Ranking UNH

U.S. News & World Report placed the university on its list of “tier one” colleges for the second year in a row. But are the numbers all they’re cracked up to be?

If you believe the hype, UNH may have entered a new era of prestige.

U.S. News & World Reports has ranked the university 110 among regional colleges in its 2012 listing of “Best Colleges,” landing it a spot for the second year among the “top tier” in the “Regional Colleges – North” category.

The category includes colleges that offer a full range of undergraduate programs, but few doctoral programs. Colleges with doctoral programs are listed in a separate national category.

Just what do the rankings say about the quality of the institution, though?

In a press release for UNH Today, President Stephen H. Kaplan reasoned that UNH's rise in the U.S. News rankings was due to “substantial investments toward expanding academic programs, enhancing student life and creating state-of-the-art campus facilities,” which have “helped us attract more high-achieving students and world-class faculty.”

Alice Aleksandrovich, a senior who is double majoring in English literature and political science, has noticed some major improvements during her tenure at UNH. “It’s more technologically advanced than when I started,” she says. “The bookstore, health services, tutoring and other student services are also much better.”

Aleksandrovich still thinks there’s room for improvement, though. She says she would like to see more housing built, especially for sororities and fraternities. She also says that too much of the material in the library is outdated.

UNH’s sustained presence on the “Best Colleges” list is certainly beneficial for the university. U.S. News is the most popular resource in the nation for comparing colleges. Being in the top tier means greater exposure among students and parents researching prospective colleges.

Perhaps more importantly, it means greater exposure within the community of academic institutions. There’s an irony to making the list: since 25 percent of a regional college’s ranking is determined by the assessment of other college presidents, simply being on the list makes it more likely that a president who has never actually seen the campus will have a favorable view of UNH.

U.S. News has come under increasing criticism in recent years for the ways in which it judges schools. In February, New Yorker Staff Writer Malcolm Gladwell slammed U.S. News for using prejudicial criteria. He called the reputation factor a “self-fulfilling prophecy.”

“When U.S. News asks a university president to perform the impossible task of assessing the relative merits of dozens of institutions he knows nothing about,” wrote Gladwell, “he relies on the only source of detailed information at his disposal that assesses the relative merits of dozens of institutions he knows nothing about: U.S. News.”

Gladwell pointed out that other proxies for quality U.S. News uses to measure the success of a college - such as professor salaries or admissions selectivity - have little to do with student engagement, the single most important predictor of a student’s success at college.

Gladwell also noted that U.S. News omits some criteria, such as cost, in its rankings. He writes: “at a time when American higher education is facing a crisis of accessibility and affordability, we have adopted a de facto standard of college quality that is uninterested in both of those factors.”

The U.S. News rankings have led people astray in the past. “Most students and parents think the rankings are important,” says Victor Rios, a double major in English and journalism in his second semester at Quinnipiac University in Hamden. “For me, I fell into that spell when I applied.”

Quinnipiac has ranked well in U.S. News. It took the number 11 slot this year. Rios says, however, that some professors allow too much leniency with assignments and due dates. He feels that the college hasn't done as much to foster his intellectual abilities as he had expected.

Rios and Gladwell aren't the only ones who have problems with the U.S. News algorithm, and a few organizations have even attempted to assess college quality on their own terms. In 2009, the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, a nonprofit education group, launched its “What Will They Learn?” survey. It measures whether colleges require students to take courses in seven “key subjects:” composition, literature, foreign language, U.S. government or history, economics, mathematics, and natural or physical science. A grade from A to F is assigned to the institution.

If Rios had used ACTA's rankings instead of U.S. News's, he would have gotten an entirely different impression. There, UNH gets a grade of B and Quinnipiac gets a grade of C.

In addition to his academic dismay, Rios, who was born in Mexico, says that he has been uncomfortable with some of the unintentional prejudices he's encountered.

“People I’ve talked to who work there say that the school understands the problem, and is trying to mitigate it,” he says. Nevertheless, he felt unwelcome when he first came to the campus.

Diversity is often an important piece of college life, especially if you happen to be in a minority group. Only 1 percent of Quinnipiac's population consisted of international students last year. At UNH, on the other hand, these students comprised 7 percent of the student body. U.S. News lists this information, but does not weigh it as part of a college's rank.

Professor Karen Isaacs, who teaches journalism and English at UNH and Housatonic Community College in Bridgeport, warns against placing too much emphasis on rankings.

“In any school, you're going to have exceptional departments and weaker departments. And you can get outstanding students anywhere,” she says.

She says that students need to find what they're comfortable with.

Regardless of whether U.S. News is an accurate guide or not, UNH seems poised to continue its ascent. According to UNH Today, the class of 2015 has higher SAT scores and GPA's than previous years. “The average GPA has continued to increase over the last six years,” says the press release.

Isaacs has been teaching at UNH off and on for about 20 years, and she agrees that the university is on a positive track. “I've seen enormous increases in the quality of the students,” she says.

This article originally appeared in The Charger Bulletin.

