A Columbia University math professor took his red pen to the numbers that vaulted his school to a second-place ranking on the U.S. News and World Report list of best colleges — and argues the digits don’t add up.
In a lengthy article posted last week, Columbia math professor Michael Thaddeus sifted through data the university provided to U.S. News for its annual rankings and concluded “several of the key figures supporting Columbia’s high ranking are inaccurate, dubious, or highly misleading.”
Columbia University Math Professor Michael Thaddeus
Columbia University Math Professor Michael Thaddeus (Obtained by Daily News)
Thaddeus found “discrepancies, sometimes quite large, and always in Columbia’s favor,” between figures Columbia supplied for ranking purposes and data the university has posted elsewhere.
A former Rhodes Scholar who’s taught at Columbia for more than two decades, Thaddeus said he’s trying to help the university he loves.
. “I do actually have the best interests of the institution at heart, even though it might not seem that way,” he explained. “The way I look at it is it’s only fair to hold Columbia’s administration to the same standards of integrity as we hold our students to.”
Columbia spokesman Scott Schell said the university “stand[s] by the data we provided to U.S. News and World Report.”
“We take seriously our responsibility to accurately report information to federal and state entities, as well as to private rankings organizations. Our survey responses follow the different definitions and instructions of each specific survey,” he added.
U.S. News’s rankings are based on a complex formula that includes class sizes, financial resources, graduation rates, social mobility, a “peer assessment survey,” and other metrics.
Thaddeus said he was inspired to take a closer look when Columbia landed a coveted second-place spot last fall — tied with Harvard and MIT and trailing only Princeton.
The first data point that caught Thaddeus’s attention was Columbia’s claim that 82.5% of its undergraduate courses enrolled fewer than 20 students — a higher percentage than any of the other schools in the U.S. News top 100.
“That just instantly triggered by bulls**t detector, because that just doesn’t conform to my experience at all,” Thaddeus said.
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When Thaddeus scoured the university’s Directory of Classes, an online catalogue of all the college’s courses that includes enrollment numbers, he found that only between 63% and 67% of classes reported fewer than 20 students.
“We can be quite confident” the true percentage is “nowhere near the figure of 82.5% claimed by Columbia,” Thaddeus wrote.
University officials countered that enrollment numbers from the Class Directory aren’t certified by the registrar and may deviate from the official count.
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Thaddeus was also suspicious of the eye-popping $3.1 billion the university claimed to spend on “instruction” during the 2019-20 school year — another metric in the U.S. News rankings. “This is a truly colossal amount of money,” he wrote. “It is larger than the corresponding figures for Harvard, Yale, and Princeton combined.”
Combing through the university’s financial records, Thaddeus concluded that Columbia’s $3.1 billion number must have also included the cost of providing patient care in the university’s hospitals — an expense he argues would be a stretch to classify as “instructional.”
Other universities, including NYU, explicitly left the cost of patient care out of the sum they reported spending on instruction, Thaddeus added.
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Columbia officials didn’t explain how they arrived at the $3.1 billion figure.
University administration pushed back on other parts of Thaddeus’s analysis, including his suggestion that Columbia misrepresented its percentage of full-time faculty and faculty with the “terminal degree in their field” — arguing in both cases that Thaddeus misunderstood the data submission requirements from U.S. News.
Columbia instead says the university’s climb up the rankings was propelled by U.S. News’s recent shift to give more weight to the graduation rates of low-income students, an area in which Columbia representatives said the school performs well.
Thaddeus says U.S. News also bears some responsibility for the data discrepancies.
“If the institution in second place is shown to have inaccuracies, that really sheds some doubt on the value of the entire rankings,” Thaddeus said, adding that the magazine “should be vetting the tops schools very thoroughly.”
U.S. News chief data strategist Robert Morse said “we rely on schools to accurately report their data and ask academic officials to verify that data.”
Thaddeus hopes his critique can spur broader debate about the value of a ranking system that “gives this false sense of simplicity and clarity” to the complex, often subjective question of what makes a good college.
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“My administration is more focused on perception than reality,” he said. “And this is a away to steer their attention back to reality.”
A Columbia University math professor took his red pen to the numbers that vaulted his school to a second-place ranking on the U.S. News and World Report list of best colleges — and argues the digits don’t add up.
In a lengthy article posted last week, Columbia math professor Michael Thaddeus sifted through data the university provided to U.S. News for its annual rankings and concluded “several of the key figures supporting Columbia’s high ranking are inaccurate, dubious, or highly misleading.”
Columbia University Math Professor Michael Thaddeus
Columbia University Math Professor Michael Thaddeus (Obtained by Daily News)
Thaddeus found “discrepancies, sometimes quite large, and always in Columbia’s favor,” between figures Columbia supplied for ranking purposes and data the university has posted elsewhere.
A former Rhodes Scholar who’s taught at Columbia for more than two decades, Thaddeus said he’s trying to help the university he loves.
. “I do actually have the best interests of the institution at heart, even though it might not seem that way,” he explained. “The way I look at it is it’s only fair to hold Columbia’s administration to the same standards of integrity as we hold our students to.”
Columbia spokesman Scott Schell said the university “stand[s] by the data we provided to U.S. News and World Report.”
“We take seriously our responsibility to accurately report information to federal and state entities, as well as to private rankings organizations. Our survey responses follow the different definitions and instructions of each specific survey,” he added.
U.S. News’s rankings are based on a complex formula that includes class sizes, financial resources, graduation rates, social mobility, a “peer assessment survey,” and other metrics.
