"t’s just a few weeks from the next edition of the U.S. News & World Report “Best Colleges” rankings, widely questioned by educators but relied on by many students and parents (and boasted about by some of the same educators who say that the rankings are a lousy way to pick a college).
But it turns out that eight of the colleges ranked a year ago submitted information that was sufficiently incorrect that it would have changed their places in the rankings. And so U.S. News has declared them to be “unranked,” a punishment that lasts until Sept. 10, when the new edition comes out." …
Those schools should be at risk of losing federal aid because they violated the Student Right To Know Act of 1990 and failed to follow the guidelines provided by the US Department of Education for calculating the graduation rates.
It’s amazing to me that colleges demand integrity from their students – which they should – but somehow think the rules don’t apply to them. It’s ironic that they lied about the business program. Are those the ethics they’re teaching their students?
US News–contrary to what so many believe–is not the overseer of post-secondary education in this country. Why in the world would there be a loss of federal funding?
You can find outliers on anything. It is a very small minority of people here who aren’t on the level. Comparing this to the problems with banks is a little too much hyperbole.
The violations mentioned in the article aren’t a game changer for me. Yes, it is hypocritical to submit false information while expecting academic honesty from the students, and those schools deserve “a year on the bench”. However, DD is not picking a school based on the professors salaries, the spending per student, or even the graduation rate. To me it is further evidence that, if these are the ways schools are gaming their USNWR rankings, those rankings don’t mean much, at least to us.
Personally…I am fond of these ratings as they are based on ROI as opposed to so called prestige(we all know many colleges “game the system”) and allows potential students a perspective of what could be affordable and still provide a realistic opportunity and a decent education.
Having said that…I realize there isn’t any perfect way to measure.
“Unlike U.S. News, which focuses on several measures that really shouldn’t matter to students — percentage of alumni who donate, for example — Money magazine tries to answer the questions that prospective students should be asking on their college tours this summer: What is the graduation rate, net price (what’s the real tuition they’ll pay), how much do they and their parents have to borrow in loans, and will they learn any marketable skills that will help them get a job in order to pay back those loans?”
The punishment is only 3 weeks long. They are removed from the rankings until the new ones come out on Sept. 10.
I don’t think answering a question wrong is an integrity issue by itself. None of the errors were done to mislead the consumers of the information. I believe if it was an integrity issue, the punishment would have been more severe.
Come on. Who really thinks USNews is gospel? Or any of them? The complicated formulas don’t make rankings any more than a goof to look at. We like when our schools do well.
I’ve only heard of two of those eight. Are we sincerely worried Big Bad Boss USNews has brought down the hammer?
It’s just the opposite, @lookingforward. The suspension is 3 weeks long. “Bringing down the hammer” would have been suspension for a year. This isn’t even a spanking; it’s more like a side-eye.
Regarding alumni donations:
“Alumni giving rate. U.S. News pitches this as a proxy for student satisfaction, arguing that alumni who felt they received a good education are likely to give generously. That may or may not be true. The easiest way to encourage alumni giving, though, is admission preference for children of alumni.”
^That makes sense anyway. There’s been a lot of past discussion about whether sexual assault statistics reflect the actual number of assaults or the ease of reporting at colleges. In other words, a college with a high number of reported incidents may be a college at which assaults are taken seriously and students are encouraged to report them.
I could see colleges underclassifying assaults in order to game the US News rankings.