September 2010
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SUNY Buffalo Update: Contested Interim President Withdraws
Brian reported some serious static at SUNY Buffalo (aka, University at Buffalo). After the resignation of the university's president, the UB Council Chair announced the appointment of the Scott Nostaja, the university's Senior VP and COO, as Interim President. But there were at least two problems with this move, from the point of view of the Buffalo…
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National Association Representing Computer Scientists Denounces NRC Rankings
Here. I do not recall any national association of scholars reacting this way to prior NRC reports (though, of course, prior ones were straightforward surveys of experts evaluating faculty and program quality). Here's an excerpt from the CRA statement: CRA has serious concerns about the accuracy and consistency of the data being used in the…
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In fairness to racists
They aren't all in the Tea Party and they don't all use e-mail.
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A Devastating Analysis of the NRC Ratings from a Leading Statistician
Here. I added this as an update to the main post on the NRC rankings, but it deserves special notice. Charlotte Kuh and Jeremiah Ostriker, who bear primary responsibility for this fiasco, really have good reason to be embarrassed.
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More NRC Reactions
Epistemologists are not impressed! Brad DeLong, an economist at Berkeley, makes what I suspect will become a typical mistake in interpreting the results. According to the NRC, there is a 90% chance that the "true rank" of Berkeley Economics is between 4 and 8. Every school in the nation is "among the nation's best" according to…
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Annette Gordon-Reed Wins MacArthur Fellowship
Annette Gordon-Reed, a law and history professor at Harvard, was named a MacArthur Fellow yesterday. Gordon-Reed won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize in history for her book, “The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family." Gordon-Reed only recently joined the Harvard faculty, moving from New York Law School.
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A Quick Guide to the New National Research Council (NRC) Rankings
UPDATE: Given the large number of (largely new) visitors coming to this post, and the various updates I am adding to it, I will leave it at the top for a few days. Regular readers are encouraged to scroll down for new postings. Thanks ========================= The NRC ranking of doctoral programs for 2005-06 is finally…
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National Research Council Report on PhD Programs Circa 2005-06…
…is finally out. I explain what's going on at the philosophy blog, for those who might be interested. As IHE is reporting, even the authors of the study, which is both badly dated and very hard to interpret, don't want to defend the results!
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Congratulations to Boston University!
The first school to officially violate the NRC embargo on the rankings! (8:25 am CST.)
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UT Austin Readers: Stay Off Campus! (9:30 am CST)
A gunman has killed himself in the PCL (the main campus library), but police are still searching for a possible second gunman at this time. UT's emergency site with current information.
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The NRC Rankings Aren’t Officially Released Until This Afternoon…
…but already serious mistakes are being alleged in the data collection and processing. "Garbage in, garbage out," as the first link puts it. (I should add that inaccurate data appears to be the least of the problems.)
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Harvard and Marty Peretz Redux
Robert Paul Wolff has the details of the event. Kudos to Professor Wolff for doing the right thing!
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SUNY Binghamton Law Coming – But Not Soon
The optimistic folks at Binghamton University are predicting a new law school in SUNY's future. At a Binghamton University Council meeting last week, Interim Provost Jean-Pierre Mileur announced that – pending approval – the University intends to open a law school somewhere between the fall of 2015-16 and the fall of 2017-18. This will give…
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The National Research Council Will Release Its Rankings of Graduate Programs for 2005-06 Tomorrow
I'll have more to say then, but now seems a good time to bring forward Ned Block's earlier comments about the methodology and its peculiarities: I am not criticizing using polling to derive rankings. That is what the PGR does and I (like a lot of other people) think the PGR ratings, despite flaws, are…
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A History of Canadian Law Schools
I've been blogging recently about deanship issues at the University of Windsor law school. For those of you who want to catch up on a little Canadian law school history, the Lawyer's Weekly has a concise (and assuredly incomplete) account here.
I respond to this report here https://jasonstanleyantifascist.substack.com/p/on-the-philosophical-muddle-that