I am not a fan of the engineering faculty at the USMMA. Still, the tiny sample sizes for the professors’ ratings at many or all of the colleges rated translate to Moneywatch’s rankings having no value. I would say not anywhere near even half of faculty at any given institution are rated. Typically less than half a dozen students rate any one faculty member.
CBS Moneywatch says the professor ratings for each school come from ratemyprofessors.com. At ratemyprofessors.com, look at the listing for any USMMA department. Many long-time faculty are not rated at all. Of those faculty that are rated, the sample size is typically one to four students.
West Point is ranked among the colleges with the best professors, at #2. At ratemyprofessors.com, search for “Military Academy.” Go to the West Point math department. Sixteen West Point Math faculty are listed. Five or less cadets rate fifteen West Point Math professors. One West Point Math professor is rated by 44 students. Go to engineering for West Point, and only six faculty are rated, all with ratings by four or less students. West Point’s web site indicates West Point has over 50 faculty teaching engineering courses.
West Point’s high ranking may very well be based only on the ratings of the math department. This translates to the ratings of a (1) a tiny sample of students for (2) a small fraction of (3) the West Point math faculty (not all the faculty) likely determining West Point’s overall ranking as #2.
When there is a large number of students doing the rating of any one professor for any college, I would bet it is because the professor told the students to go to ratemyprofessors.com. This is not a bad thing. But it does mean that the “overall” grade for many or all of the institutions listed has no meaning, since so few students were surveyed and so few faculty were rated.
I write this as a long-time critic of the USMMA engineering department’s abilities. The Merchant Marine Academy should be teaching largely the way the Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program teaches. It does not. Still, one has to be fair or have no credibility. The ratings from ratemyprofessors.com are not any sort of comment on an institution’s overall faculty quality.
Moneywatch should be ashamed of publishing a ‘conclusion’ based on the “data” from ratemyprofessors.com.