Note: Before starting this blog, mostly to create a space where I could call out Seth Abramson, I left a comment about his MFA rankings on his blog, using my real name. Several days later, after the blog was underway, he tracked me down on facebook, where we had the following correspondence.
Seth Abramson: Dear [MFAwesome], I just discovered that we're Facebook friends. I don't know how that happened, but I suppose it gives me an opportunity to ask you what your problem is? Your comment on my blog was nasty and unfair for too many reasons to count. Any particular reason for you asking to be my Facebook friend and then acting like a douchebag on my blog? I don't think I'm being off the wall here -- what you wrote made you look like a douchebag.
P.S. In case you forgot (or were drunk or high at the time or whatever), here's what you wrote: "Hi there! I think it's great that you're compiling these rankings. When I was applying to schools there really weren't any to be found. However, I think they are complete garbage. I don't accept your bullshit numbers or your bullshit 'methodology'. I don't accept that you attend UW Madison and you rank it at #2. I don't accept your 'objectivity'. Please cease and desist." I don't know, maybe I'm like hyper-sensitive, but that reads douchebag to me.
MFAwesome: Haha. Sorry about that, my friend. Yes, drunk, high douchebaggery. And you're right to call out douchebaggery when you see it. Apologies.
That said, I pretty much stand by what I wrote. I understand there's a tonal problem there, but I didn't feel like taking the time or energy to craft a lucid argument, and I still don't, though I’m sure such an argument could very, very easily be crafted. Buck up, fella. You had to know you were doing potentially controversial work. Bound to piss someone off sometime.
Seth Abramson: Fair enough -- you don't have to craft an argument, and I won't bore you with one either. I'll just say this: It's fine if someone disapproves of the methodology (though I don't have difficulty defending it), but it's a different thing altogether when someone calls me a liar. Your comment about UW-Madison (whose MFA I _don't_ attend, by the way) is what really angered me. All of the data for the rankings is public data which doesn't come in any way from my own opinions. My personal opinions form absolutely zero part of the rankings.
UW-Madison is currently #3, but it wouldn't be quite that high in my own personal rankings -- it's applicants who put it there, not me. So whether I'm "objective" or not, my personal opinions just have no opportunity, whatsoever, under the methodology, to intrude on the data. Hate the rankings, hate the methodology, but don't tell me I'm committing a fraud on the applicants of America unless you have proof.
MFAwesome: Drunk and high or not, I didn't say you attended UW Madison's MFA program. I know you're in the PhD program. Which means, presumably, that you take writing workshops, teach courses, and draw a paycheck from the University. Apples to oranges, don't you think? And still a conflict of interest. I'm not calling you a liar or accusing you of fraud, just saying that the conflict of interest should disqualify you from the role of "ranker."
Here's the thing. When a thing claims to be one thing and is obviously something else, I call that thing bullshit. I wouldn't have a problem with your "rankings" if you called them instead "survey of MFA applicants", but that loses a little punch, doesn't it?
Ranking programs this way is like polling job applicants and then publishing a list "The Best Companies in America". Might be an interesting list, but it would be essentially meaningless.
I'm sure you've heard this all before, but to make an accurate list, at a bare minimum you'd need to rank faculty, poll faculty, poll current students, poll former students, rank post-graduation job placement, and rank post-graduation publication records. But I can see why you don't do that, since it would be a lot of work.
So there you go, recuse yourself until you're no longer affiliated with a program that you're ranking, and I won't call you a fraud. Change the name of your "rankings" to better reflect what they actually are, and I won't call them bullshit. Or change the "methodology" and actually do the hard work required. Otherwise, you'll have to live with me calling it how I see it.
