In the time honored tradition of Reed and St. John’s Annapolis, Columbia University will decline to fill out the questionnaires supplied by the USNews annual ranking. The reason given is its need for more time to evaluate its own data collecting mechanisms:
Columbia Won’t Participate in the Next U.S. News Rankings - The New York Times (nytimes.com)
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“For an Ivy League school like Columbia to withdraw from the rankings, even temporarily, is a blow to their reputation and could spur other universities to reconsider their participation as well.”
What a bizarre takeaway. Columbia is withdrawing to address a serious, credible, and thorough complaint that the data they provided is fraudulent. Why would this cause other institutions to follow suit?
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Old thread:
With UCLA and USC leaving the Pac-12, the Ivy League should “relegate” Columbia and add Stanford. 
Where there is smoke there is fire. Columbia’s initial response to their professor’s claims in February was weak and vague — more like a self justification than a defense. As I recall a few people here were pretty defensive about it too…
Better late than never I guess.
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Provost Mary Boyce’s Statement Regarding U.S. News and World Report’s Undergraduate Survey
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Things that make you go hmmm…
No further comment.
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Since 2011, Columbia’s rank within its category has varied from 2 to 5, which is a range representative of its current top-4 position. Columbia’s ascent in the rankings appears more historical (and related to changes in USN’s methods) than dramatic.
This is a blow to USNews’s rankings because when the #2-rated institution withdraws it immediately renders the rankings, at their very top level, as faulty. If just a few more such institutions would make a similar move (your turn, Yale and Stanford!) then the whole thing would fall apart like the house of cards it is. Reed doesn’t affect much, but a concerted effort by just a handful of top institutions certainly would. In the interest of students and parents, you’d think they would seriously consider this.
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Interesting follow-up/response to
Did Columbia University Cheat Its Way to the Top Of the US News Rankings?
Iirc, USNews will use public information and estimates to rank them. I suspect the result will be lower than recent rankings.
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To be clear, Columbia cannot withdraw. It will be ranked his year.
U.S. News has occasionally removed schools from its rankings, however, for what it views as misreporting, as it did with UC Berkeley several years ago.
This seems to relate to a different topic. Yale and Stanford have not been accused of misrepresentation.
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Thanks for the clarification, merc81. Even if Columbia will be ranked, that it’s included without submitted data seems faulty at best. And I certainly didn’t mean to imply that Yale and Stanford had been accused of anything–rather, that they could similarly withhold data and work to undercut the legitimacy of the USNews rankings–which, to my mind, are an indisputably malignant force in US higher education.
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I share your concern about the outsize role USNWR rankings play in college admissions - but, they work to the advantage of these top ranked institutions. These colleges are, after all, in the business of making money - and being highly ranked by USNWR helps them attract top talent and big $$ donors. I don’t see these institutions undercutting the rankings system any time soon.
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Integrity is central to the reputation of any academic institution. Why shouldn’t Columbia, or any other school, release publicly any data they send to USNWR? Having data in the open so anyone who cares can examine them is the best way to ensure data integrity. Why are the two most highly ranked schools that are accused of gaming USNWR rankings also the ones that have kept their Common Data Sets private?
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Nothing against Columbia - it’s a top institution, but did anyone really ever believe their USNWR rank? It was always an outlier.
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Based upon posts here and on Reddit, yes indeedy. Many, many users, including some older, very experienced users, treat USNWR rankings as gospel
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Potentially less faulty than using deceptive or incorrect self reported data which was the previous condition for Columbia. Arguably USN’s current practice of accepting unaudited self-reported data is worse than the organization relying on other publicly available data. And seemed to lead to exposed cases of fraud every few years which themselves are likely the tip of the iceberg of all the unexposed fraud. The incentives for corruption are too high with not enough disincentives.
What similar move??
Columbia isn’t withdrawing to take a principled stand against the supposed hegemony of the USNWR list; it is withdrawing because there is serious and credible evidence that it engaged in a conspiracy to falsify data.
Regardless of whether other institutions love, hate, or are conflicted about the rankings, Columbia’s choices have nothing to do with them, and quitting right now might in fact imply that they had an ethics and truth deficit as well.
Going forward, USNWR should refuse to list any institutions that do not publish a CDS: Columbia, Chicago, JHU, Rochester, and BC come to mind. And anyone who hates the list can continue to ignore it 
.
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This. If USN really cared about the integrity of their list they would not allow any school that didn’t do this to participate.
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Are you sure that Columbia will be ranked next year, despite not sending in data? I thought this meant they’d be out of next year’s ranking, at least.
It’s hard to believe that this year’s magazine isn’t largely completed, so much of the data is lagging by about a year.