Columbia Won't Cooperate With USNews This Year

I don’t think it accurate to say Columbia isn’t “cooperating” with USNWR. These are the words from the Columbia provost…

“The deadline for that submission is July 1. Given the extensive analysis required to review the data and ensure it complies with U.S. News methodologies, we cannot complete our work with the appropriate care within that timeframe.”

Stated differently it means in spite of having several months of lead time we can not publicly attest to our prior numbers having been accurate, not are we in a position to provide currently accurate data.

Given this was a prepared statement (meaning reviewed by lawyers, communications professionals, and administrators) it it intended to present and protect Columbia. The fact that no mention of prior accuracy and an inability to respond currently are fairly damning. This appears to be an exercise in damage control as clearly the prior numbers were fudged and the current numbers would not be consistent or flattering.

When ones hands are caught in the cookie jar, and the jar has experienced repeated thefts a response of we are now thoroughly reviewing our dietary habits is tantamount to an admission of guilt.

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They probably shouldn’t be ranked higher than Yale, Stanford, or MIT. Though I do think Columbia is outstanding, I’ve always kind of thought of them as being perpetually tied for 6th with UChicago and Caltech.

But then, we harp on it all the time in here – can you really look at a school ranked 3rd and one ranked 6th, three whole ranking spots between them, and rely on ranking to discern a meaningful difference in quality? Typically the answer is “no”.

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The top schools don’t need the rankings. In fact, probably the top 100 schools don’t need the rankings. I wonder what would happen if they all just declined to fill out the questionnaires?

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Yeah, people who care and study up on this sort of thing can identify the top 30-40 private U’s, the top 30-40 LACs, top 30-40 public schools, etc. And from that general knowledge, a sort of generally accepted group of 100ish schools emerges. Heck – add more to each group, quality schools all, to form a top-150 or even 200.

We are blessed to have so many great options in the US.

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Some of them apparently do. Otherwise, why would they try to game their rankings? There’re apparently benefits to the schools and those running them if their schools are more highly ranked or have moved up in rankings. One of the benefits may be reflected in compensation. Bollinger is, and Zimmer was, two of the most highly paid university presidents.

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It’s not in their interest to do this. Being highly ranked (and raising their spot on the list) brings many benefits.

It’s also in USNWR’s best interests to keep a certain set of institutions in the top 10. When the list was first created, Bob Morse - the man who came up with the idea - decided that to gain credibility with readers the list would have to be familiar as well as surprising. So it had to have Princeton, Harvard, Yale, etc in the top 10 as well as some less familiar names that would intrigue readers and lead them to buy the magazine. This principle still holds and every few years there are articles demonstrating how USNWR places its finger on the scale to benefit certain schools.

Long story short - it’s a mutually beneficial co-existence and neither side is motivated to make major changes.

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Actually - I remember Barnard College deciding years ago to stop bothering.

Although Barnard students have full access to the expansive University resources, like all of Columbia’s schools (except Barnard formally paying an annual cost contribution due to its financially independent status), some of these ranking lists would (incorrectly) take away points for the supposed lack of sports facilities, clubs and other amenities.

Yet, over the past 10 years, applications have steadily increased, and admission rates become increasingly selective.

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Good, those rankings are like old fish, they stink and should be thrown out. For too long, colleges have made decisions based on a magazine ranking rather than what is best for their students. The rankings have been used as a mechanism for lower ranked schools to crawl up the ranks by using second semester acceptances, second year acceptances, changes in all types of data.

The sooner they stop ranking colleges the better, IMO.

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Good, those rankings are like old fish, they stink and should be thrown out. For too long, colleges have made decisions based on a magazine ranking rather than what is best for their students. The rankings have been used as a mechanism for lower ranked schools to crawl up the ranks by using second semester acceptances, second year acceptances, changes in all types of data.
Students should look for fit and not rank. And if they care about rankings, they should rely on comprehensive data sets that are already available rather than some compilation that includes factors which have zero bearing on the quality of education.
The sooner they stop ranking colleges the better, IMO.

Before USNWR rankings, people were already informally ranking colleges. If USNWR rankings went away, people will still informally rank colleges.

Of course, formalizing college rankings is a business opportunity for USNWR.

