New rankings

US News and World Report has released their new rankings, America's Best Colleges 2008, and Rutgers is 59th. My alma maters are scattered around with Wisconsin at 38, Kentucky at 122, and LSU is ranked low enough that I can't find it online. It appears that UK has a ways to go before they become a Top 20 University.

Like a lot of people in academia, I have a problem with the rankings and I have a problem with what they are doing to academia. A story in the Home News capture it this way:

"This particular ranking is bad social research, it's anti-intellectual and misleading in about 20 different ways," Weisbuch said. "I have a friend at another university who says he uses the survey to reward his friends and punish his enemies."

I also can't resist looking and talking about it.