relationship between department rank and college rank in engineering graduate program rankings conducted by U.S. News and World Report, The

Journal of Engineering Education, Jan 2003 by Vojak, Bruce A, Price, Raymond L, Carnahan, James V

V. CONCLUSION

This study provides statistical insight into the collective perceptions of the engineering academic community nationally regarding the relationships between college and departmental rankings. The top-five analysis demonstrated that there are statistically significant discrepancies between college rankings and department rankings for engineering graduate program rankings conducted by U.S. News and World Report. The transition probability analysis demonstrated that college rank is more closely related to department rank for some disciplines than others, providing additional resolution beyond our earlier work. Moving beyond the findings, the important issue to understand is the manner in which decisions are made based on these perceptions. Hopefully, these analyses will challenge us to continue asking what makes a great engineering college.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

The authors wish to acknowledge the assistance of Fernando Diaz in the collection and analysis of data for this study.

REFERENCES

[1] Casper, G. 1996. Letter to James Fallows. , accessed October 16, 2002.

[2] Director, S. 2001. University rankings and the resulting implications on engineering schools in the areas of student and faculty recruitment, research dollars, and tuition costs. Conference on Industry and Education Collaboration. American Society for Engineering Education.

[3] Duffy, B., and P. Cary. 1999. Dissension in the rankings: US News responds to Slate's `Best colleges' story. Slate. , accessed October 16,2002.

[4] Golden, D. 2001. Opening arguments: As law school begins, it's Columbia vs. NYU. The Wall Streetjournal, p. Al (August 8, 2001).

[5] Gottlieb, B. 1999. Cooking the school books: How US News cheats in picking its best American colleges. Slate. , accessed October 16,2002.

[6] Holder, G. 2001. Rankings we could live with. Prism. American Society for Engineering Education. 11(1): 76.

[7] Klein, S., and L. Hamilton. 1998. The validity of the U.S. News and World Report ranking of ABA law schools. , accessed October 16, 2002.

[8] McDonough, P., et al. 1997. College rankings: Who uses them and with what impact. Annual Meeting. American Educational Research Association.

[9] Montgomery, D., and G. Runger. 1999. Applied Statistics and Probability for Engineers. 2nd ed. New York, New York: John Wiley&Sons.

[10] Rogers, E., and S. Rogers. 1997. `High science' vs. Just selling magazines'? Bulletin. American Association for Higher Education.

[11] Sanoff, A. 1995. Letter to the editor. The Wall Street Journal p. A15 (April 27,1995).

[12] Smith, C. 2001. News you can abuse. University of Chicago Magazine. 94(1):18-25.

[13] Stecklow, S. 1995. Cheat sheets: Colleges inflate SATs and graduation rates in popular guidebooks. The Wall Street, journal, p. Al (April 5,1995).

[14] Stecklow, S. 1995. Education: Universities face trouble for enhancing guide data. The Wall Street, journal, p. Bi (October 12,1995).

[15] US. News and World Reports Best Graduate Schools, 2003 Edition. Engineering rankings methodology.