What if, instead of merely picking the top two or three universities listed on the U.S. News annual rankings of America's colleges and universities, you could find the schools that best fit the criteria that matter most to you? Geoff Davis, mathematics Ph.D. and founder of the website PhDs.org, has created a new graduate school rankings system that does just that. Using data from the National Research Council, the National Science Foundation, and the National Center for Education Statistics, Dr. Davis' system allows users to rate criteria such as average number of faculty publication citations, average number of grants, and time to degree. The ratings are then used as weights in a customized search to find the schools that best match the user's criteria.
The important thing to keep in mind is, of course, that the rankings are only as good as the input data, which must be up-to-date to be useful. In an article published last week in Inside Higher Ed, Robert J. Morse of U.S. News unsurprisingly criticized the efforts of his new competitor, saying that the NRC data are "likely" to be 15 years old. New and improved data sources, of course, can be expected to be found as the website grows, which currently is being funded with support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the Burroughs Wellcome Fund. Regarding the U.S. News rankings, Dr. Davis said, "It doesn’t make sense to call any department No. 1. They all have strengths and weaknesses."
Comments (1)
Hi Jackie--
Thanks for the plug! I hope you found the site useful.
It's true that some of the data are old; however, the majority of the content, including the most interesting data - the outcome measures - are brand spanking new (or at least "new" by NSF standards).
Geoff
Posted by Geoff Davis | April 9, 2007 11:09 AM
Posted on April 9, 2007 11:09