Forum Post
In the last 6 years WSU’s USNWR annual rankings have plummeted from 140 to the just released 189. The deleterious consequences of this plunge are many and deep, and pose significant and increasing barriers to our Strategic Plan and to recruitment and retention at all levels. WSU’s fall started long before the pandemic and continues afterwards, while rankings of peer institutions over the same six years remain stable or even rise. Now UI ranks 10 points above WSU. It would be useful to know
– What particular metrics caused WSU’s rank to drop consistently over six years ?
– What efforts have been taken by the administration to address these metrics over the six years ?
– Which has failed: the efforts to address performance on metrics, or the mechanisms to measure outcomes of such efforts ?
– What if any administrative actions, e. g., within the planned Strategic Program and Resource Reallocation, and/or the Academic Affairs Program Optimization, are expected to address ranking metrics either explicitly or implicitly ?
Uambiguous information of what is going on would be valuable for retention and recruitment of faculty, students, and staff.
Response
The Faculty Senate Executive Officers have been notified of this forum post and will respond back once more information becomes available.
Comments
A comprehensive review of rankings and their impact/metrics was done in response to voiced concerns last year (2023): https://strategy.wsu.edu/institutional-data/rankings/us-news-task-force-report/. See the recommendations which address several key areas starting on page 6. We have also notified the Provost and President there may be followup questions at our upcoming Senate meeting.
Thanks for that detailed report. In my opinion much of the report is in significant part directed to discounting USNWR rankings role in our life. A few retorts:
– Impact e.g Section 2 Context and Purpose of USNWR” also page 24 “no clnclusive evidence rank is related to enrollment – I have first hand evidence of significant impact on international students at both grad and undergrad levels, not in your surveys, and have heard similar from others.
– Relevance, Accuracy e.g. Sections 3 and 4, involves extensive softening of relevance, accuracy, transparency of USNWR who wish “to sell magazines…”, and their rankings are “complex, lack empirical use for intended support, and difficult to change.” On the contrary they are not difficult to change as evinced by our own unfortunate 49 point drop in 6 years.
– Isolated causes of the 2023 disaster drop (to 212, released in 2022): but what we have is a 6-year drop the last of which this year is not due to mixing new data in faculty salaries or new schools being included in the assessment.
Nevertheless the Recommendations appear sound and reasonable, if perhaps overly-optimistic. The second paragraph uses the verb “invest” three times, and the third section targets faculty retention which is currently not working for research-active faculty. Both involve resources currently allocated elsewhere. My original fourth question, not addressed in the report, remains, now revised since I’ve read the recommendations:
– What if any administrative actions, e. g., within the planned Strategic Program and Resource Reallocation, and/or the Academic Affairs Program Optimization, are expected to address recommendations given in the 2023 USNWR Task Force findings for student (Section 6 paragraph 2) and/or faculty (Section 6, paragraph 3) recruitment and retention ?.
Given current concerns over continued budget cuts, massive and increasing debt from non-academic units, and now potential increases in teaching loads, clear understanding would avail recruitment and retention efforts of any and all Cougs.