University Times

Pitt ranked 25th among public universities and is a "rising star" among them, according to a new study that claims to be the first to use objective — rather than "soft," reputation-based — data to rate U.S. research universities.

The study findings are detailed in the book, "The Rise of American Research Universities: Elites and Challengers in the Postwar Era" (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996).

Looking at 203 research universities from 1945 to 1990, the authors of the study measured per capita faculty research productivity, which they defined as the creation of new knowledge in everything from medical science to classics.

The five numerical indexes used to measure productivity were: money from federal research grants, number of articles published across the scholarly gamut, articles in top-rated scientific and social science journals, and fellowships in the arts and humanities.

The study ranked private and public universities separately. "Although there are fewer surprises among the private universities, in the public system some dramatic rising stars are found. Universities such as Ohio State and Penn State that traditionally enjoyed strong reputations were not among the top performers," said co-author Hugh Davis Graham, who is the Holland N. McTyeire Professor of History at Vanderbilt University. According to the study, the top 10 public universities were: the University of California-Berkeley (1), UC-Santa Barbara (2), SUNY-Stony Brook (3), UCLA (4), Michigan (5), Wisconsin-Madison (6), Illinois-Urbana (7) Indiana (8), UC-San Diego (9) and Colorado (10).

The top private schools were: Stanford (1), Princeton (2), Chicago, Harvard, Yale (which were tied for 3rd place), Columbia (6), Duke, Pennsylvania (tied for 7th place), Brandeis and Johns Hopkins (which were tied for 9th place).

Graham said the study rated private and public universities separately because the latter face comparative disadvantages due to their "political nature," which requires them to serve various roles set by government, not campus, officials.

For example, land grant schools traditionally have been required to offer majors in agriculture, physical education, fire prevention and other areas that emphasize training over the creation of knowledge, he said. And a larger percentage of private universities have medical schools, which attract large amounts of research funding and generate high numbers of journal publications.

According to Graham, some of the nation's best universities, including Pitt, often are not recognized as such because bigger-name schools are getting by on their reputations. "The problem with the previous, major studies of American universities, such as the ones conducted by the National Research Council [in 1982 and 1994] and the American Council on Education [1966 and 1970], is that they relied heavily on subjective surveys," Graham said.

"Academicians would be asked to estimate the quality of programs in various disciplines, and they would tend to cite the same programs year after year because those were the big-name schools, and those were the ones that they [survey respondents] were familiar with." "The Rise of American Research Universities" attributes the success of the top-ranked publics to focused competition. The state university systems of California and New York got high marks for designating certain schools as research universities and supporting them accordingly. Most states unwisely try to level the playing field by treating all of their public universities the same, Graham said.

His comments echoed those of Pitt administrators, who have argued increasingly in recent years that lawmakers, in appropriating state funds, should give more consideration to the differing missions of research universities and schools that primarily teach undergraduates.

— Bruce Steele