Gorno announced his withdrawal from the American university rankings!Squeezed in the second in the United States by accused of being fraudulent

Author:Scientific network Time:2022.07.03

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Does the ranking reflect the reality? Unfortunately, the answer is negative.

As one of the Ivy League, Columbia University is also among the oldest universities in the United States.

In the 2022 U.S. News American university rankings, Goshan University is tied with Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 2022 Thames Higher Education World University Rankings, Gauda ranked eleventh.

This famous school attracts a large number of outstanding students every year. However, it has recently fell into the storm of "ranking data fraud".

On Thursday night local time, Columbia University announced that it will no longer participate in the next round of the US News ’s best university rankings of the year. The reason is that an internal survey is being conducted in the school, which is related to the professor of the professor earlier this year.

Professor of mathematics question

In February of this year, Michael Thaddeus, a professor of mathematics at the University of Columbia, published a long article on the results of the second place in Columbia University's Best National University Rankings in 2022.

Like other faculty and staff of Columbia University, I am very interested in Columbia University in the ranking of the University of US News. It is gratifying that the 18th place in Colombia from 1988 to the 18th place steadily rose to the second place this year. It is currently second only to Princeton University and tied with Harvard and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

But at the same time, THADDEUS began to think: "Can we determine that these data accurately reflect the reality of college life? Unfortunately, the answer is no. As we will see, the key data that supports the high ranking of Columbia University is not the high ranking of Columbia University. Accurate, suspicious or highly misleading. "

At that time, a spokesman for Columbia university insisted that the data submitted was no problem. However, on Thursday night, Columbia University officially issued a notice.

The dean Mary Boyce said that after the published by Michael Thaddeus, Columbia University has "immediately started the process of review and submission of data collection and submission."

"The ongoing assessment is about integrity, and we will not take shortcuts." Boyce said.

Why can Brother University rank second?

The ranking of U.S. News is based on a complex formula, including class scale, financial resources, graduation rate, social liquidity, a peer evaluation survey and other indicators.

Thaddeus accused Columbia University exaggerated the proportion of classes and teaching funds for less than 20 students. These two indicators helped the school improvement in the ranking of U.S. News.

In the course of undergraduate students in Columbia University, the percentage of less than 20 students may be 62.7%and 66.9%. We can be convinced that this is far from the 82.5%claimed by Columbia University;

In the course of undergraduate students in Columbia University, 50 or more students may be between 10.6%and 12.4%. Similarly, this is much worse than the 8.9%of Columbia University's claims;

These numbers show that the class scale of Columbia University is not particularly small compared to peer agencies. In addition, the year-on-year data from 2019-2021 shows that the class scale of Columbia University is growing steadily. Ironically, Columbia University is considering significantly expanding the number of undergraduate enrollment, which will further expand the size of the class.

The strong performance of Columbia University in financial resources seems to be attributed to the amount it claims to spend in teaching. In the documents reported to the government, its teaching expenditure in 2019-2020 is higher than $ 3.1 billion. This is indeed a huge sum. In the report submitted to the government in more than 6,000 colleges and universities, this is the largest number that has so far, which is larger than the corresponding amounts of Harvard, Yale and Princeton.

It is difficult to imagine how Colombian University spends so huge funds in teaching. Teachers' salary levels are not high. From 2019-2020, the salary expenditure of full-time non-medical teachers is US $ 289 million, less than 9%of less than $ 3.1 billion. Even if part -time and medical teachers have given rich allowances, and these are calculated in the teaching costs, there are still huge funds "where the whereabouts are unknown."

Thaddeus pointed out that in other circumstances, Columbia University's description of its expenditure is very different, claiming to spend less in teaching, and spend more on other things.

For example, Columbia University often claims to spend more than $ 1 billion in research each year. In its government report, the school stated that its research expenditure was about $ 763 million.

In its consolidated financial statements, Columbia University claims to spend about $ 2 billion in "teaching and educational management" (probably including academic support and student services), which is more than $ 1 billion lower than the data in government reports.

On the other hand, in the consolidated financial statements, it includes another very large cost of "Patient Care Expense" with a very large cost of more than 1.2 billion US dollars, and this item is completely in the government report.

U.S. News: We are not responsible for verifying the accuracy of the school's submitted content Thaddeus, saying that he will not describe the Statement of Columbia University as "the victory of transparency and accuracy", and pointed out that there are still unreasonable issues, including what the university review will be found And whether the school will participate in the ranking again. But withdrawing from "at least the critics of Columbia University make sense."

U.S. NEWS's university has been in disputes for many years. On the one hand, the specific data issue, on the other hand, the evaluation indicators of "good universities" are more or less subjective.

Critics said that the list just strengthened everyone's existing ideas and rewarded the richest and well -known institutions.

The Ride College in Oregon, the United States, refused to provide ranking data to U.S. News, but was still included in the annual list. Some critics believe that the school's ranking has declined sharply because of this incompatibility, and the guidelines of U.S. News are full of hidden punishment and statistical tricks.

U.S. News stated in March this year that the organization was not responsible for verifying the accuracy of the school's content.

However, Kim Castro, editor and chief content officer of U.S. News, said in a statement in a statement on Friday, "Columbia University acknowledges that they cannot reach U.S. News World Report data standards for the best university ranking in 2023, which has caused a series of problems . We pay attention to this and are reviewing various solutions, including the data submitted before the Columbia University to ensure that our ranking continues to maintain the highest level of integrity. "

Reference materials:

https://www.math.columbia.edu/~thaddeus/ranking/investigation.html

https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/education/ny-columbia-withdraws-us-news-data-accuracy-best-colleges-20220701-u5dbyay2enc6zjdholq6twnpui-story.html

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