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Date:         Wed, 10 Feb 93 11:24:34 EST
From: Robert Gossweiler <AHK55465%UDELVM.BITNET@VTVM2.CC.VT.EDU>
To: socgrad@ucsd.edu
Recently, several contributors have raised the issue of department
ranking. While it was recognized that these rankings are largely
bunk, it was also noted that there are important consequences of
departmental rankings. Greg Nagby (sp?)  correctly pointed out
that graduate students lacked the power to make an "altenative"
ranking system effective and suggested that such a ranking system
would be important as a supplement to the rankings based by other
(usually outsiders) professionals. The issue of student strikes
was also raised by several people.
    First, how real are the consequences? In other words, do faculty,
comittee memebers of grant organizations (e.g., NIDA & NSF) rely on
these rankings or do they use more informal networks (i.e., word of
mouth reputation- conferences- publications). My experience is that
professionals largely rely on informal reputations, rather than
on formal ones. I believe that people are more willing to trust what
they hear from a significant other (e.g., friend or colleague) than what
they read by some collumnist. (However, they will use the articles to
back up their predjudices) This is much different than my experience
with students. Students tend to rely and trust objective measures of
status. The "offical" rankings are a symbol, or badge, of prestige.
The consequences are that students will be mislead by these official
rankings, while the rankings utilized by faculty and others are formed
behind other doors (not necessarily closed).
     Greg Nagy (sorry if I'm spelling this wrong) also correctly points
out that the official rankings will bias student selection toward
certain universities, and that these universities will reap profit
(labor in terms of quality students, future reputation, etc) because of
this. Quality universities may also be more prone to abuse their
select students (because students are comming to them, rather than them
comming to the students). An alterantive ranking system, somewhat informal,
may be the best protection for students against abuse, and if formally
presented it may lead to a concentration of power for graduate students.
In other words, if graduate students rank departments, and students
pick departments based on this ranking (which they may trust more
than other ranking systems), the graduate students have allocated more
power for themselves meanwhile providing worthwile information to
each other. (Hey, let's do what faculty have long neglected to do-
apply sociology to the shaping of sociology-- in our teaching, research
and everyday life with administration).
If college football students can organize into collective action,
perhaps we can too (maybe, some of those students took sociology courses...)
    On the point about students not willing to "down" their own
departments. I'm not so quick to agree. I hear a lot of complaints from
many students. Besides, we sociologists collect sensitive data all the
time (see any crim. journal...).
    In terms of actual substance to the rankings, I would like to see
rankings of specific subfields. The present ranking systems
are very naive if they believe a ranking of #1 means (operationalizes)
the ability to teach *all* sociology fields the best. For example,
Wash. State probably out-ranks (informal poop from the faculty,
by the way) many of the departments in criminology, including Cal. Berk.
But Cal. Berk. probably is better in demographics. An overall ranking
system is fairly unimportant if your trying to choose a school. Perhaps
several overall measures should be used (library, funding), but we
need to include specific measures based on *graduate* student needs.
First, I suggest that we outline those needs, and then attempt to
operationalize some faculty assessment criteria.
   Gotta run, remember: don't be philosophers, be sociologists.
[if you a philosopher, sorry, go to another net]
Robert Gossweiler
U of DE

PS.  I love my department, ;-)