Are you suggesting that those colleges appeal to nostalgic communists?
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Let’s move on please.
It’s doubtful these schools are anywhere near as good as the media says they are. And I’m not surprised that many of their numbers appear to be “fudged.” I’m pretty sure every other elite school does the very same thing, but are better at hiding it. Why would anyone in their right mind use US News as a credible source for finding a college?
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A new twist is added by Forbes, which uses completely different criteria - and kept its criteria the same from last year to allow for direct comparison. It reaffirms Columbia’s high ranking.
Columbia comes in #5, after Princeton, but before the rest of the other Ivy’s. One reason is the higher retention rate (which had dipped significantly at other schools), and the higher fraction of Pell recipients.
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“According to the latest federal data, only 76% of former freshmen returned to Harvard for their second year in the fall 2020, bringing the university’s otherwise impressive three-year average retention rate to about 90%, from 98% last year. Fellow Ivy Leaguer Yale University, which dropped six spots in our rankings this year, also saw its retention rate take a nosedive to 65% in fall 2020 from 99% the prior year.”
That is a dumb criteria to use mechanically when it does not adjust for voluntary leaves of absence because of COVID. When students are actually dropping out or forced to take academic leave, it does reflect on the school. This is not the case here. HY made it incredibly easy to take time off. The fact that so many students chose to do so only reflects how important HY students value their on campus/ in class experience. That’s a plus not a minus in my book.
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Agreed, of course!
Any attempt to find “measurable” differences between the nation’s top universities, then assign those differences arbitrary weights, and to use the resulting “number” to rank them to whatever decimal point is pseudo math – and the resulting “order” entirely meaningless.
We might as well throw in the zip code as a tie-breaker.
Unless SOME school ranks the best in every single imaginable criteria, and is undisputed #1 - all these lists are just annual click-bait.
So, does anyone REALLY think Harvard, Columbia, etc. will see a significant drop in enrollment next year, because it’s no longer ranked among the “Top 10” in one list, or the other.
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If the Forbes article is correct, it appears its data is based on stats from Fall of 2020. Thousands of colleges saw their retention rates fall that year due to Covid. Columbia may have been relatively unscathed due to its location. I am very skeptical that Princeton’s retention rate in any other year before or since was 65%.
Absolutely. Like all the different rankings, it simply demonstrate how easily the choice of criteria can lead to huge moves up and down the hitparades, when in reality nothing dramatic ever changes at each “ranked” university - or the relationship to their peers in these short terms.
Nor will these “forced jumps” affect where people with the stats and means will apply.
While college reviews are helpful for people to select a list of schools by various criteria, the “big news” each year how the top-10 was re-shuffled amongst themselves, serves nobody but the publisher.
Actually - that is the ONE piece I’m truly curious about: I’m not sure that the location of Columbia (an urban campus in a large city in the Northeast, in a Democrat-run state) is sufficiently unique to explain any huge differences?
And if the 3-year-average retention rate truly was such a big factor, how can Princeton get a high ranking with the stated much-lower 83%, but Harvard drop off despite a much higher 90% retention?
They also cite the effect of Pell Grants - but state that it’s only weighted 5%:
Harvard doesn’t enroll many Pell Grant recipients, …, only 11% of undergraduate students at the university
With adjacent Barnard placing 71st, it doesn’t seem that location by istelf would be sufficient to explain Columbia’s 5th-place Forbes ranking.
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No clue, but perhaps if some of Columbia’s data was wrong, maybe the data on retention rate was wrong too.
Apparently, Forbes is using the “2020-2021 final release data in IPEDS”.
I don’t know (literally) how “official” those figures are, or how much room to interpretation the colleges have in their reporting? (Not a rhetorical question).
Or (tongue in cheek), USNews had it right all along all these years on how superior Columbia is, given that now even Forbes agrees using completely different sources, methodology and weighting. 
Sorry - triplicated by your system, because your Web App claimed 5xx Server Errors when trying to post - but clearly did post inspite of it.
I believe that is the explanation Columbia had provided USNWR for their “inaccuracies”.
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