MSNBC
10/3
OSU's quest for No. 1
Not just OSU sports find top rankings can carry clout
By Jeff Bell
Business First of Columbus
Updated: 8:00 p.m. ET Oct. 2, 2005
Like Ohio State University football coach Jim Tressel, Chris Zirkle knows what it feels like to be ranked No. 1 in the nation.
An assistant professor in the College of Education, Zirkle heads a vocational education section that is consistently ranked first in U.S. News & World Report's annual ratings of graduate schools.
That may not resonate in Buckeye Nation like Ohio State's 2002 football championship, but Zirkle said it's still a nice position to be in on a campus where rankings by college guides are taken seriously.
OSU President Karen Holbrook and other administrators tend to crow at public meetings and in media releases when the university climbs a notch or two in national rankings. OSU Medical Center touts its U.S. News & World Report rankings on billboards and in other advertising, and many academic units of the university, including the Fisher College of Business, pay close to attention to rankings.
Zirkle's program is the only one at OSU with a top rating from U.S. News, the kingpin of college guides, but he's not so sure the lofty ranking earns him any extra perks.
"Obviously, the university and college like our program, and that it's ranked No. 1," he said. "I don't want for things or go without things, but if I ask for new office furniture and think I'll get it because we're No. 1 - probably not."
Allocating money
Critics of rankings say the groupings should have no place in how schools allocate resources. But academic leaders counter that the rankings can't be ignored because prospective students, their parents, donors and even faculty they are recruiting from other colleges pay attention to them.
"That's part of the world we live in," said Barbara Snyder, OSU's provost and a professor in the Moritz College of Law.
Snyder said rankings come into play - indirectly, at least - with other factors when OSU evaluates where some of its resources should be targeted. Among the leading considerations are the quality of teaching and how productive faculty are in conducting research and landing grants.
"We do celebrate a good ranking," Snyder said, "but we would never use rankings as a proxy for quality - not ever."
Joseph Alutto, dean of the business college, views rankings as a necessary evil in university life. He also thinks OSU doesn't go overboard in promoting them.
"I think the general sense of the university," he said, "is let's do what's right to improve the quality of education and the rankings will flow from that."
Under OSU's funding system, a college's ability to generate its own revenue and control its costs determines what resources are made available, Alutto said. A college's revenue comes from tuition paid by students in its courses and from grants and fundraising. Rankings can help by garnering attention from prospective students and donors.
"Rankings get translated to students," Alutto said. "Students generate more tuition dollars, and colleges can use that money to do more for faculty."
Preying on anxieties
Snyder said the university has probably increased the attention it gives to rankings over the past five years because they reflect some of the strides OSU has made on the academic front.
Many professors are offended that rankings by college guides ripple into academic decisions, said Peter Van Buskirk, a former dean of admissions at Franklin & Marshall College in Pennsylvania.
"It does influence their access to resources and so on," said Van Buskirk, now a vice president with Thomson Peterson's, a New Jersey company that publishes college guides but does not do rankings.
"(Rankings) are an invention of the media," he said, "that play upon the anxiety of a population eager to see its students get into the 'right' school or, better yet, the 'best' school. The myth is (that) there is a No. 1 (college). In my opinion, that doesn't exist."
Van Buskirk said college administrators tend to downplay the importance of rankings in public discussions while working behind the scenes to boost their scores.
"They're devoted to doing whatever it takes to tweak the numbers," he said.
For example, Van Buskirk said admissions directors are pressured to boost the number of students applying and to lower the percentage accepted. That makes them look more selective, he said, which is part of a typical college guide ranking formula.
Attracting students
OSU's Zirkle is not an admissions expert, but he said he has a good sense of what it takes for a program to be ranked highly by U.S. News & World Report. In the case of Ohio State's vocational education program, he said, the keys are the number and quality of graduate programs it offers, its ability to attract international students and its reputation among peers at other universities.
That reputation is boosted, he said, by the fact that OSU is the home base for two leading national vocational education centers - the National Center for Dissemination of Career and Technical Education and Center on Education for Training for Employment.
The program's No. 1 ranking by U.S. News helps it attract top students nationally and internationally, Zirkle said. That is important, he said, but faculty members in the College of Education aren't obsessed with rankings.
"We only discuss them when they come out," he said. "We congratulate ourselves and pay attention if we pass people and to who is moving up in the rankings."
Snyder, who has been at Ohio State for 17 years, thinks that is the common view in the university's faculty ranks.
"I don't think our faculty are sitting around and saying, 'How about those U.S. News ratings,' " she said. "But we certainly are asking our people to think about the academic state of the university and how each college rolls into that."
