Move over US News, here's an alternative ranking of colleges and universities. Of course, I like it particularly because my alma mater, UC Berkeley, fared so well.
The August issue of Harper's magazine contains an article on Tyrone Hayes' research on pesticides and frogs (It's Not Easy Being Green by William Souder). Hayes is a professor in Berkeley's Integrative Biology department. His research has shown that atrazine, a common pesticide, turns male frogs into hermaphodites. I can't seem to find a link to the article, but check it out if you have a Harper's handy.
On a sad note, for those who remember the Naked Guy from the 1990s, he passed away earlier this year from an apparent suicide.
4 comments:
Well, I'm grateful for yet a nother confirmation that Princeton sucks. But apart from the social mobility listing (which would be nice to have separate from the merged scores), I see little value in this ranking. There is no distinction in the quality of the research produced -- as if the aforementioned Alabama A&M and Columbia were prodcuing the same quality of scientific innovations and the only distinction were the number of PhDs awarded. Secondly, there is no measure of the quality of eductaion in the languages and humanities. Ever elusive to numerical tabulation as these fields are, the authors didn't even bother to attempt some kind of measure. Finally, I question the value and utility of measuring "Service to the country" by counting the number of students enrolled in ROTC programs. In the current social demographic of the country, levels of ROTC participation are likely to match the social mobility index of the school, as students from less privileged backgrounds will look to the ROTC program as a source of financing their education. As a measure of what the school is doing for society, it is exceedingly weak.
I love the bashing of The New School, where I just finished my Masters (paid for by my employer). Can't argue with any of that, although I think NYU should be much lower, too.
I used to correspond with a Chinese guy who taught English at Berkely.
I remember seeing a news story about "Naked Guy", I can't believe he's dead! Wow, how tragic.
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