyranny of the flawed U.S. News system is higher education itself," Mr. Carey wrote in his report. "Some objections are grounded in reasonable but addressable concerns about the accuracy of information. Others go deeper, reflecting both a strong desire for autonomy and a basic instinct to preserve the status quo."

[jne]

From Bruno's earlier post:
"rankings are rankings... statistics are statistics... the devil is always in the methodology... one must be careful about how they interpret the data...

however, to imply that boren has skewed numbers to get ou to out rank osu sounds like sour grapes...

FIX OSU-Tulsa NOW!!

Make OSU-Tulsa a real 4 year state university.
That is the key to Tulsa and downtown's future.

And, I hate OSU...
But, It really is that simple.
The best damn "magic bullet" we could ever hope for.

"it costs a fortune to look this trashy"
http://www.stopabductions.com/"

I could not agree more

[swake]

quote:Originally posted by jne

From Bruno's earlier post:
"rankings are rankings... statistics are statistics... the devil is always in the methodology... one must be careful about how they interpret the data...

however, to imply that boren has skewed numbers to get ou to out rank osu sounds like sour grapes...

FIX OSU-Tulsa NOW!!

Make OSU-Tulsa a real 4 year state university.
That is the key to Tulsa and downtown's future.

And, I hate OSU...
But, It really is that simple.
The best damn "magic bullet" we could ever hope for.

"it costs a fortune to look this trashy"
http://www.stopabductions.com/"

I could not agree more

It's TCC and Langston that are blocking OSU-Tulsa (and OU-Tulsa) from offering lower level classes. Langston has done nothing with the money given them for a Tulsa campus, so they should be out, Tulsa gave them a shot and they have done nothing, so get out.

TCC is the bigger problem here. That school really upsets me because they are so much a big part of the leveling of the southern end of downtown for ugly treeless parking. It's time TCC, which has been funded by Tulsa over and over, does what is best for Tulsa and not what is best for TCC.

Kathy Taylor and Tulsa's state legislators, this is a call to you. It's time to call out these special interests (TCC and LU) that claim to want to serve Tulsa but really are hurting the city and the state by protecting themselves.