When making my choices on what graduate schools to apply to, I relied on U.S. News & World Report and their rankings for LIS programs. After reading this article from Time Magazine, I started wondering whether I should really be basing my choices on a list of top ten schools where 25% of a school's overall score comes from surveys that ask administrators to evaluate peer institutions.
Some colleges are getting tired of this system because they often get locked into the same relative space on the list because of their decades-old reputations. The rankings also emphasis per-pupil spending, which makes up 10% of the score and doesn't help to lower tuition. Bowdoin College dropped from fourth to eighth after it balanced it budget, rather than keep up with the spending increases of its peers. Additionally, the LIS program rankings didn't include any school that didn't have a Ph.D program, cutting out a number of eligible colleges.
A few colleges have opted out of the rankings, including Reed College. As a result, in one year they dropped from the second tier of schools to the fourth, but their application numbers haven't dwindled.
I guess I should be looking at some programs outside of the list anyway, as I should really have a Plan B in case I don't get into one of these top ten schools. Who knows, maybe I'll find myself in an excellent program that I didn't give much of a first glance.
The US News & World Report rankings are always dubious when Lewis & Clark Law bests UO Law, and always informative and helpful when UO Law bests Lewis & Clark Law.
At least, that's how the UO Law administration always spun it.
My questions: how come that magazine provides US News and a World Report? Where's the US Report? The World News? Are we getting the whole story?
I'd chalk it up to liberal media bias.