sutton092

Here are the top universities in selected categories in the latest Best Colleges Ranking from Princeton Review. The rankings are based entirely on survey data and are obviously subjective and vulnerable to sampling error. Most conservative students: University of Dallas, Texas Most liberal students: Reed College, Oregon Best campus food: University of Massachusetts Amherst Happiest students: Vanderbilt University, Tennessee Party schools: Tulane University, Louisiana Don't inhale: US Coast Guard Academy, Connecticut Best college library: University of Chicago, Illinois Best-run college: University of Richmond, Virginia Most studious students: Harvey Mudd College, California Most religious students: Thomas Aquinas College, California Least religious students:  Reed College, Oregon Best athletic facilities: Auburn University, Alabama.

The Princeton Review has just published the results of its annual survey of 382 US colleges with 62 lists of various kinds. I'll publish a few of the highlights later but for the moment here is one which should make everyone happy. "Don't inhale" refers to nor using marijuana. Four of the top five places are held by service academies (Coast Guard, Naval, Army, Air Force). The academies also get high scores in the stone cold sober rankings (opposite of party schools) so everyone can feel a bit safer when they sleep tonight.

Global university rankings are now nearly a decade and a half old. The Shanghai rankings (Academic Ranking of World Universities or ARWU) began in 2003, followed a year later by Webometrics and the THES-QS rankings which, after an unpleasant divorce, became the  Times Higher Education  (THE) and the Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) world rankings. Since then the number of rankings with a variety of audiences and methodologies has expanded. We now have several research-based rankings,  University Ranking by Academic Performance  (URAP) from Turkey, the  National Taiwan University Rankings , Best Global Universities from US News ,  Leiden Ranking , as well as rankings that include some attempt to assess and compare something other than research, the  Round University Rankings  from Russia and  U-Multirank  from the European Union. And, of course, we also have  subject rankings ,  regional rankings , even  age group rankings . It i...

It seems that university rankings can be used to prove almost anything that journalists want to prove. Ever since the Brexit referendum experts and pundits of various kinds have been muttering about the dread disease that is undermining or about to undermine the research prowess of British universities. The malignity of Brexit is so great that it can send its evil rays back from the future. Last year, as several British universities tumbled down the Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) world rankings, the Independent claimed that “[p]ost-Brexit uncertainty and long-term funding issues have seen storm clouds gather over UK higher education in this year’s QS World University Rankings”. It is difficult to figure out how anxiety about a vote that took place on June 24th 2016 could affect a ranking based on institutional data for 2014 and bibliometric data from the previous five years. It is just about possible that some academics or employers might have woken up on June 24th to see that their intel...