https://premium.usnews.com/best-colleges/columbia-university-2707
They didn’t adjust all other rankings, there’s just no school at #4.
U.S. News & World Report has unranked Columbia University from a number of rankings in the 2022 edition of Best Colleges (first published September 2021) after Columbia failed to respond to multiple U.S. News requests that the university substantiate certain data it previously submitted to U.S. News
The right move on USNWR’s part - but this casts as much shadow on their process as it does on Columbia’s.
Doubt if Columbia minds.
If they didn’t mind why bother manipulating the results in the past? It apparently did matter to them.
It seems that Columbia didn’t fail to respond; it just did not provide satisfactory answers. According to USNWR’s article, “To date, Columbia has been unable to provide satisfactory responses to the information U.S. News requested.” Additionally, USNWR didn’t unrank Columbia until after Columbia said it would not be submitting info for the 2023 USNWR edition because it needed to make sure it was gathering and reporting institutional data properly (source).
Columbia issued its statement on June 30 and then USNWR unranked Columbia on July 7 as (in my opinion) there would be way too many questions once the 2023 edition of USNWR came out about Columbia not being in it and then why it remain ranked for 2022, even though there were serious questions about the legitimacy of the of the data submitted for 2022.
U.S. News is committed to providing quality information on institutions across the country and relies on schools to accurately report their data so prospective students and their families can make informed decisions throughout their college search…we continue to be concerned and are reviewing various options to ensure our rankings continue to uphold the highest levels of integrity.
Well, if USNWR wants accurate data, then they should just aggregate all the data from the Common Data Sets, which Columbia plans to release this year. There’s no penalty for submitting false information to USNWR. I suspect there is a penalty for submitting false information to the government. Then all schools would be producing a CDS which would be helpful to students and families, and the data would be accurate, or at least more accurate. Sounds like a potential solution to me.
I sincerely hope that there might be a knock on effect and that other colleges follow Columbia’s example–either because they have to, or because they choose to. Now, Columbia obviously needs to get to the bottom of this., but I’d love to see less emphasis placed on USNWR rankings.
I doubt anyone is going to stop applying to Columbia as a result of this action.
P.S. At least Reed now has company.
People have their own rankings in mind even if usnews doesn’t rank. For example Harvard is not at 1 , but many people think of it as 1 or 2. People also have a sense of Elo ratings — ie there is an informal bilateral rankkng between each pair of schools in people’s minds that leads to a fuzzy set of rankings at least in the first 20 or 30 schools.
A similar hope was expressed in another thread on this topic, and again I’ll ask: follow Columbia’s “example” for what plausible reason?
Columbia seemingly engaged in a years’ long conspiracy to submit fraudulent data to USNWR to manipulate its place in the rankings. The evidence against them is as devastating as it is thorough.
Whether other institutions are pro, anti, or neutral on the rankings, or a combination thereof, in what possible way would it benefit them to opt out now?
To repeat: Columbia isn’t opting out of the rankings as a principled, proactive objection. They are being kicked out because they were cheating so brazenly one of their own employees blew the whistle on them. Why would an institution that has been following the rules want to hitch themselves to Columbia’s train wreck??
You’re right, and I didn’t phrase that correctly. I agree with you, and that’s why I said “because they have to.” If Columbia has been caught, I am sure others are will be caught too. Maybe the others don’t even know it yet. My point is more about other schools dropping out of the USNWR rankings and joining Reed (who chose to opt out) and Columbia.
Unless similar allegations are likely for other schools, why would they drop out? It’s apparently all a big competition. So, doesn’t this latest inure to their benefit?
Plus, if the allegations are true, wouldn’t this represent a serious blow to their credibility…
Columbia’s status of unranked may change in September. By general policy, U.S. News ranks schools by alternative sources of information if necessary.
If Columbia actually does this, which they have not in the past, USNews very well could rank them. They rank, and have ranked in the past, other schools that do not cooperate/provide data directly to USNews.
And I’ve never done the cross-reference, but even without a CDS, the data in IPEDS is likely to cover very much the same. I can certainly see not trying to retroactively re-rank Columbia for the 2022 publication, using this information, this late in the game. And with the 2023 rankings coming out in about 2 months, I wonder if they’ll need to leave them unranked for another year, using IPEDS/CDS data starting with the 2024 ranking.
https://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/datacenter/institutionprofile.aspx?unitId=190150
You are right that IPEDS data include much of what we see on the CDS…even for schools that haven’t traditionally completed a CDS, like Columbia. The downside of IPEDS info is that it’s typically delayed, at some points it’s from 2 years ago. If USNWR was ok keeping Columbia in the rankings, why didn’t they just use Columbia’s IPEDS data now?
I’m sure there are Columbia admin and trustees who care a bit about this kerfluffle, but I doubt we will see any decrease in applications because Columbia was caught providing bad numbers or isn’t ranked in USNWR’s list.
I don’t think very many people thought Columbia is #2 anyway. The way to check this is to ask where would the top kids apply EA/ED. Separately, if they had both Columbia and Yale at the end of the season, how often would a student pick Yale over Columbia etc. At least at our school Columbia did not figure in the top 5. It might even be below Penn — not sure.
However other people think of Columbia, Columbia itself clearly doesn’t believe it belongs to the very top tier. Otherwise, it would have done away with ED in favor of some form of EA.
This is also true, although the EA/ED preference by the school is not determinative in thinking of them to be at the very top. For example Georgetown has only EA (no ED), and people still prefer Columbia or Penn over Georgetown.
The two Catholic schools, Georgetown and Notre Dame, are in a somewhat different category. They can rely on other measures to make sure they’re their applicants’ top choice and will enroll if admitted.
I would like to see USNWR become non-credible. That means more colleges leaving the list either because 1) they have been using false data, which will damage the credibility of both USNWR and the school, or 2) more colleges opting out of providing data to USNWR full stop, because they don’t wish to be part of it, as Reed did some years ago.
If they are not being honest in providing a ranking, that is something we could wish they would fix. But the ranking itself is not a useless service if done properly. It is useful to have an entity do research on colleges and present us with a ranking.
Anyway people are relatively informed consumers of what these rankings are – people make what they want out of them. Not sure why they are simply bad to have.