In an important way, Columbia may not be able to submit a CDS consistent with that of its peers. Columbia appears to have ignored the statistics of its School of General Studies students for so long that to introduce them now would make Columbia seem quite different from how it has presented itself through U.S. News.
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This is called, “Uneasy Rests the Crown Syndrome”. At #2 in the poll, Columbia has no place to go but down, no matter what they decide to do about their CDS.
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Pretty clear in the light of recent events that this move was in anticipation of Columbia being punished by the magazine’s online editors:
Columbia University - Profile, Rankings and Data | US News Best Colleges
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Didn’t mean “elite” economically; I meant elite, academically.
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Surely it’s been Mentioned here, but didn’t usnews boot Columbia for misreporting faculty/student ratios and class size?
Yes.
This could be a bigger risk to USNWR. It could highlight the instability of their rankings. It is like the SAT average was really 1000 but they were reporting 1500.
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I wonder if any Columbia students/graduates have complaints about choosing to attend Columbia? Now that Columbia is unranked, do students/families think they are not receiving what they feel they deserve? The percentage of students who chose Columbia over X directly because Columbia was ranked higher than X must feel absolutely dejected now that they are attending a school ranked below UofSWDakota.
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The answer is no, of course.
Columbia is one of the finest universities. Why did they feel this was necessary?
I have the same feeling about Chicago. Nondorf has played all sorts of games to improve its ranking, but Chicago is strong enough to stand on its own merits without his used car salesman tactics. Would it really matter if it dropped a couple of spots as a result? I say no.
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Possibly the same reason US public companies have been ruined by short term earnings obsession. In that case it’s because that’s how their boards incentivize the leaders. CEO’s are heavily rewarded for prioritizing quarterly earnings, even if manipulated, over building long term product development and growth, customer loyalty, etc. I would imagine many heads of colleges similarly look at ranking improvement or retention as a perceived barometer of their success. If they didn’t, or if it was totally uncorrelated to job retention (or job promotion), there would be no reason to focus on it.
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Since there is a new thread with updates, and since this platform does not effectively allow merging threads, I am closing this and asking further comments go on the new thread: