By SUSAN JONES
The latest U.S. News and World Report rankings released this week looked at graduate programs in engineering, business and various health science fields, including nursing.
Pitt saw their rankings increase in several disciplines, with nursing once again placing several programs in the top 10.
The School of Nursing ranked:
10th in Doctor of Nursing Practice category
4th in Clinical Nurse Leader
5th in Nursing Administration
5th in Doctor of Nursing Practitioner
6th in Administration/Management
The School of Public Health's Master of Health Administration moved up three spot to 14th.
The School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences had two programs ranked: Rehabilitation Counseling program, 17th, and Physician Assistant Studies up over 40 spots to 50th.
The School of Education ranked 27th, up from 32 last year
The Swanson School of Engineering was up one spot to No. 47, with four specialties (biomedical, chemical, computer and industrial engineering) ranking in the top 50.
The Graduate School of Public and International Affairs stayed at 39th, but jumped up in Local Government Management (15th) and Urban Policy (22nd). International/Global Policy and Administration ranked 9th.
The Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences had two programs ranked in the top 50: Chemistry stayed at 42nd, and Physics jumped 10 places to 38th.
College rankings have come under fire over the past year for, among other things, relying too heavily on standardized test scores of admitted students.
U.S. News said in a statement that this year’s rankings place greater emphasis on the results that education can bring. It lowered its weights on reputation factors to equal 25 percent across several rankings. “With outcome measures outweighing reputation, schools are able to demonstrate their value by having strong outcome performance,” the magazine said.
Medical and law rankings delayed
U.S. News delayed its rankings of the top medical and law schools, and no release date has been announced.
Earlier this year, Pitt’s School of Law joined several other schools, including Penn State and the University of Pennsylvania, in dropping out of the U.S. News and World Report’s law school rankings.
In January, medical schools at Harvard, Penn, Columbia and Stanford — all ranked in the top 10 last year — said that they would no longer provide U.S. News with data it uses to rank them.
Anantha Shekhar, Pitt’s senior vice chancellor for health sciences, said in a January article in the Washington Post that, “No ranking system is perfect.” He said he has concerns, but acknowledged that rankings can spur healthy competition. “We’ll continue to submit the data for now, but we’ll have to evaluate it over time.” Pitt’s School of Medicine ranked 14th in the U.S. News listing last year.
Graduate business schools
The one area where Pitt dropped was in the master of business administration from the Katz Graduate School of Business, which fell from 55th to 86th. The part-time MBA program ranked 43rd.
Dean Gene Anderson said the drop in the U.S. News ranking was “unwelcome news. The program is doing as well as ever in other major rankings,” including 54th in BusinessWeek and 41st in the U.S. in the Financial Times.
Out of eight metrics used by U.S. News, Katz improved significantly on three — GMAT scores, GPAs and starting salaries, Anderson said. “However, we fell behind peers in placement rate at graduation and at three months.”
The change in weight to reputation and placement impacted Pitt’s ranking. And although the average GPA went up, U.S. News gives less credit when fewer than half of an entering class submits a GPA from a U.S. college or university. Pitt’s program was below this threshold last year.
“We greatly value our international students. Everyone benefits from their presence in the program,” Anderson said. “The U.S. News policy on GPA seems out of step with being a global business school in the 21st century. Other rankings view student diversity as a positive.”
Anderson said they are reviewing appropriate actions in response to this news. He said they don’t want to “re-engineer the program around a ranking, but to position ourselves as well as we can while staying true to our strategy and observing the ranking’s guidelines.”
Susan Jones is editor of the University Times. Reach her at suejones@pitt.edu or 724-244-4042.
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