Although Ohio University is consistently behind the pack in US News & World Report's annual America's Best Colleges issue, a new study by an OU professor paints a rosier outlook.
Using a new model for measuring student outcomes, OU leaps forward from a humble 112 on US News & World's 2008 rankings to a more respectable No. 55.
Richard Vedder, an economics professor, developed a ranking model that ' although not flawless ' measures real world success after graduation. Vedder, aided by a group of undergraduate students working part-time, published the results with The Center for College Affordability & Productivity.
Like many who criticize popular rankings for stressing inputs such as financial resources, Vedder believes the strength of a university should be measured by the success of its graduates.
Searching an unbiased sample of 5,207 entries from Who's Who in America ' a directory containing blurbs on successful people, including Vedder himself ' for alma mater and crossing that with the list compiled by US News & World casts some doubt on conventional wisdom, Vedder said.
It is true
looking at raw data that Harvard Yale and Princeton ' 1
2 and 3 on US News & World's rankings respectively ' are also rated high in this ranking
Vedder said. It's also true that you have schools that do quite well and have a lot of famous people that don't perform so well on US News and World.
One such school happens to be OU, ranked 55 out of the 57 schools with 15 or more entries in the Who's Who in America sample, according to the raw numbers.
The raw data does not account for enrollment size or measure the probability of landing in Who's Who in America, Vedder said. Taking enrollment into consideration and filtering out private schools, OU is ranked No. 15.
That's as high as you'll ever see OU in any ranking
Vedder said.
Vedder conceded that the sampling is not foolproof and that using Who's Who in America to gauge real-world achievement invites chiding from those who find it an unsuitable measurement of success. It is, however, an attempt to understand what is overlooked by popular rankings that award wealth and stellar ACT scores ' the value-added component of college experience.
What makes a college good is what it does with the resources
and not the amount of resources it has
Vedder said. Do you have people leaving who are better off in some way ' in terms of knowledge
critical thinking
knowing the difference between right and wrong
interpersonal communication ' than when they came in?
In an article to be published in the Journal for Marketing in Higher Education, Joe Brennan, former executive director of University Communications and Marketing, argued that the US News & World ranking is a self-perpetuating system based on narrow dimensions that fails in its fundamental purpose of differentiating among schools.
It's a little bit like that show Whose Line is it Anyway? where the rules are made up and the points don't matter anyway
