UCONN's best standing ever

[Icebear]

UCONN

19th ranked public university in this year's US News and Business Report rankings.

 

[diggerfoot]

There was once a special kind of ranking done for universities in which the overall assessment was based on positive contributions to society. Schools good at certain kinds of engineering might be ranked high because of their particular innovations; producing a successful teacher might have been ranked as high as producing a successful lawyer; providing upward mobility to graduates ranked higher than churning out upper class kids; etc. I liked that much better than the USN&BR criteria. Of course, with my typical lack of foresight I never bothered to remember who did those rankings or even if they still exist. I only knew about it at the time because there was only one Ivy League school that was in the top ten: Cornell. I don't know where UConn ranked at the time, but with it's top ratings in sustainability and being green I'm guessing it might be top ten now as well. Though I am glad that UConn is 19 in the ranking that gathers all the attention.

 

[jplotinus]

Because there are so many university ranking schemes and because the schemes measure different things differently, I would say that the overall result reveals that rankings are arbitrary and misleading.

The genre is more closely related to commercial advertising than to any other measure. And, they are used by universities in much the same way as movie review excerpts are used in movie advertisements. That is, complimentary aspects are lifted out and bandied about while indicators of mediocrity are downplayed and negatives ignored altogether.

UCONN is a good university, however, it ain't Yale BUT, I have just seen that it DOES have a Research Intensive University (Very High research activity), or RU/VH rating from the Carnegie Foundation.

In my opinion, UCONN is legitimately counted as a top university because of its RU/VH achievement.

 

[Icebear]

It 19th of the 171 public universities rated. Ivy League schools are not public institutions. Of all universities UCONN ranked 57.

 

[diggerfoot]

It 19th of the 171 public universities rated. Ivy League schools are not public institutions. Of all universities UCONN ranked 57.

Just to be clear, I understood that distinction. Though the ranking for societal good I spoke about included all universities I suspect UConn would come out top ten in it anyways.

 

[Icebear]

I understood and the insights, digger, are interesting as always. In someway the #57 of all universities which includes Ivies and all universities is even more impressive than the #19.

 

[jplotinus]

Coincidentally, there's another "University ranking" story making the rounds in mainstream media today, sourced to the BBC.

This ranking uses the world as its baseline for ranking, not one or another nation. BBC headlines that 6 of the top 20 universities in the world are in UK. Most of rest of the top 20 are in USA. MIT and Harvard, neither of which is in a BCS conference, are #1 and #2, respectively, Yale is #8. Thus, our little State is in the mix in a big way, thank you very much

The list referenced in BBC article places a high value on "employability" as a metric. If you don't like Stanford, don't look at it.

Source:

http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/education-24024767

 

[DobbsRover2]

There was once a special kind of ranking done for universities in which the overall assessment was based on positive contributions to society. Schools good at certain kinds of engineering might be ranked high because of their particular innovations; producing a successful teacher might have been ranked as high as producing a successful lawyer; providing upward mobility to graduates ranked higher than churning out upper class kids; etc. I liked that much better than the USN&BR criteria. Of course, with my typical lack of foresight I never bothered to remember who did those rankings or even if they still exist. I only knew about it at the time because there was only one Ivy League school that was in the top ten: Cornell. I don't know where UConn ranked at the time, but with it's top ratings in sustainability and being green I'm guessing it might be top ten now as well. Though I am glad that UConn is 19 in the ranking that gathers all the attention.

I think what you're referring to is the Washington Monthly rankings for colleges that has some loose "contributions to public good" description wrapped around all the many components it refers to such as Bachelor's to PhD and Students receiving Pell Grants categories. The linked table for universities does not have UConn very high at #81 overall, but I think the category you're talking about is the "Community service participation and hours served" column where UConn has its highest rating at #9.

 

[JRRRJ]

In my opinion, UCONN is legitimately counted as a top university because of its RU/VH achievement.

After 7 years of involvement with a Research I university through my researcher wife, I find the patina of such a ranking to be quite faded. Surprisingly little of what happens is about research, and much of the research is very poorly administered (since it's usually administered by the researchers in ad hoc organizations), making it far more about the money than the science as far as the U is concerned. That's not just from my local U, but from conversations with other researchers far & wide.

I know lots of good bio & civil engineering research comes out of UConn, but I'd rather rate a U on how it grows & educates it's students. And, believe me, researchers are almost universally not about teaching, except for their protégés. It's a separate part of the U.

Addendum: Checked up on it & it seems "Research I" has been replaced by "Doctoral/research universities-extensive" in the Carnegie classifications.
.

 

[UcMiami]

There are so many variables and subjective assessments involved with rankings of universities that I distrust most of the overall rankings, though I am certainly happy that Uconn has scored well in this one. I do think it is a good school and one that takes academics seriously.
And JRRRJ I agree about the 'research' aspects - generally the benefits are money and for a few selected grad students and occasionally a few undergrads a chance to work on and get associated credit for the research. One of the things I found interesting at Princeton was the separation between undergrad/graduate schools and the requirement for almost all undergraduate professors to actually teach a majority of their time. In many schools, undergrads have almost no chance of seeing let alone taking courses from the 'star' faculty.

 

[Icebear]

Whatever the various ratings the US News and Business Report rating is one most Americans are familiar with. UCONN's steady rise and position can only help in the process of perceived value among recruits.

 

[UcMiami]

Whatever the various ratings the US News and Business Report rating is one most Americans are familiar with. UCONN's steady rise and position can only help in the process of perceived value among recruits.

And conferences like the Big10 and ACC when evaluating any additions.