Has US News Rankings Improved Higher Education Through Competition?

<p>In Canada, Maclean’s magazine ranks Canadian schools and is the Canadian equivalent of US News rankings. If you are a subscriber to the print edition, you can go online and adjust the rankings. You can eliminate categories that you feel irrelevant and reassign weights to the other categories. USnews should do the same.</p>

<p>"To what degree are schools actually better than they were in the past, and to what degree has US News caused energy to be wasted on things that did not tangibly improve the school, but did raise its ranking. Also, has the competition increased donations from alumni? "</p>

<p>I imagine many of them would prefer not to care about “rankings” by some non-academic magazine trying to bolster sales, but over the course of time many have found that position did not work for them, because they were actually being hurt by the rankings. Others saw right away that this could help them and jumped on the bandwagon much faster,and aggresively manipulated variables as a way to improve their rankings, and hence improve their school. Rather than the other way around…</p>

<p>So, many of them are now probably doing stuff with consideration to the impact on their rankings, to some degree at least.</p>

<p>Hopefully some of the stuff they are doing is actually making substantive improvements to their schools. but some of what I perceive is more like window-dressing to improve their rankings by these formulas, or arguably even harmful.</p>

<p>Like:
aggessively soliciting applications, for no other reason but so they can reject more people.
Going SAT optional, SAT non-existent, or simply lying about scores, or selectively not reporting certain colleges of their university that have lower scores.</p>

<p>To the extent that at least some are probably changing who they admit based on being mindful of this reporting and rankings, that’s kind of disturbing. All that gets reported and ranked are class rank and test scores, not the many touchy-feely parts of an applicant’s qualifications that oftentimes may be more important, in the big picture. I’ve heard of a couple schools that were actually trying to modify their campus culture to appeal to a broader range of applicants, just so they could get more applicants (though they already ahd plenty of applicants)</p>

<p>They may be playing games with class sizes to appeal to the ratings formula, but in the process getting more kids needlessly shut out of classes, and/or having less qualified instructors teach the additional sections. Small classes may be great, if there are no tradeoffs. The tradeoffs go unevaluated/ unranked.</p>

<p>They probably are getting more donations, because now alumni are being pumped for donations with the main goal being to pump their rankings.</p>

<p>The PA is the only thing that attempts to measure the qualifications of who is doing the teaching, at least s senior faculty is concerned. Though I’m not sure that this fully captures the qualifications of everyone who is doing the teaching - including the sea of visiting professors, permanent lecturers, graduate teaching asistants, undergraduate teaching assistants that undergrads may be exposed to, to various extents.</p>

<p>^^^^Sad, but true. You hear that WUSTL?</p>

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There can only be so many colleges and universities with distinguished academic programs…which is what PA is measuring. If you add too many members to the “good old boys” club, distinction is diluted.</p>

<p>Re #16:
Before US News there was plenty of data available about colleges. it was all there, in the Barron’s and Cass & Birnbaum college guides. One just had to go through the data oneself. That’s what I did. These guides had sections that put the colleges in different selectivity buckets, eg " Most selective", Very selective", etc.
From there, one could look at the data to make finer distinctions for ones self.</p>

<p>It wasn’t so bad, at all. I had plenty of information. I made my own ranking, based on my own criteria and the available data which was readily available in the guides.</p>

<p>More information is good, and the PA is a piece of such information. but I’d rather decide how to use it myself (ie do my own ranking), than have to be beholden to how some magazine decides to use it.</p>

<p>Accurate numbers measuring tusks may provide little information about the whole elephant. The act of taking numbers on various aspects of the animal may cause the reporters to distort the numbers to show their animal is better. Despite limitations, however, having numbers readily available is probably worthwhile for potential buyers. </p>

<p>My theory is that the rising tide of excellent students, corresponding to increased student populations, means that excellent students need to cast a wider net. Same forces effect professors, so many colleges are improving because not every excellent student and professor can get into HYP etc. Back in the day, a great poly sci prof at Yale, beloved by students, did not get tenure. I just saw a lecture by him on the Teaching Company brochure - he is at U.T., so Yale’s loss was U.T.'s gain. College guides, supported by data, give ideas about other options that may not have been considered before. As excellent students and professors go to lesser known places for education, the “prestige” factor for those places increases. As with any numbers based performance incentive, there can be negative consequences from unscrupulous “gaming,” but there are benefits in greater name recognition for other deserving schools. </p>

<p>To pick some names off of the LAC rankings, will a good student receive a significantly better education at Middlebury than she would at Bates or Kenyon (assuming roughly equivalent departments rather than comparing area of strenth to area of relative weakness)? Is the education at Reed College (#49) inferior to that at Williams (#1) or will an excellent student have more or less the same opportunities at either place, and and have similar prosects upon graduation? Obviously, the level of the student body, faculty, and resources at Williams will be signficantly different from that at Doane College (NE), but how significant is the variation in the top 50 or even top 100 or so LACs? I will admit to some bias as S is going to Whitman next year.</p>

