<p>acarta07, you are wrong.</p>
<p>The president of Stanford sent on open letter several years back to US News stating that he believed the rankings were wrong.</p>
<p>If I am not mistaken, Stanford is ranked quite highly by U.S. News. Maybe they are mad about not finishing in the top 3?</p>
<p>I give U.S. News credit for nudging Stanford and other universities to post their Common Data Set filings on their college Web sites.</p>
<p>IT'S ABOUT TIME FOR THE REVOLT!!!! we've all been held hostage by an organization that is less than scrupulous. imagine about a 25% of the total ranking accounted for by the "old boys"...college presidents all stroking each other! and MONEY. whatever happened to ranking based on...academics!!!!!!!</p>
<p>What college do you recommend for good academics?</p>
<p>tokenadult~ that's a complex question...where location-wise you want to be, your areas of interest, your current level of competitiveness...so i guess i'm saying the answer is highly individualized. are you already in college, or high school? i can't tell from your location.</p>
<p>This boycott will likely have little effect until more prestigious universities join. I also see it as somewhat ridiculous, as ridiculous as eliminating class rank in high schools.</p>
<p>There is a concept in psychology called social facilitation where one's performance improves in the presence of others. An example of this is how a runner usually runs faster during a competition as opposed to running by himself. Although eliminating the flawed US News rankings would probably give more people a warm fuzzy feeling inside, it's not right. In order for there to be winners, there's has to be losers.</p>
<p>dsstark and bluebayou - thanks so much to you both :) Apart from the ihep report that is so good it deserves getting mentioned twice, there is also another publication "Beyond the Rankings: Measuring Learning in Higher Education" that includes an excellent piece entitled "Grading Higher Education" and subtitled "How can journalists assess and compare the quality of colleges and universities?". The report looks at the education debate in terms of the new developing metrics aimed to address that thorny question of higher ed academic excellence - including NSSE and the CLA - Collegiate Learning Assessment.</p>
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[quote]
Journalists lack of attention to learning outcomes is not surprising since most colleges and universities dont devote much time or many resources to the issue, either. Instead, they tend to fall back on their best-in-the-world reputation, cite the need for an independent professoriate and speak of the difficulty of using any test to gauge the value of higher education. Nevertheless, the debate around measuring learning outcomes is growing louder and occurring in more places across the country....
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<p>At the heart of all of this debate is the fact that educators - college presidents, and journalists -such as those in charge of the USNWR rankings, are grappling to come to terms with the same issues and that they exist in a symbiotic relationship. At this point, it seems pretty clear that many people view this as an important issue because the public trust is at stake. If colleges do not collaborate with journalists and if journalists do not continue to collaborate with educators as they put together their ranking systems then we all stand to lose. Metrics such as USNWR derive their prestige and status in the market as a "gold standard" precisely because colleges agree to play the game by their rules. So the question is not how many "prestigious" colleges opt out at all - whatever "prestigious" is supposed to mean. Nor is it a question of how colleges compete with each other to be bigger, better, brighter as they set out to attract ever bigger, better, and brighter applicant pools. Of course it is important to see just how many colleges decide to join the boycott and shun the rankings but a major point has already been made - after all, these days it does not appear that anyone is getting fired for turning their collective back on USNWR.</p>
<p>fudge your analogy does not hold up in my mind. Race results are totally objective. The fastest time wins, the others loose. College rankings are very subjective. Heck a number of years back CalTech "won" the number one USNews rating and they changed the formula. Guess who didn't win the next year?</p>
<p>A more fitting race analogy would be to give the previous year's winner a head start in the race because of his reputation. To give another runner a head start because of a Nike endorsement or any other factor unrelated to the race itself.</p>
<p>As a parent in a family of four children, the oldest of whom is already taking college classes and who will matriculate in a few years, I would much rather have independent journalists providing me with more information about colleges than receive still more propaganda from the colleges themselves. I attend a lot of regional information meetings in my town about colleges all over the country, and I also have attended the NACAC National College Fair events several times (in more than one city). Most colleges are hungry for students, and will say whatever it takes to get a tuition check. Because each of my children can only matriculate at one college at a time, I'd like them to have better information about how colleges compare and what they have to offer than the colleges provide about themselves.</p>
<p>Here is an (admittedly selective) set of excerpts from the third report linked by both dsstark and bluebayou. The point of the boycott is less that it will have much concrete effect on what USNews does, but that higher education leaders are finally saying that they will not be complicit when the consequences of the rankings include factors such as these:</p>
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[quote]
The Impact of Higher Education Rankings on Student Access, Choice, and Opportunity, Marguerite Clarke</p>
<p>Rankings contribute to the increasing stratification [by race/ethnicity and income] of the U. S. higher education system by creating incentives for schools to recruit students who will be “assets” in terms of maintaining or enhancing their position in the rankings. {At this point the article discusses some of the allures of ED/EA, merit $, spending aimed at bumping the rankings rather than increasing educational quality.}</p>
<p>In particular, the rankings tend to most advantage high-income and high-achieving students and to most disadvantage minority students and those from low-income homes.</p>
<p>A less favorable U.S. News rank resulted in a declining applicant pool (at least for the selective, private, four-year institutions that they examined). In addition, a smaller percentage of admitted applicants matriculated, and the resulting entering class was of lower quality as measured by its average test scores.</p>
<p>The consequences for student access, choice, and opportunity vary, but tend to be particularly negative for low-income and minority students. At least some of these adverse outcomes are related to the student selectivity indicators used in the rankings, and highlight the need for rankings that reward schools for how well they have educated students as opposed to how selective they have been in recruiting them.</p>
<p>The small amount of research that directly examines the effects of commercial rankings on employment and earnings outcomes suggests that these publications do have an impact, at least for business school graduates. Not surprisingly, students at less prestigious business schools have tried to increase the standing of their program in satisfaction-based rankings by sending back surprisingly upbeat surveys. There also are rumors of school officials coaching students on how to fill out these forms.
