This is representative of a number of e-mails I've gotten from philosophers about the NRC, though this is particularly interesting as the perspective of a former Chair of a Department at the time the NRC data was being gathered:
First, I’m sure I speak for many people when I say that I’m very grateful to you for the posts and the links. Departments across the country are going to be asked by their administrations to speak to their rankings in the NRC report and I’m sure they’re very grateful for the information and analysis that you’ve provided yourself and that to which you’ve provided links.
Second, I understand that some of your analysis is influential beyond philosophy – my wife tells me that you were quoted on the IHE web site the day that the NRC report was released. It’s in that connection that I’m writing now.
I really think that someone needs to point out one implication of the fact that the rankings are – as you put it – a fiasco. The implication is that an enormous amount of faculty and administrative time was simply wasted at the data-gathering stage. I was department chair at that stage and spent hours exhorting my colleagues to fill in their surveys, filling in my own faculty survey and filling in the departmental survey.
Chairing an academic department is, as you know, extremely burdensome. I never minded doing the kind of work that was legitimately needed to maintain and build a department. But asking people to spend squander so much of their time providing data for a report that is ultimately valueless is simply unconscionable. The people who ran the survey ought to be embarrassed at the product. They ought to be ashamed of the process that led to it. I hope that at some point, you’ll use your platform to make that point.
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