<p>rjkofnovi: I am not against public schools being fairly evaluated in the mix. And we consumers (parents and students) do want some relative measuring stick. Which is why I have advocated an alphabetical listing by tiers. Top 50, next 50, and so forth. Schools should market themselves as the ANTI UNSWR (rankings obsessed neurotic schools) and see how that sells. Seriously.</p>

<p>I dont want one size fits all either. I want diversity in just about everything a college has to offer: size, geography, student body, faculty, POLITICS, facilities, sports, food service, internships, graduation rates, jobs at graduation, on and on.</p>

<p>There is a certain segment of our society that is obsessed with prestige with little or no regard to appropriate fit, which results in some sad stories of blowouts, suicides, alcohol abuse, cheating, whoring around, and on and on. </p>

<p>If you listen to the leaves, as my mother used to say, they will guide you. What she meant was look around and find the right environment for YOU and your skillset, needs, objectives, personality, etc and you will be much better off. Whether your SAT is a 1600 or a 1100, there are many colleges (many of them off the radar screen of the prestige hounds) that may well be the best place for you to attend college. I have seen it over and over and over.</p>

<p>Not saying prestige is NEVER a factor. That would be disingenuous and false. Its a factor for most people…I just dont want it to be the DOMINANT factor. Did we use USNWR? We observed and remarked and made our choices. We didnt obsess. Then we looked at the faculty in the schools we were looking at, their credentials and awards and expertise and reputation (if we could find out), and went from there. Finally, just showing up on campus and getting the vibe: is this school too intense and hyper? Is this school too sleepy and laid back? Is this school challenging enough? Are the people here like me? Or do I feel really, really out of place here? How important is sports? How important is gothic architecture? Do I prefer modern architecture and a sense of reaching forward? Or do I prefer the hallowed halls of past academia? Everyone is different.</p>

<p>I applaud people who look at Kenyon or Ursinus or Lafayette or Clemson or NCState or Michigan State without regard to whether they are high enough in the USNWR rankings for your personal stats. </p>

<p>I dismiss people who get into 10 colleges and then pick the school which is most prestigious (and only that factor) and dump the rest with a sneering voice of “they weren’t high enough…they were my safeties or match schools.” </p>

<p>UCB: you made my point. Its an exclusive club and they have no intention of letting in any “upstarts”. Its a game. Its all about perceptions.</p>

<p>Not saying the top schools dont deserve to be there and they don’t provide an exceptional educational experience and pump out PhD’s and nobel laureates. This is really less about “them” and more about “helping students find the right school.” In other words, I’m not into narcissism.</p>

<p>IPEDS contains almost all of the objective data in USNWR and is free and available to play with for anyone. Transparency is good, that’s not what we’re talking about here though.</p>

<p>Does USNWR create competition between colleges which results in changed practices which improve higher education?</p>

<p>I do think that it has resulted in some places changing practices, but I’d debate the notion that these changes are more than window dressing, like monydad said. There is 0 analysis out there on the benefit side on just about every category USNWR measures, so there is no way to know how much of a difference is meaningful or if differences are meaningful at all across most categories. The subjective evaluation of many people in the business of higher education is that the causal chain between these factors and an outcome of "better education " is weak, if existent, even in theory.</p>

<p>So yes, it’s increased competition, but likely across factors which are not important for improving education or inefficient means of improving education.</p>

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<p>Not considering test scores takes a school out of the rankings completely. This actually creates yet another reason to go test optional if a school wants to boost its ranks.</p>

<p>Like it or not, colleges care more about US News Rankings than prospective students (well, sort of) and the general public. I remember a news blog (maybe it was “the Choice”) said that when a college moves into the top 50, it receives a significant boost in applications. I also don’t like how many colleges manipulate their admissions (UChicago this year) to seem more prestigious or to increase their rank.</p>

<p>“Not considering test scores takes a school out of the rankings completely.”</p>

<p>Not necessarily:
[Columbia</a> GS | School of General Studies | Columbia University in the City of New York](<a href=“http://www.gs.columbia.edu/]Columbia”>http://www.gs.columbia.edu/)</p>

<p>What is not collected is not reported, and therefore cannot be used against a university which is presumed to be reporting aggregate stats across its colleges. </p>

<p>Of course, alternatively they could collect the data and just exclude it from what they report externally. To wit, until several years ago Columbia did not report stats for Fu; then Fu stats got better so they started including them in the reported aggregate. They have never reported any info for GS (eg admit %) in their “consolidated” reporting.</p>

<p>Which reminds me, another thing Pre-US News is that the guide books showed stats for each college of a multi-college university separately. there was no attempt to consolidate the university as an aggegate as if each of its component colleges were just the same. Where there were material differences in selectivity, different component colleges of multi-college universities appeared in different selectivity “buckets” on the selectivity page.</p>

<p>“Is the education at Reed College (#49) inferior to that at Williams (#1)”</p>