It’s interesting to speculate whether people were “informally ranking” colleges before 1988, or what that might have even looked like. Basically, you’re describing an era when a college was considered “elite”, if it rejected two-thirds of its applicants. That was the cut-off in order to be designated “Most Competitive” by Barron’s college guide and they were listed alphabetically, followed by the next tier, which was designated, IIRC “Less Competitive” and then somewhat sneeringly as “Somewhat Competitive”. But, always alphabetized within each tier.

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Tiering makes much more sense to me (although of course, the tiering shouldn’t be solely based on selectivity).

Especially since there was no internet and extremely limited access to data. So for most people any “ranking” would have been informal word-of-mouth reputation.

Growing up at a public school in CA, everyone academic had a clear sense of the ranked hierarchy of each UC, then CSU’s were kind of a big collective tier, and those of us on the academic tract knew that Harvard, Yale, Princeton, MIT, Stanford and CalTech were considered great. And we knew about USC but it was thought of as the place rich kids who didn’t get into UCLA went. And that’s about it. I don’t even think I had heard of Dartmouth, Brown, Cornell, UPENN. I might have vaguely known Columbia and NYU existed. I had never heard of any of the top LAC’s (or even knew that was a category) until I moved to the East Coast 14 years later. I didn’t even apply out of state and almost no one I knew did.

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Yes, those were the kind of informal rankings that I meant. Obviously, any given person’s informal ranking was incomplete and limited to the colleges that they knew about.

Placing schools within tiers represents information removal. It would seem that readers of USN could create tiers on their own from the current rankings, if desired. However, if USN itself were to place schools in tiers, than readers who prefer more information would be without an option to see individual rankings.

My point is that within a tier the individual rankings don’t really matter. For example if you’re looking at, say, the “top 10 mechanical engineering programs in the country”, is there a meaningful difference between school #3 and school #7 when there are literally hundreds of schools offering this major? Rather one should focus on individual fit and other factors when considering one or more of those schools.

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That’s understood. However, the indicated difference between school #10 (tier 1) and school #11 (tier 2) will be magnified in such a system, which may not serve readers who choose to consult rankings especially well.

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Well, I’m old enough to remember applying to college before 1988. And yes, we ranked schools. There was a book and it had all the same stuff that’s around now including dividing the schools by categories of competitiveness. IT also listed what the acceptance rate was, what made it unique, where it was located, size, cost, and more.

There was just as much interest from the college bound then as there was now. More people stayed in their own state but there were also schools where all the kids went on to college. My graduating class of about 200, had 1 person who joined the military. The rest went on to college. In general, not everyone went to college at all. But in some states, there were more attending. But the idea that only “elites” were going to college is not correct. By 1988, there were loan programs and many could borrow ( and costs were lower). Many middle and lower class kids went to college. And honestly, it seemed like there were more merit based scholarships then than there are now. Today, it seems to be based mainly on pure FA.

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99.5% to college some time before 1988 includes community colleges, or all four year colleges? (And did the military recruit enlist, or go to college like a service academy or with ROTC?)

If four year colleges only, that would be a top-end high school, since typical of the time was probably a third or fewer. My high school decades ago had probably an 80% college-going rate at the time, but most of it was to the local community college. Going out-of-state was not that common; it seemed like the best known one was BYU for students who were CJCLDS members.

Back then, it was more likely that a high school graduate could self-support (not necessarily living with parents) on a high school graduate job while taking a small student loan to cover tuition and books at an in-state public university.

However, then and now, college attendance was still more common as one goes up the SES levels.

Yep, my high school was set up to send kids to college. . So most kids intended to go to college and the school guided kids to be well rounded. A’s went to Ivy/Amherst/Williams, B’s to BC/Tufts/Syracuse/Big States, C’s to Northeastern and State Schools. Times have changed a lot. No one could touch those schools with B’s or C’s. Yes, not typical of time but in the Boston area more kids went to college than elsewhere. There are more colleges here. As an example, I applied to and was accepted by multiple Ivies. That wasn’t unique in my class. It doesn’t happen these days. At all.
Military kid went direct, and we also had one who went to West Point whom I counted in the went to college group.

It’s likely. I think most kids worked Summers and during the school year and parents put in something. Nothing at all like today where most people can’t pay a single tuition year post tax with a single salary. Crazy.

Yes, I think that’s always been true. I think location has a lot to do with it also. In some places, it’s still uncommon to attend college. In some places, it’s very common for many people to have a graduate degree. Often but not always tied to SES. Some immigrant communities have a lot of college bound kids too.

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