How can everyone be #1?
Among the latest articles chronicling the end of the financial world as we know it, there was an article detailing some of the difficulties now faced by state universities in the U.S.
It’s pretty much run of the mill for this kind of story, and we’ll be hearing more about it again, I am quite sure. What I do think bears more discussion is the content of the following passage.
Mr. Crow’s record for improving quality is impressive, too. He has hired more than 600 tenured or tenure-track faculty members, and last year, for the first time, won a spot on the National Science Foundation’s list of the top 20 research universities without a medical school, along with powerhouses like M.I.T. and the University of California, Berkeley.
But not every university can be in the top 20. And in a time of shrinking state budgets, undergraduates at public universities will most likely pay the price in higher tuition, larger classes and less interaction with tenured professors. So it is a real question how many public research universities the nation can afford, and what share of resources should go to less expensive forms of education, like community colleges.
The first point to make is that as the article mentions later on, being a cutting-edge research university is not the same thing as being an excellent teaching school for undergraduate students. Most of us know that just because you’re a genius who understands all the ins-and-outs of a particular subject does not make you the best teacher of that subject.
Mr. Crow’s objective of creating an institution which excels both in research and teaching is a fine one and those objectives do not necessarily conflict with each other. Those objectives are not, however, the same. More importantly, in an environment with limited resources, directing resources toward one objective means less resources available for the other objective.
While it may be unpalatable, universities and policy makers should acknowledge that these different objectives are coupled through choice, not because they are inseparable.
Which brings me onto my second point: not everyone can be number one.
In fact, the idea that every state can have a leading research university is simply a non-starter. As the article points out, simple arithmetic dictates that to be a “leading” research university in such a scenario means being in something like the top 20 such institutions. But if every state had such ambitions, then the majority will be bitterly disappointed. And all the states are likely to spend increasing amounts of money chasing their ambitions, most for little to no reward.
This observation extends to teaching as well. With hundreds (I think) of tertiary teaching institutions in this country, only 20 schools can be in the “top 20″ for anything, including teaching. Rankings are only a useful metric in so far as they tell us something about the difference in quality.
First, they should tell us that there is an ordinal difference in quality. That is, there should be a measurable superiority in quality in the school ranked number one versus the second ranked school. As many, many people opine, this is rarely the case, with most rankings being criticised on this very point.
Second, rankings imply a certain degree of cardinality in the difference in quality. For example, as a student, you would much prefer going to a top 20 school than the one ranked 100th, and there is much more prestige associated with the top 20 than the top 100. But a top 20 school may not be significantly better than a top 100 school.
Ultimately, it is probably more important that a school achieve a certain threshold of excellence rather than worry about how it compares in ranking. In a cash-strapped environment, this is especially important since the additional resources necessary to improve in rankings will likely experience severe diminishing of returns.
All things the taxpayers, if not the policians, will care about in the current environment.
