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The Relative Contribution of Department Ranking to College Ranking in Engineering Graduate Program Rankings Conducted by U.S. News and World Report

Bruce A. Vojak, James V. Carnahan, and Raymond L. Price

Department of General Engineering University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Abstract

College rankings conducted by various popular magazines have generated both considerable interest and controversy, with concerns focused both on the formulas used by the magazines and the data supplied by the ranked schools. The present work seeks to circumvent the confounding nature of these issues by (1) considering only “reputation” rankings by academics and (2) using the discrepancy between college rankings and departmental rankings to provide insight into how the rankings of various departments contribute to the rank of the college they comprise. In this work, we present an analysis of 12 years of U.S. News and World Report graduate school “reputation” rankings for engineering colleges and departments, using it to reveal the relative perceived contributions of various disciplines to college rank.

Background

College rankings conducted by various popular magazines have generated both considerable interest and controversy over the past decade. However, while certain groups of prospective students increasingly rely on such rankings 1, a number of academics openly question their validity. Many express concern with the magazines’ choices of measures and quantitative formulas used to obtain the “overall” rank for a college 2-7, as well as with their peer’s choices of data supplied to the magazine conducting the ranking 8-11.

In the specific case of the U.S. News and World Report rankings of engineering colleges, the “overall” rank for a college currently is calculated by using a weighted quantitative formula 12-14 that incorporates the following measures12:

· Reputation (40%) – measured by separate surveys of both academics and corporate recruiters · Student selectivity (10%) – measured by GRE quantitative and analytic scores, as well as by the proportion of applicants accepted

Proceedings of the 2002 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright ã 2002, American Society for Engineering Education

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Carnahan, J., & Vojak, B., & Price, R. (2002, June), The Relative Contribution Of Department Ranking To College Ranking In Engineering Graduate Program Rankings Conducted By U.S. News And World Report Paper presented at 2002 Annual Conference, Montreal, Canada. 10.18260/1-2--10055