<p>Because Reed doesn’t return the questionnaire, USNWR assigns missing values one standard deviation lower that the average for the school’s group. Reed was in USNWR’s top ten back when they returned the questionnaire.</p>

<p>To show how arbitrary such rankings are, here is a list (a specific narrow criterion, advanced grad school prep, future PhD earners) with Reed #4 and Williams #17:</p>

<p><a href=“Harvard v. LACs - College Search & Selection - College Confidential Forums”>Harvard v. LACs - College Search & Selection - College Confidential Forums;

<p>This just shows how rankings are sensitive to the specific criteria chosen, as well as accuracy of data.</p>

<p>The time has passed for one-size-fits-none on-paper rankings. USNWR’s data gathering is excellent, but it’s time for their web site to allow *students<a href=“instead%20of%20magazine%20editors”>/i</a> to choose the criteria important to them.</p>

<p>It baffles me why so many use the term “prestige” in a pejorative sense. Prestige is good and it makes sense to seek a prestigious college. Prestige develops over time from consistently excellent performance. Prestige is not imaginary. Prestige is a substantive concept. Prestige also has its perks.</p>

<p>All it has done has made people feel bad about attending excellent schools b/c they were rejected by other “higher ranked” schools. USNWR is about selling magazines not making education better. If you remember that, the whole issue makes more sense (cents).</p>

<p>“Most college presidents despise the USNWR rankings and would like to put that nonsense out of business.”</p>

<p>]</p>

<p>I’m a professor of 18 years. I’m also president of our professional association (which covers 10,000 faculty members across thousands of colleges), and I’ve been an administrator. </p>

<p>PROFESSORS do not care about USNWR rankings. Trust me. Yes we care very much about prestige and research reputation, but that has NOTHING to do with magazine ratings, which are entirely intended for students and their parents. In fact, a high ranked school by USNWR may be considered low rank and unprestigious by faculty; and vice versa. Where some school falls in the ranks has no impact whatsoever on our ability to hire faculty. What we PUBLISH and our reputation our field based upon our research impact is what matters to us.</p>

<p>I can also tell you that what these rankings do is drive administrators and Deans- not professors- to scramble to influence the next set of rankings. Over and over and over again they play at the edges, playing around with very very superfical stuff, repackaging, seeing what the others are doing, playing with numbers and how things are reported, working on yield, and lots and lots and lots of marketing. The actually EDUCATIONAL component, the curriculum, the pedagogical approach, never changes because that is not relevant to USNWR.</p>

<p>I know for a fact that USNWR has been very very bad for the college education system. It has wasted TONS of valuable time, energy and resources on all the wrong things. It has nothing to do with ‘education’ and everything to do with selling a product that can convince naive consumers that its worth buying.</p>

<p>USNWR unquestionably provides alot of useful information for prospective students. The most useless thing it provides – and the thing it will never eliminate because it’s what sells magazines – is that lone number to the left, the ranking.</p>

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<p>I’m sure hawkette and Pizzagirl would fight “tooth and nail” to discredit this statement.</p>

<p>“In fact, a high ranked school by USNWR may be considered low rank and unprestigious by faculty; and vice versa.” </p>

<p>Sounds like the PA score rating to me!</p>

<p>RML,
Au contraire, mon ami, starbright’s statement above merely confirms the status quo priorities on far too many American college campuses today, ie, that the interests of the undergraduate student are a secondary concern to the faculty. </p>

<p>If one’s college choice is to be determined by prestige within academia, have at it. If, however, you care about the actual student experience and the environment that the student will encounter at a given college, then an intelligent consumer will look beyond the vapidity of the prestige-obsessed. </p>

<p>The problem with academia is that it is accountable to no one. Students and families regularly transfer their life savings to the colleges and what they too often get in return is a system that is not concerned with their interests. I think that that is borderline criminal. </p>

<p>A student goes to ABC College, gets many of his classes led by an unintelligible, non-English speaking TA and/or gets shut of out of classes necessary to advance and/or receives little to no academic advising and/or is left to fend for himself/herself in the job search process….I could go on. And what is the consequence to the institution or the faculty for producing this pathetic environment?? I know of none. </p>

<p>If you want a model of combining the interests of both the undergraduate student and the faculty, look at a place like Dartmouth. Compare that to your favorite, UC Berkeley. The differences are vast….and meaningful…to the average undergraduate student. I don’t know if you’ll ever understand that, and I certainly don’t expect your closed mind to ever acknowledge that Dartmouth is superior to your beloved, but for the vast majority of Americans, it is. And I could add several dozen more colleges to this list in comparison. Thankfully, USNWR provides a lot of the data that makes this screamingly clear.</p>

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<p>With all due respect, almost by defnition, EVERY data point that USNews uses helps the “rich (Ivy League and top 10 LAC’s)”. Not only that, it helps the private, rich…</p>

<p>Think about it. :rolleyes:</p>