<p>Rankings of colleges needed by consumer
By Steven Roy Goodman
09/25/2007</p>
<p>On the Yale University campus today is a meeting of education officials from throughout the nation to discuss alternatives to college rankings. Likely to come out of the gathering will be an increased commitment to continue opposing the use of third-party rankings in college recruiting. Ironically, this meeting is being hosted by Yale, an institution that has always been in the position of ranking applicants and then choosing certain ones over others.</p>
<p>The problem with the article is that it assumes that "third party rankings" are accurate and fair. The rankings that have proliferated in the past decades are neither. It is wrong to choose an inaccurately subjective ranking on the basis that "this is better than having no ranking at all".</p>
<p>The quality of education at a specific institution can not be measured with a cold number. There are more subjective aspects involved and the only "third parties' qualified to make that determination are the prospective students themselves. </p>
<p>I believe that identifying "groups" of colleges which share common academic characteristics, interests, environments and so forth is a lot more relevant, accurate and realistic than ranking a particular school at 11 and another one at 13.</p>
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Americans love rankings.
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<p>Well, americans also love litigation and to suit for the most trivial things. Just because a socially aberrant behavior exists, that does not mean that it needs to be perpetuated by society.</p>
<p>Many critics of US News would agree with much of the article--it
doesn't really deal with the true bones of contention. </p>
<p>Most colleges have no objection to the public dissemination of information (see recent posts on the U-CAN project). Most colleges have no objection to lists that enable consumers to see that a particular school is: #1 for lowest admit rate; #10 for freshman retention, #77 % in faculty with terminal degrees, or whatever. </p>
<p>What colleges do find troubling is that a single figure, the USNews ranking number, digests a host of measures down to a single number that is presented as a meaningful measure of overall educational quality. And they have reservations about the way that this dubious ranking number has come to influence the number of applications they receive, their yield rates for the best students, bond ratings, alumni satisfaction, presidents' salaries [Arizona State], et al. They also have reservations about the way that the power of that single number can cause it to become a factor educational policy decisions on everything from standardized testing policies to capital expenditures.</p>
<p>
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Ironically, this meeting is being hosted by Yale, an institution that has always been in the position of ranking applicants and then choosing certain ones over others.
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What's even more ironic, if not downright hypocritical, is that Yale has refused to join other colleges in boycotting USNWR. It doesn't do so for applicants' sake. Heck, a lot more information is available on its institutional</a> research page. It participates because it benefits.</p>