http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/newsrel/general/09-09CollegeRankings.asp
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2009_09/019738.php
The comments that various visitors left on the second link are quite “interesting” to say the least. I think anyone that subscribes to John Henry Newman’s The Idea of a University http://www.newmanreader.org/works/idea/ would agree that popular rankings such as U.S. News are offensive and don’t take into account the effectiveness of the institution in terms of intellectual and cultural enrichment. I do not mean to say that Washington Post’s rankings are superior in every way, however I do appreciate their alternative approach. As a former U.S. Marine and a student of a field that attempts to merge right and left brain thinkers, I wholeheartedly agree with one of the reader’s comments below:
So not allowing the ROTC on campus makes you a bad public citizen? Maybe those campuses don’t believe in encouraging military recruitment (especially during a period of wasteful, unjust war)? IIR, public universities allow ROTC because they have no choice, whereas privates like Harvard can afford to deny them.
Also, I don’t like the idea that a university’s public worth is measured by how many Ph.Ds and scientists it creates — first, it discounts the amount of good that liberal arts majors do, even if they only earn a B.A. or an M.A., and encourages an even greater shift of scarce resources from the humanities to the sciences. Why must Washington Monthly participate in the devaluing of right-brain thinkers? We already suffer enough on the income scale.