Tips on Arguing: The Moving Goalpost

Imagine that you’re playing a game of football, and you make a field goal from the 10-yard line. Now imagine that the referee decides not to count your kick. Instead, he orders the goalpost to be moved back an additional ten yards. You make the goal again. He decides it’s still not good enough, and has it moved back another ten yards.

Would you think this was fair?

In argumentation, “moving the goalpost” refers to a similar tactic. Your opponent gives a certain criteria for you to meet, or asks for certain evidence. Then, once you provide it, he or she changes the criteria. It’s an extremely common fallacy, and one that can perpetuate a false controversy for years.

Perhaps the most famous modern example of moving the goalpost exists in the anti-vaccination movement. Concerns over whether vaccines cause autism actually began in the late 1990’s, in Great Britain. According to Michael Fitzpatrick, a British physician and author of several books and articles on the subject, the controversy began with a research paper published by a gastroenterologist named Andrew Wakefield and twelve co-authors (ten of whom later issued a partial retraction) in the journal The Lancet (which formally retracted the entire article last year).

The study looked at twelve children, nine of whom were autistic, who had experienced a form of intestinal inflammation that Wakefield speculated during a press conference was caused by the MMR vaccine. The media seized on it. Many subsequent studies thoroughly debunked his claims, but by then it was too late – the seeds had been planted in popular culture.

As the aftershocks of Wakefield's claims rippled through the U.K., he brought his concerns to the U.S. Only this time, the blame wasn’t laid on MMR; it was placed instead on a preservative called thimerosal, which contained a small amount of mercury. The argument was that because mercury is a known neurotoxin, it could be causing damage to a child’s normal development. This neglected the fact that the dose of mercury was well below dangerous thresholds. It also ignored the fact that there was no causal evidence to suggest a connection.

But that didn’t matter. The goalpost had effectively been moved.

Despite further research that found no link between thimerosal and autism, the U.S. government finally conceded to have the preservative removed from most vaccines in the early 2000’s. Autism rates, as one would expect, were not affected.

Eventually, critics of vaccines had to drop this second line of argument. That hasn’t made them any more reasonable, however. Over the past few years, they’ve built a whole new campaign around the idea that vaccines contain a debilitating cocktail of “toxins.” Antivaccinationists now target this brew as the cause of autism.

In a 2008 article for the blog Science-Based Medicine, surgical oncologist David Gorski unpacked, piece-by-piece, the emptiness of that approach: “for example, they either ignorantly or willfully confuse ethylene glycol (antifreeze, which is not in vaccines) with polyethylene glycol (a polymer of ethylene glycol, a chemically different compound which is in some vaccines and is also in a number of skin creams, tooth paste, and medications, including laxatives)…they’ll also rant on and on about formaldehyde, neglecting the fact that most people are exposed in a single day to more formaldehyde…than babies are exposed to from their entire vaccine schedule.”

Although Gorski and others have the facts on their side, they’re unlikely to convince the opponents of vaccines, no matter how much proof is provided. As long as the goalpost keeps being moved, it remains impossible to score.

Toxic Runoff Creates "Rainbow Street" in Fairfield

When Hurricane Irene slammed into Connecticut on Aug. 28, the widespread flooding it brought along shorelines and rivers was hard not to notice.

What may have been less apparent to some people were the contaminates it dragged off the land with receding flood waters.

The pollution was obvious on Kenard Street in Fairfield, though.

At approximately 11 a.m., the tiny road that abuts the construction zone of the new Metro North railroad station was inundated with several feet of water from Ash Creek, which runs through the area.

As the water drained, it left brightly-colored stains across huge swaths of the pavement. A fluorescent sheen of yellows, blues, and pinks marked where the creek had crept across the road (see video above).

As anyone who has owned an old car knows, those stains are caused by motor oils and similar waste products. They are known as nonpoint source pollution.

According to the EnvironmentalProtection Agency, nonpoint source pollution is the leading cause of water quality problems. Billions of dollars are spent every year to test and treat water to make sure that the fish that swim in it, the plants that grow in it, and the humans who drink it all stay healthy.

Nonpoint source pollution becomes worse as urbanization occurs, because soils that once absorbed and neutralized contaminants are replaced by blacktop and other non-porous surfaces. The pollutants sit there, building up until it rains or snows, at which point they're deposited in rivers, lakes – or Long Island Sound.

The Fairfield Metro North complex is a prime example of urbanization. Last summer, the hillside near Kenard Street was occupied by a grove of trees. All of them were removed as part of the development project.

The view now consists of giant piles of contaminated soil dug up by construction equipment. The mounds became a point of consternation for the town after officials realized that the millions of dollars it would cost to remove the soil was not accounted for in the project's budget.

In the meantime, the exposed mounds (and the machines moving them around) contribute their own pollutants to the mix of runoff every time it rains or floods.

Although $7.5 million in additional funds approved by the town on Aug. 31 will pay for cleanup of the soil, Hurricane Irene has already siphoned her fair share of toxic material back into Fairfield's waters. That cost is much more difficult to quantify.