Seth Abramson: [MFAwesome], no one who lives and works outside the CW field would give enough of a damn about MFA programs to rank them or even (frankly) to gather together information about them, so any database or ranking or whatever about MFA programs is going to be run by someone affiliated with an institution -- period. AWP does annual surveys of MFA programs, publishes a database of information, &c, and it's housed at an MFA program -- George Mason. The Board of AWP is comprised of faculty at MFA programs. The most that can be done -- that any reasonable person could ask of a ranking system in this field -- is this: (1) All of the data is publicly available and therefore publicly verifiable, making the claim of "bias" just a feeble excuse for not accepting publicly available and publicly verifiable data which anyone could confirm if they wanted to get off their butt and do that; (2) All of the data, once collected, goes through an editorial process which involves independent persons not affiliated with any ranked institution. P&W is an independent non-profit with a huge editorial staff that reviews everything I do; moreover, I work under a contract which prohibits me from having direct contact with programs. And once again, I am not "affiliated with a program that I'm ranking" (as you yet again claim), I'm in a doctoral program at a university which also hosts one of 207 ranked MFA programs -- though again, what the hell does that matter when all the research I do is independently verifiable (and verified) anyway. In five years of doing this work -- and where do you get off urging me to "do the hard work required"? I work hundreds of hours a year on this, what the hell do _you_ do for anyone but act the troll on people's blogs? -- programs have asked for my data to be corrected fewer than eight times, and in only three of those instances did the data changes result in any sort of substantial ranking alteration. That's a record for accuracy I'd put up against anyone's -- especially yours, as my three major errors in five years is two less than the five major errors you just made in just your last Facebook note to me. In any case, as an attorney I have a sneaking suspicion I know exponentially more than you do about what constitutes "a conflict of interest" and what doesn't.
You want to know what a conflict of interest would be, [MFAwesome]? THE METHODOLOGY YOU ARE SUGGESTING WE USE. What kind of moron thinks that surveying "current students" is not a conflict of interest? In that case, the actual data for the rankings would be _created_ by people with an institutional affiliation and every reason to be self-interested; unlike here, where there's only an institutional affiliation as to a single researcher who a) doesn't create the data, b) doesn't presently attend any of the ranked programs, and c) can be independently verified as to everything he does. Likewise, how in the world can you claim to even have an inkling of what the term "conflict of interest" means when you want to "poll faculty" regarding the quality of... OOPS! their employers. That's as asinine as polling current students regarding the quality of... OOPS! their own academic credentials. Or as asinine as asking "former students" to rate the quality of... OOPS! their own CVs.
Maybe this is why no credible ranking methodology _in the world_ asks current students or faculty to self-report on their own alma maters or employers? Here's the thing, [MFAwesome]: years have been spent honing this methodology, and I resent the sort of brazen jackassery that makes you think you can lecture me about how ranking methodologies are devised. You're ignorant on this topic -- totally so -- and that makes you arrogance all the more risible.
As I'm sure you know (being clearly so well-researched on this topic), the P&W rankings are not one ranking but nine rankings -- and the majority of those are hard-data rankings whose methodology is beyond dispute: selectivity rankings, funding rankings, student-to-faculty ratio rankings, fellowship-placement rankings, and job-placement rankings (do you seriously know so little about what you're popping off about that you just advised me to do "post-graduation job placement" rankings, when exactly that type of ranking is _in the current issue of the magazine_?).
What you're complaining about here is a single part of the rankings, a survey of individuals in the field of creative writing with some basis of knowledge (and a strong innate motive to be knowledgeable) about a wide range of programs -- exactly the sort of surveys U.S. News does for well over two-thirds of the degree types they rank. The difference? USNWR stops there -- they do _only_ those surveys. P&W augments its surveys with five hard-data rankings and nine other categories of data, the better to bolster the validity of the surveys. So unless you've been on the USNWR website recently popping off about how they're all frauds and they don't know anything about statistics or methodology, you've no grounds to be so recalcitrant here.
You can "call it how you see it," [MFAwesome], and that's exactly the problem with America -- ignorant, stupid people "calling it how they see it" when they don't know what the hell they're talking about. So here's me "calling it how I see it" on a subject I now have more than enough to make a call on: You're a douchebag. In the future, don't request to be Facebook friends with anyone you plan on being a towering asshole to.
S.
Note: S. 'unfriended' after sending this message, but before I had the chance to read it, so I wasn't able to respond. I don't think responding would be that hard. Apparently though, S. hadn't taken the tongue lashing to a level that was satisfactory to him, and he called me on the phone later that night (my phone # was listed on facebook). If you want to discuss his "rankings" with him, his phone number is 515-421-3101.
No comments:
Post a Comment