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/9575671/
10/3
OSU's quest for No. 1
Not just OSU sports find top rankings can carry clout
By Jeff Bell
Business First of Columbus
Updated: 8:00 p.m. ET Oct. 2, 2005
Like Ohio State University football coach Jim Tressel, Chris Zirkle knows what it feels like to be ranked No. 1 in the nation.
An assistant professor in the College of Education, Zirkle heads a vocational education section that is consistently ranked first in U.S. News & World Report's annual ratings of graduate schools.
That may not resonate in Buckeye Nation like Ohio State's 2002 football championship, but Zirkle said it's still a nice position to be in on a campus where rankings by college guides are taken seriously.
OSU President Karen Holbrook and other administrators tend to crow at public meetings and in media releases when the university climbs a notch or two in national rankings. OSU Medical Center touts its U.S. News & World Report rankings on billboards and in other advertising, and many academic units of the university, including the Fisher College of Business, pay close to attention to rankings.
Zirkle's program is the only one at OSU with a top rating from U.S. News, the kingpin of college guides, but he's not so sure the lofty ranking earns him any extra perks.
"Obviously, the university and college like our program, and that it's ranked No. 1," he said. "I don't want for things or go without things, but if I ask for new office furniture and think I'll get it because we're No. 1 - probably not."
Allocating money
Critics of rankings say the groupings should have no place in how schools allocate resources. But academic leaders counter that the rankings can't be ignored because prospective students, their parents, donors and even faculty they are recruiting from other colleges pay attention to them.
"That's part of the world we live in," said Barbara Snyder, OSU's provost and a professor in the Moritz College of Law.
Snyder said rankings come into play - indirectly, at least - with other factors when OSU evaluates where some of its resources should be targeted. Among the leading considerations are the quality of teaching and how productive faculty are in conducting research and landing grants.
"We do celebrate a good ranking," Snyder said, "but we would never use rankings as a proxy for quality - not ever."
Joseph Alutto, dean of the business college, views rankings as a necessary evil in university life. He also thinks OSU doesn't go overboard in promoting them.
"I think the general sense of the university," he said, "is let's do what's right to improve the quality of education and the rankings will flow from that."
Under OSU's funding system, a college's ability to generate its own revenue and control its costs determines what resources are made available, Alutto said. A college's revenue comes from tuition paid by students in its courses and from grants and fundraising. Rankings can help by garnering attention from prospective students and donors.
"Rankings get translated to students," Alutto said. "Students generate more tuition dollars, and colleges can use that money to do more for faculty."
Preying on anxieties
Snyder said the university has probably increased the attention it gives to rankings over the past five years because they reflect some of the strides OSU has made on the academic front.
Many professors are offended that rankings by college guides ripple into academic decisions, said Peter Van Buskirk, a former dean of admissions at Franklin & Marshall College in Pennsylvania.
"It does influence their access to resources and so on," said Van Buskirk, now a vice president with Thomson Peterson's, a New Jersey company that publishes college guides but does not do rankings.
"(Rankings) are an invention of the media," he said, "that play upon the anxiety of a population eager to see its students get into the 'right' school or, better yet, the 'best' school. The myth is (that) there is a No. 1 (college). In my opinion, that doesn't exist."
Van Buskirk said college administrators tend to downplay the importance of rankings in public discussions while working behind the scenes to boost their scores.
"They're devoted to doing whatever it takes to tweak the numbers," he said.
For example, Van Buskirk said admissions directors are pressured to boost the number of students applying and to lower the percentage accepted. That makes them look more selective, he said, which is part of a typical college guide ranking formula.
Attracting students
OSU's Zirkle is not an admissions expert, but he said he has a good sense of what it takes for a program to be ranked highly by U.S. News & World Report. In the case of Ohio State's vocational education program, he said, the keys are the number and quality of graduate programs it offers, its ability to attract international students and its reputation among peers at other universities.
That reputation is boosted, he said, by the fact that OSU is the home base for two leading national vocational education centers - the National Center for Dissemination of Career and Technical Education and Center on Education for Training for Employment.
The program's No. 1 ranking by U.S. News helps it attract top students nationally and internationally, Zirkle said. That is important, he said, but faculty members in the College of Education aren't obsessed with rankings.
"We only discuss them when they come out," he said. "We congratulate ourselves and pay attention if we pass people and to who is moving up in the rankings."
Snyder, who has been at Ohio State for 17 years, thinks that is the common view in the university's faculty ranks.
"I don't think our faculty are sitting around and saying, 'How about those U.S. News ratings,' " she said. "But we certainly are asking our people to think about the academic state of the university and how each college rolls into that."
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/9575671/
