I can remember when college guidebooks were something you found in public libraries. And, much like today, there was really only one that more or less occupied the field and it was Cass-Birbaum. My sense is that it took The Yale Daily News’ Insider’s Guide and its cheeky descriptions to really turn it into a small cottage industry.
FWIW. here’s a possible trip up memory lane:
ISNWR’s methodology for ranking colleges that do not submit the survey is quoted below. However, if USNWR believes that Columbia has been previously submitting false information, then they may have a different procedure that can involve a temporary ranking penalty or temporarily removing from rankings.
For schools that don’t return the questionnaires or don’t answer all the questions, U.S. News uses comparable data from the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics (for SAT and ACT scores, acceptance rates, six-year graduation and first-year student retention rates, student-faculty ratios, faculty counts and salaries, tuition, room and board, other student fees, and financial resources), as well as data that U.S. News collected in previous years and in a limited number of cases pulled from those schools’ own websites.
Creating more buckets when there’s considerable uncertainty about which bucket an item should belong to misleads, rather than better informs, IMO. Tiering is about grouping items (in this case, colleges) based on some substantial characteristics, not based on their positions on some rather arbitrary list. So it doesn’t mean separating #11 from #10, unless #11 clearly lacks certain characteristics of the top 10.
In any event, the attempt by USNWR and other rankings to reduce the “quality”, however defined, of a college (or one of its majors) to a single number (i.e. its position in the rankings) is purely a marketing ploy. We all love simplicity and are suckers for products that allegedly shield us from the complexity of the underlying analysis.
Columbia appears by omission to acknowledge that misrepresentations were made. They have now had more than enough time to review how and why these inaccuracies were put forward. Their silence on the matter suggests both that it was deliberate and or that they are protecting those responsible.
If the methodology was correct or it was a one off honest mistake it would have been made public. I strongly suspect there are some very senior members of Columbia’s administration who were both aware and instrumental in this fabrication. From the NYT in response to Columbia’s announcement…
Dr. Thaddeus said on Thursday night that the move raised a host of questions that Columbia had not yet answered.
“Is the university expressing its disapproval of the U.S. News rankings themselves?” he wrote in an email. “Will it withdraw in future years as well? Why can’t the work be completed? What was it about the questions I raised that, apparently, derailed the process?”
The next edition of the rankings is scheduled to come out in September, officials said. To help prospective students navigate without it, Dr. Boyce said Columbia planned in the fall to publish a Common Data Set, a loosely standardized set of statistics used by higher educational institutions. She said it would include much of the same information that is included in the U.S. News profiles.
Dr. Thaddeus said he understood that Columbia had prepared such data sets in the past for its own internal use but did not make them public.
“The point is that they have documents that would shed light on their past submissions to U.S. News — and might even reveal whether their misrepresentations were intentional or unintentional — but they refuse to make them public, even after an overwhelming majority of the faculty who voted asked them to do so,” he said.
The university had not made “any substantive responses to the concrete issues I brought up,” he added.”
Goodness me…I had NO idea that schools like Columbia had withheld CDSs.
Isn’t that a huge red flag if a school DOESN’T disclose this data? What I am getting at is the lack of transparency.
I assumed, obviously wrongly, that all major schools released their CDSs.
Columbia is not unique in this regard. UChicago is another that does not post it. And while most T20’s do post it, if you look at all 4 year colleges, I would guess it’s more common to not make publicly available.
My experience when looking for CDS at various colleges is that it is more common than not to find one (not just at “T20” colleges).
Besides Columbia and Chicago, USC used to refuse posting its CDS, but now it does post it. However, a subset of CDS information can be found at collegedata.com .
I seem to recall an entire thread with a sticky that someone started on CC, entirely devoted to colleges that made their CDSs publicly available. Presumably, this was because it was such an unusual phenomenon. Things may be different now.
But, isn’t there something called, the “Student Engagement Survey” that none of the elites really wants known because it would reveal how disengaged their own students are from pure academics and only waiting to become Goldman Sachs analysts?
My - “slightly” more blunt take - “We got caught gaming the numbers we submitted, and until we can find a way to cheat without geting caught, we’re going to sit this out for a while…”
And more eloquent😀
This is all due to USNews not taking the “News” part of their name seriously. If they did, they would base their rankings on publicly available data (CDS, Tax Filings, Annual Endowment statements, etc.) rather than taking the lazy and fraud tolerant method of relying on surveys. It would take more working on their part, but isn’t that what a “News” organization is supposed to do?
It would also provide a public service by pressuring schools to release more public data.
I don’t think schools like Columbia and UChicago would much enjoy seeing a “NOT RATED - KEEPS COMMONLY PUBLIC DATA CONFIDENTIAL” next to their names instead of a ranking…
I guess that’s finally my point/question: is it a red flag is a school (“top”, T-20, “good” or whatever superlative is used) not to publish its CDS?
Upthread, in addition to Columbia, I’ve seen UChicago, Johns Hopkins, and BC, among a few others, mentioned.
Purely “anecdata-lly” 
, these schools were good “back in the day” for me (i.e., decades ago), but three of them are now stratospheric.
Again, purely on a personal basis, I find that interesting. D is putting together her college application list, and I will make sure she knows about this.
Sunlight is just a great disinfectant, ain’t it?
Clearly, it’s not impacting application numbers.
I’m not sure anyone here could effectively argue (although some might try) that the existence of a CDS equates to transparency in the college’s admissions process.
Is more data better than less? Sure. Will having more data lead to better application strategies? Perhaps for some, but I’m not sure for most.
Maybe more like a flashing yellow caution light than a red flag.
They stopped doing that a while ago. Most of their major old school magazine peers are either out of business or now owned by online engagement brands that exist for clicks. The college rankings are really the only reason they still exist and integrity of their data only matters insofar as it affects their monetary conversion date. In theory a damaged reputation could do that but I bet >99% of those who use them aren’t even aware of news like this.
Ski, I’m not even getting to the issue of application strategies. The question for D is WHETHER to even apply in the first instance. I am not saying that the other schools that don’t publish CDS are engaged in fudging or worse, but it does make you wonder WHY they don’t publish when so many peers do.
Yes, D is aware of the ludicrously low admissions stats, and that the chances are she won’t get it even if she were to apply. But I think she shares my concerns about an issue like what Columbia appears to be facing.
Stating it more simply, I personally wouldn’t want D anywhere near a school that might be making misrepresentations. Columbia is on the block now, and I think we are all extremely curious about what its next steps are going to be.
I have looked at a few CDSs, which is something I wasn’t even aware of until I started hanging out at CC. It is a treasure trove of info, but perhaps I am reading far too much into it than is warranted.
I do think CDS forces a degree of accuracy in disclosure for comparison and review. Meaning it is a “common” or shared methodology for disclosure that the colleges are conveying directly which makes them ethically and likely legally responsible to ensure are correct.
Same reason my kids liked having a CDS available. Why use various metrics for various schools. It’s like reading only what the school wants you to hear and not showing the data that might put them in a lesser light.
Not all schools that don’t publish their CDS’s do so for the same reason. Some of them don’t want to be bothered. Some of them are constrained by their resources. However, schools like Columbia or UChicago actually do collect the data (and more). In fact, they even produce the same (or similar) reports. They just don’t want to make them public. Why?
Small nit: the CDS was actually a creation of USNews adn other publishers such as Petersons, along with College Board, back in ~2002.