Are Public Universities Losing Ground?
New data from a company that ranks research universities primarily based on per-capita faculty productivity suggest that there are consistent and dramatic disparities in research output at public and private institutions. Lawrence B. Martin, chief scientific consultant for Academic Analytics and dean of the graduate school at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, said the data provide evidence that a phenomenon projected for decades has now in fact arrived: As top private institutions grow richer, public universities have found themselves unable to compete on the resource front, and so the competitive edge enjoyed by private institutions has ultimately spilled into research and all that results (journal articles, grants and books).
But many administrators and higher education researchers caution that while the thrust of the data from Academic Analytics might confirm sneaking suspicions (and even conventional wisdom in some quarters), the results should not be read too broadly to reflect a significant shift in the public/private balance. Some individuals strongly criticized the company’s methodology, while many who had little to say specifically about the two-year-old, for-profit entity’s data said they’d be awaiting this year’s planned release of the National Research Council’s updated departmental ratings – still the gold standard for assessing doctoral education – to see if they confirm what Academic Analytics found.
