A change in the way research universities are classified has placed the University in a different category, but some University faculty believe the shift represents a loss of prestige.
Before March, The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, an educational research foundation, lumped the University in the highest category next to heavyweights such as Harvard University. But when the foundation changed its categorization technique, the University ended up in the new middle category away from the Ivy League.
The reassessment reflects the University’s slide into mediocrity, associate professor of economics Bill Harbaugh said. He said other faculty members at the University feel similarly.
But Rich Linton, the University’s vice president for research activities, said the University surpasses an overwhelming majority of all other national research institutions, and the foundation classifies institutions not as a rank but as a tool for comparison.
Previously, The Carnegie Foundation divided institutions into two categories, one higher and one lower, with the University falling into the higher. The foundation now offers three categories for research institutions that award doctoral degrees, “Very High Research Activity,” “High Research Activity” and “Doctoral/Research Facilities.” While the University is in the middle category, five University of California campuses, New York University, Princeton University, Harvard and Oregon State University are among the 96 schools in the top category.
Gay Clyburn, a spokeswoman for the foundation, said the categories do not represent rank of any form and the University did not lose face in the change.
“You can’t move up or down,” Clyburn said. “Your institution didn’t get worse or better. It’s unfortunate that people look at the Carnegie classification that way.”
Some institutions use their classification in public relations releases, Clyburn said, but the foundation collects its data to offer objective portraits of the amount of research going on, not as a judgment of an institution’s quality.
Linton said some faculty misinterpret the classifications because of their complexity.
“We’re one of the smallest research universities in the country,” Linton said.
Linton said most of the institutions in the top category have medical, engineering and agricultural programs, which often generate more research money, programs that the University does not offer.
“We’re always at a comparative disadvantage,” he said.
Even though the University does not offer these programs, he said, research funding is up 50 percent in the last five years, and faculty members have raised money at an enormous rate. The category also shows the University to be among the top 4.5 percent of research institutions nationally. He also said many University faculty researchers work in fields in which fundraising is difficult, a factor the foundation uses to create its categories.
Linton said people who see the classification as ranking do so for political reasons.
Harbaugh said he found the reclassification disturbing. He said the classifications are tiers that show an academic ranking of a University’s commitment to research.
“What really bites here is that Oregon State’s in the top,” Harbaugh said.
He said the report shows both a broad trend that the University is slipping and that the current administration lacks commitment to research.
“President Frohnmayer seems completely unconcerned about it,” Harbaugh said.
University president Dave Frohnmayer would not comment on the issue.
Harbaugh said he agreed with Linton that the faculty works hard on research and that the lack of certain programs could hurt the University, but said the category compares the University with others that he sees as mediocre.
“How come we’re in the same category as New Mexico State and Western Michigan? It’s rare that the top university for a state isn’t in that top category,” he said.
He said part of the reason the University is in the middle category is because the University does not pay its faculty as well as other institutions.
“They pay competitive salaries when they first hire you, but as time goes on they don’t give you raises,” Harbaugh said.
He said he stays at the University because he loves his job.
Senior research associate David Etherington saw the ranking as accurate.
“There’s some very important research going on here,” he said. “We are not Stanford or MIT or Harvard, but neither are we East Podunk.”