|
StudentsReview's Criteria for the Top Creative Schools is: 75% -
Creativity 10% - Competition & Collaboration 5% -
Academic Success is based upon 'understanding' 5% - Schoolwork
is Useful 5% - Would Return again
Creative people are those who naturally see worlds of possibilities,
and who value their individualism as a source of their
creativity. For creative schools, we highly emphasized creativity,
but we also included collaboration/competitiveness. While creative students may
all have their own ideas about how to do things,
we felt it was important for them to learn to
work WITH other students, rather than against each other, which
is why we included competition & collaboration in the rankings.
Finally because creative students often don't accommodate well to
specific directions, we felt that it to be very important
that the schoolwork be both useful and that their success
be dependent upon understanding. Creativity is something that is highly
valuable — from personalization of the home to new business
& product ideas. Creativity changes our society and our
world. Creative/Innovation Innovation is the conversion of educational knowledge
into new opportunities, and new ways of doing things.
Pure education can become outdated, but teaching a student how
and encouraging their creativity and innovation will provide them with
returns for the rest of their lives. Course Competitiveness
While a certain amount of competition is a good
thing, this metric measures the amount of “bad competition” —
the kind that results in cheating, hoarding knowledge, looking
over the shoulder, and the general kind that is counterproductive
to the working relationships at highly profitable companies, or
in effective management. Effective companies and employees — and
“people” in general are those that work together openly.
Cut-throat competition teaches a work ethic & mentality that is
actually counter to success. Academic Success is based
upon 'understanding' This is fundamentally important. In a world
obsessed with grades, it is imperative that any educational institution
insure that the grades it gives, the metrics, and evaluations
are clear and appropriate to the student's mastery. Many
schools stake their reputation on grades, and their abilities to
make qualified, educated, and ambitious people either fail out, or
do poorly — because then it artificially seems as
though the education is difficult. Schoolwork is Useful
& Instructive Many schools give coursework for the purpose
of delivering grades rather than the purpose of educating
students. Students have evaluated to say what proportion of
their coursework is useful and instructive. In the context
of a good education, busywork does not assist (for the
most part) understanding and competency in the workforce, and provides
a mechanism by which grades do not match competency, harming
students post-graduation opportunities. The purpose of universities is to
educate, not to babysit, nor to leverage customers for reputation.
Would Return (Overall Experience) All things stated, would
the students choose to return? This blanket captures things
that all of our ratings did not, or could not
capture. Is there some unknown factor affecting why students
would not return?
Filtering and Analysis To find out how the data
analysis was performed for the 2005 New Years Day OFFICIAL
Rankings, including filtering, invalidity, weighting, distribution matching, and inherent biases,
please go to 2005 NYD Rankings Explained.
|