Historical Newspapers of South Carolina

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^Vi'.ftjVrtfly.^iJI'ij)^'; /;"\w?,, r ' ' ^*-"*V)^tyX ?, ' s "-.' ' ' " " " "\'"' ? .-_ ^ IP : . ' ?Vv. ' / ;-5p'' "*v*' '* ; . Thursday Oct. 37,1077 Univerity of South Carolina, Columbia, S.C. Volume LXIV, No. 16 ,,,,.J v ^ i/ //> JBhUHKL I <4 $ The ratii 0 By JOHN KOZMA Gamecock Staff Writer National prominence continues to elude the USC schools of education, law and business. aCCOrdinC to a rPTPnt r??nnri in Change magazine: "The Cartter Report on the Leading } - Schools of Education, Law, and Business" appearing in the Feb., 1977 Cliange summarizes the opinions of deans and leading professors. They rated the academic quality .v of 51 business colleges, 91 law schools and 81 colleges of education throughout the vuuiiii jr. The opinions reflect each school's "faculty quality" and "educational attactiveness" as a numerical score. A composite average combining these two scores was used to determine the relative ranking of each school. The study was commissioned by the California Board of P Regents, administrators of higher education. mgL LEWIS C. SOLMON, secretary-treasurer yfc-pnd executive officer of tlie Higher |??ducation Research Institute, Inc., a Los ^^ jngeles firm, did the survey and statistical HRbrk for the Cartter Study. fl^Solmon was quick to point out that his Ysurvey results must be taken with a grain of salt. "I think there are a lot of problems with these kinds of ratings," he said. TVi? tr\r\ tari 11 hiUam/v >iv ivp Tvsii inun.ait wiicic uic mui t: prestigious schools are, Solmon said, adding "There is no reason why in a country of this size there can't be 50 or 60 or 70 good schools I in one.area." THE RELATIVE VALUE of each school's ngs game National promin degree should be considered, Solmon said. More prestigious schools can place graduates in wider job markets, he said, but this may be unimportant to students seeking employment within their school's geographic region. A distinction of what advantages the student brings in with him from what knowledge the school gives him must also be made. For example, a student whose father has a successful business will probably be i n~? * iiucvi ui wnere ne ODiains Ms degree. Still, Solmon said, a lot of research evidence isolates such factors and indicates that more prestigious degrees are more marketable. A frequent criticism of any rating system is that it is self-perpetuating, or that one rating simply reflects the influence of past ones. Raters without personal knowledge of the institutions they rate, it is argued, depend on past ratings to arrive at new ones. Solmon said those polled in the Cartter study were asked how they knew the schools they rated. The ratings based on personal knowledge, he said, did not turn out much different from those based on second hand information. SOLMON SAID raters tend to place a premium on research faculty over teaching faculty, graduate programs over undergraduate programs, and academic over business experience qualifications of faculty members. In addition, faculty members eugugt-u in researcn ana in rn.u. programs tend to have better reputations because they publish more, he said. Thus. Ph.D. programs and research faculty nave an effect on the prestige of a school. & ? ence eludes USC While the study was limited to schools with Ph.D. programs in the education and business areas, Solmon did not say that raters did not consider the undergraduate programs at the institutions they evaluated. >n<A ? itie vaiuc ui nil- survey us an aia 10 judging undergraduate programs is therefore limited, Solmon said. A school may not offer Ph.D.'s but still have an excellent undergraduate program, he said, citing Dartmouth's school of business. USC's business and education undergraduate programs may have been similarly slighted, he added. The top ten in business were Stanford, Harvard, MIT, Chicago, Carnegie-Mellon, California at Berkeley, Pennsylvania, UCLA, Northwestern and Cornell. A SPOKESMAN from the Higher Education Research Institute said the 51 business and 81 education schools rates all granted at least 10 Ph.D?s between 1961 and 1970 in their respective areas. USC was not included in either area because this requirement was not met, the spokesman said. Some southeastern schools included in the rankings for regional business schools were UNC-Chapel Hill and Texas-Austin, second > > ^ icii, <iiiu nuriua ana i*eorgia state in the fourth ten, said Solmon. "People are not aware of how far this college has come," said James Hilton, associate dean for academic affairs of USC's business school. Guest lecturers faced with tough questions by USC faculty members attending their seminars have expressed their surprise at the improved faculty quality, Hilton said. ZHVf schools The growth of USC's graduate business I enrollment in past years reflects the introduction of several innovative programs, t The M.B.A.-ETC program which began in 1970-71 with the students has increased to 400 students. USC was the first institution in the country to offer an accredited MBA program via live television with talkback, Hilton said. USC WAS also one of the first schools to offer a Masters in International Business Studies (MIRS). Hilton said Rf>onr? ir? yorjA. 75 with an enrollment of 35, the program now enrolls 190 students. Enrollment in the Ph.D. program increased from 23 in 1972-73 to 62 now. Hilton said USC has recently placed graduates from the Ph.D. program on the faculties of several reputable ousiness scnoois, among tnem Ohio State, Texas, Illinois, Penn Wharton, and Indiana. "We're shooting for top ten by 1982," Hilton said. Minimum standards for entrance into the upper level (junior year) of the undergraduate program will be imposed beginning in 1978, Hilton said. Also, a good combination of teaching and research talent on the faculty is emphasized, he said ? teaching to directlv hpnpfit ?h?? ar?ri research to solve new problems and add new depth. HILTON SAII) the support of the business community is "one of the main rryisnns we've come this far." The goal of t)ecoming a top-ten school nationally and the best business school in the southeast is "within reach" if support from the state and the business community continues. See; Ratings, page 5