Word: arens
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...that fair? Some schools or college presidents or boards have used wanting to improve in the rankings as an administrative goal. Some schools are targeting their academic policies toward improving in the rankings. But I don't think that's really hurting students. The factors that you cited aren't really part of the rankings. Many people at the schools don't understand the ranking methodology and say things as an excuse vs. the truth. Generally, targeting the rankings doesn't hurt students. If schools are targeting ranking factors like improving graduation rates and improving freshman retention and paying faculty...
What tells you how heavily to weight each factor? Our accumulated judgment. Our rankings aren't social science in the sense that we're not doing peer-reviewed rankings; we're not submitting our conclusions and our weighting system to a group of academics and letting them decide if they are right or wrong. We do meet regularly with academic experts about the relative importance of the factors that we use. And we have been doing this for 25 years...
What keeps you guys from measuring that? There just isn't any data available. The schools themselves aren't measuring learning. What's the difference between your knowledge when you start as a first-year student and when you graduate? What do you feel about the teachers? What's the rigor of the academic program? How engaged are you on campus? Information like that is just not available from all schools...
...turn a verbal clash between demonstrators into a shoot-out. "In a heated atmosphere," Petro argues, "it's a recipe for disaster." Most critical, according to Petro, author of Standing Next to History: An Agent's Life Inside the Secret Service, is the message the guns send. "These guys aren't going to shoot the President," he says of the protesters. "But it's putting the idea in some nut's head that maybe he can get a gun and try to shoot...
...mixed. Some who want the U.S. to leave soon say a delay would postpone the probable power vacuum and accompanying bloodbath, which they hope will be short-lived. But that is the very reason others say it's not time for the U.S. to leave, because Iraqi security forces aren't ready and Iraqi politicians - pampered as they are patriotic - don't yet recognize that the country isn't prepared to go it alone. (See pictures of Obama in Iraq...