2008 Woodie Awards
Yeshiva Climbs a Spot
Places 45th Among Top National Universities
Elyasaf Schwartz
Issue date: 8/31/05 Section: Features
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In its annual national ranking of colleges and universities, U.S. News and World Report again placed Yeshiva University among the top fifty national universities. Ranking forty-five alongside the University of California, Santa Barbara, and University of Washington, Yeshiva climbed one spot since last year, and its overall score rose from 58 to 60.
Yeshiva has grown accustomed to this perennial honor, and the top-50 placement continues to be a source of pride for the Yeshiva community, as well as for practitioners of Modern Orthodoxy, who see the institution as its flagship. To many, this validates the 'Madda' in Yeshiva's founding slogan, "Torah U'Madda." However, U.S. News' oft-beleaguered ranking system has caused some to discredit the high rank as a benchmark of academic quality.
According to U.S. News' website, "Those in the National Universities group are the 248 American universities (162 public and 86 private) that offer a wide range of undergraduate majors as well as master's and doctoral degrees; many strongly emphasize research." The groups are then rated on "up to 15 indicators of academic quality," which fall into seven differently weighted sections: peer assessment, retention, faculty resources, student selectivity, financial resources, graduation rate performance and alumni giving rate.
Peer assesment, the most heavily weighted section at 25 percent, continues to be Yeshiva's bugaboo, as its 2.9 rating out of 5.0 replicated last year's abnormally low score for its tier. Indeed, even some Tier 3 schools bested Yeshiva's peer assessment score. Furthermore, no school ranked above Yeshiva had a score below 3.4.
To determine peer assessment scores, U.S. News distributes surveys to school officials nation-wide, asking them to rate the academic programs of peer institutions. While Yeshiva's American Association of University Professors censure, which resulted from a high-profile Supreme Court case in 1982, may be a source for some slight, Executive Director of University Communications Georgia B. Pollack insists that this method "reflects more about name awareness than actual assessment," and that Yeshiva can look forward to improvement in future peer assessments. "Yeshiva is a relatively small university. As its alumni and alumnae go out into the world and there are more years to establish Y.U. in academic research, awareness will grow. We are better than other academic leaders perceive us to be, and their perceptions will catch up."
Yeshiva has grown accustomed to this perennial honor, and the top-50 placement continues to be a source of pride for the Yeshiva community, as well as for practitioners of Modern Orthodoxy, who see the institution as its flagship. To many, this validates the 'Madda' in Yeshiva's founding slogan, "Torah U'Madda." However, U.S. News' oft-beleaguered ranking system has caused some to discredit the high rank as a benchmark of academic quality.
According to U.S. News' website, "Those in the National Universities group are the 248 American universities (162 public and 86 private) that offer a wide range of undergraduate majors as well as master's and doctoral degrees; many strongly emphasize research." The groups are then rated on "up to 15 indicators of academic quality," which fall into seven differently weighted sections: peer assessment, retention, faculty resources, student selectivity, financial resources, graduation rate performance and alumni giving rate.
Peer assesment, the most heavily weighted section at 25 percent, continues to be Yeshiva's bugaboo, as its 2.9 rating out of 5.0 replicated last year's abnormally low score for its tier. Indeed, even some Tier 3 schools bested Yeshiva's peer assessment score. Furthermore, no school ranked above Yeshiva had a score below 3.4.
To determine peer assessment scores, U.S. News distributes surveys to school officials nation-wide, asking them to rate the academic programs of peer institutions. While Yeshiva's American Association of University Professors censure, which resulted from a high-profile Supreme Court case in 1982, may be a source for some slight, Executive Director of University Communications Georgia B. Pollack insists that this method "reflects more about name awareness than actual assessment," and that Yeshiva can look forward to improvement in future peer assessments. "Yeshiva is a relatively small university. As its alumni and alumnae go out into the world and there are more years to establish Y.U. in academic research, awareness will grow. We are better than other academic leaders perceive us to be, and their perceptions will catch up."