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<p>All that proves is that instead of the 3 schools we applied to kids looking at competitive schools apply to 10 and sometimes more. They still can only go to one so they get four accepts and turn down three. This skews all the numbers.<br>
The rankings by students are rather subject to manipulation which is why I have a problem with using internal student rankings if it impacts their own prospects.</p>
<p>Rankings by any group can skew the results. Which group can more accurately comment on and rank the schools-academics or students? My answer is neither. Both groups should be included along with alumni and recruiters and a broad reputational assessment will result. It is sheer folly to have a reputational assessment only in the hands of unaccountable academics who are more heavily focused on non-student matters and who are rewarded on non-student measures. Give at least part of the vote to the consumers (students, alumni, recruiters)!</p>
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YES! I don't think people realize that peer assessment is the single most important part of the ranking. It reflects how universities view the academics of other institutions, which has an enormous impact on graduate/professional school admission as well as on-campus recruitment. </p>
<p>Peer assessments are made by those who know higher education and its graduates.
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<p>You're correct that the peer assessment represents the single most important part of the ranking. However, this not mean that the numerical importance translates into absolute value. The biggest issue is that the PA represents 25% of the total, but is based on ENTIRELY subjective assessments, and is prone to abject manipulation and cronyism. As far as "Peer assessments are made by those who know higher education and its graduates" a better phrasing would be "Peer assessments are made by those who know about higher education at THEIR OWN school and its graduates." Unfortunately, that is NOT what they are asked about! </p>
<p>I support a separate ranking for the PA, but only in order to stop the distortion of rankings based on objective and measurable data, and most definitely not because this scam masquerading as a reputational survey has much redeeming value.</p>
<p>Fwiw, it also seems that this discussion has not focused very well on the "contents" of the revolt. This group of college presidents DO NOT support the peer assessment: </p>
<p>
[quote]
Last Monday, a dozen college presidents received the letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Chronicle. The letter describes college rankings as based on "misleading" data that "degrade the educational worth for students of the college search process." </p>
<p>The letter asks presidents to make three "commitments," including refusing to fill out the U.S. News "reputational survey," a measure the magazine uses to assess administrators' opinions of peer colleges (the results account for 25 percent of a college's ranking).
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<p>Bethievt wrote, "To me the problem is that "prestige hounds" need a ranking list so they can say they're at "the #1 school". There is a huge market for this product (a list saying WHO"S THE BEST) and I expect there always will be."</p>
<p>I'm sorry I missed this. That's what the rankings are about. Bragging rights. And money.</p>
<p>The people who are arguing that PA is subjective are right. The objective data is subjective too. What data is included is subjective. What the objective data means is subjective. How you account for the objective data is subjective. As soon as you assign percentages to objective data you are now turning objective data to subjective interpretation.</p>
<p>This makes all parts of the US News rankings subjective.</p>
<p>All parts.</p>
<p>So if we are going to have rankings, let's use data and interpret that data so my choices or my kids' choices rank high. :)</p>
<p>Dstark, didn't the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan say, "Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts."</p>
<p>And we are all entitled to think our opinions are facts. :)</p>
<p>dstark,
There you go again.....:)</p>
<p>Regarding your point about the objective numbers, I concur with your criticism of the arbitrary weights assigned by USNWR to some of the objective categories. However, in the case of the objective data, at least we know what is being measured. Graduation rates or class sizes or SAT scores or whatever are what they are. As users, we understand what they are and what they measure and they permit comparisons to be made. By contrast, PA is not defined, we don't not what it is telling us, we don't know whose opinions these are, and we don't know how informed those opinions are. If you want to keep PA, then create a separate ranking for this, but right now all it does is obscure and undermine the validity of the college evaluations and the ultimate rankings that are assigned.</p>
<p>It doesn't matter. ;)</p>
<p>If only that were the case. Unfortunately, these rankings do matter as they shape public opinion and influence the college decision making of thousands of high school students. Not to mention the influence that they have on college administrators as they seek to boost their rankings. </p>
<p>USNWR is not going to stop publishing. The public is not going to stop asking for rankings. But there is a middle ground. Maybe they will create a system that provides the objective data that we see now (and some additional info such as what interesteddad has suggested) and gives the user the ability to weight different variables as they relate to his/her needs and thus creates individualized rankings. Then there could be lots of #1 schools, even yours! :)</p>
<p>That's not what I meant. :)</p>
<p>Those two posts by the newcomer that you are applauding.... maybe you should reread those and then read your posts with your lists or your posts with the "objective data". </p>
<p>I much prefer the newcomer's (friedokra's) posts. ;)</p>