onilecraM | Marcelino

US News & World Report

You know what’s bullshit?

That the last time US News & World Report ranked fine arts graduate schools was in 1997. If that had been the case with med schools or law schools, the premeds and the prelaws would have thrown a fit and called mommy and daddy to fire the evil people at US News.

Do you know how useless this is? Their excuse is awesome:

“However, we decided not to publish them in the 2002 edition of Best Graduate Schools because, in the opinion of our research team, the programs in these areas have changed enough—schools may have added, dropped, or changed content—that we are not comfortable publishing these rankings as describing the present situation in these fields.”

Do you know what that means? Let me translate; here is what they are really saying:

“Unlike everything else we rank, which has had static curricula over the last 30 years, ranking visual arts, which actually change over the course of 12 months, would require us to do actual research, and not rehash or shuffle the previous year’s rankings”.

“Thus, since the possibility of our giant gag on the world of academia might be exploited through this loophole, we have decided not to risk it. Thus we will never publish rankings in the visual arts.”

“Students seeking to study visual arts might have to base their decision on the following unconventional standards:
1. Academic interests
2. Academic and social environment
3. Style of teaching
4. Career goals
5. Pursuit of intellectual stimulation

While our rankings in other fields of study prove contradictory to this, we feel that this might make you a better person, though it won’t help our sales of our magazine to people interested in the arts.
Have a nice life!

—Your friends at US News.”