Thaddeus said he was inspired to take a closer look when Columbia landed a coveted second-place spot last fall — tied with Harvard and MIT and trailing only Princeton.
The first data point that caught Thaddeus’s attention was Columbia’s claim that 82.5% of its undergraduate courses enrolled fewer than 20 students — a higher percentage than any of the other schools in the U.S. News top 100.
“That just instantly triggered by bulls**t detector, because that just doesn’t conform to my experience at all,” Thaddeus said.
[More Education] No more masks in school for NYC kids over 5 starting Monday »
When Thaddeus scoured the university’s Directory of Classes, an online catalogue of all the college’s courses that includes enrollment numbers, he found that only between 63% and 67% of classes reported fewer than 20 students.
“We can be quite confident” the true percentage is “nowhere near the figure of 82.5% claimed by Columbia,” Thaddeus wrote.
University officials countered that enrollment numbers from the Class Directory aren’t certified by the registrar and may deviate from the official count.
[More Education] NYC kids under 5 will still have to wear masks in school when mandate lifts »
Thaddeus was also suspicious of the eye-popping $3.1 billion the university claimed to spend on “instruction” during the 2019-20 school year — another metric in the U.S. News rankings. “This is a truly colossal amount of money,” he wrote. “It is larger than the corresponding figures for Harvard, Yale, and Princeton combined.”
Combing through the university’s financial records, Thaddeus concluded that Columbia’s $3.1 billion number must have also included the cost of providing patient care in the university’s hospitals — an expense he argues would be a stretch to classify as “instructional.”
Other universities, including NYU, explicitly left the cost of patient care out of the sum they reported spending on instruction, Thaddeus added.
[More Education] Plan to transfer NYC school safety agents from the NYPD to the Education Dept. is reversed »
Columbia officials didn’t explain how they arrived at the $3.1 billion figure.
University administration pushed back on other parts of Thaddeus’s analysis, including his suggestion that Columbia misrepresented its percentage of full-time faculty and faculty with the “terminal degree in their field” — arguing in both cases that Thaddeus misunderstood the data submission requirements from U.S. News.
Columbia instead says the university’s climb up the rankings was propelled by U.S. News’s recent shift to give more weight to the graduation rates of low-income students, an area in which Columbia representatives said the school performs well.
Thaddeus says U.S. News also bears some responsibility for the data discrepancies.
“If the institution in second place is shown to have inaccuracies, that really sheds some doubt on the value of the entire rankings,” Thaddeus said, adding that the magazine “should be vetting the tops schools very thoroughly.”
U.S. News chief data strategist Robert Morse said “we rely on schools to accurately report their data and ask academic officials to verify that data.”
Thaddeus hopes his critique can spur broader debate about the value of a ranking system that “gives this false sense of simplicity and clarity” to the complex, often subjective question of what makes a good college.
[More Education] Amazon to subsidize tuition for hourly workers who get accepted at eight CUNY schools »
“My administration is more focused on perception than reality,” he said. “And this is a away to steer their attention back to reality.”
不知道哪家没做假
放弃H去S,放弃S去H,放弃M去P,放弃P去M,放弃P选Y,放弃Y选P,都大有人在。
经常父母进了一个学校录取群，到了选择的日期就和大家告别了。
http://www.math.columbia.edu/~thaddeus/ranking/investigation.html
哥大有两大特点：纽约， core
out of date
英国，欧州大学没core，人文修养素质不比美国差？
这种所谓人文教育在100年前高校甚至高中都不普及的情况下还有意义，现在就是画蛇添足。其实很多就是给文科教授找点儿事做。还美其名曰素质教育。
Core 也会让学生前两年比较少专业课，某种程度影响第一年实习。
很多core 的也不是大牌教授，研究生罢工经常影响教学。
但个人还是认为core 是应该每个学生都应该学的，对品格塑造素质提升有很好的作用
我喜欢core。如果学校不提供core，我会鼓励娃辅修一个人文的major。
相比其他大学，四年毕业加上core压力大。双major就更难。很可惜的实际情况。
cc / Y : 物理, 非常优秀
cc / P: 政经，也是很有前途, 可能离P太近太久就不来了
都是纽约新泽西的孩子
英国高教强调深度强于广度，牛剑也不例外，网上论坛（如quora）很多讨论。如果牛剑人文课教得深，只能说明美国高校人文教育投入多，效果差，是失败的教育。
我本来觉得我喜欢core，但是core确实不适合所有的娃。有些娃就想在自己职业的领域学的更深，
至于喜欢人文的娃，如果是真爱，自然会修人文的课程。娃本来就想辅修一个人文major，有没有core的要求不重要。
谁会真的喜欢core呢？我能想到的就是，家长觉得core重要，娃不感兴趣。core满足了家长对教育的期待。
理论上，core 是一个好东西。但是到了这个年纪，自由选择的权立更重要。
当初娃在两个大学之间犹豫的时候，娃的老师给他做了一个表，详细比较了课程，教授，生源，职业走向。。所有这些都是我完全没有考虑过的。
Engineering School对Core的要求本来就少。而且实际执行中还放水。
我知道有拒Y去哥大的，也有据拒哥大去 Penn的（非Wharton)
Has been designated a likely Egleston scholar program
which one?
后来在P, 感觉应该有的都有，没有损失什么。
如果自己外面没有实习，P学校也会提过各种留校的研究实习机会，也有stipend 和宿舍
不是所有人都会上，所以都是好的教授，小班
哥大人人都要上，老师没有这么多，程度会不一样
修文科。之大和哥大的core对多数Stem学生来说难就难在文科