<p>I've only been following US News rankings for about 4 years, and each year I get more and more fed up with them.
I've seen historical rankings, and when the rankings started, publics were ranked much higher than they are today. The slip is sickening.
I went to a Big Ten school for two years and just transferred to an Ivy League school for purely economic reasons. I'm sickened by what the public schools have become to ranking systems like US News. They are the schools putting education on the table to the majority of this country. Heck, they even supply hundreds of thousands (if not more) Americans with steady jobs (ex: Ohio State is the leading employer in Ohio, by far). They reach out to communities all over their respective states, helping everyone--from teaching farmers about better crop irrigation systems to reaching out to underprivileged schools. I know, public schools aren't the only schools doing this, but publics (especially in the Big Ten, the only major conference I can vouch for) take it as their job, not as community service. </p>
<p>Heck, US News isn't ranking these schools on how good they are (that would be more the territory of the Top Research Universities list compiled by the Center for Measuring University Performance). The rankings have become worthless (although I suppose they may have always been--the recent slip in the majority of major publics simply made me realize this).
Until they start putting the public schools where they belong, I'm afraid I've lost all faith in US News; I'll just stick to the CMUR rankings; they're actually based on things that matter.</p>
<p>CMUR ratings?
I think everyone knows that USNWR measures exclusivity. The only reason it matters is that a lot of sophomores read it and form opinions about the colleges listed. So a strong USNWR won’t mean much, but it does draw quality students to you. It’s interesting that we pay so much attention to college USNWR rankings, yet I haven’t seen anyone mention anything about USNWR’s rankings of hospitals etc.
Look at the breakdown:
Prestige 22.5%
Selectivity 15%
Wealth 35%</p>
<p>20% retention
7.5% relative graduation performance (% graduating vs expected using incoming student’s stats)
Washington post, princeton review, Forbes all have ratings with different methodology than USNWR. Ofc. they are blasted for certain things but USNWR is designed and excels in measuring one thing mostly. Exclusivity. I think princeton review had it right, you can qualitatively measure with surveys specific characteristics and then rank colleges for that category, but ranking colleges in a seemingly objective way overall will lead to gaming of the system and inaccurate ratings as what things are important varies wildly on the person evaluating it. </p>
<p>USNWR would be a lot better off without peer review though, who thought that was a good idea? It’s like rating a vacuum cleaner by dyson on the basis that other dyson models have been good without ever using the product personally. Yay status quo!</p>
<p>Exactly. It’s one big self-fulfilling prophecy. If you’re measuring exclusivity like USNWR does, then who thought it’d be a good idea to take peoples’ opinions (often based on perceived exclusivity) into account? It’s just a big gear with very slow-moving parts.
And publics aren’t worse just because they have smaller endowments! Of course they have smaller endowments, they’re state enterprises, so when they make money, of course they’re going to spend most of it! They’re spending it on community outreach, scholarships to UR students, etc. How USNWR can justify penalizing them for that is a mystery to me (and hopefully any conscious person).</p>
<p>In addition to their academic and research accomplishments, the public purposes you mention are among the several reasons that our great public universities (and not the elite private universities) are the true crown jewels of American higher education.</p>
<p>Well, that’s debatable. But I think most people agree that publics have been underrated far too long by USNWR. Even if getting rid would hurt them (again, debatable), the fact that most of them can’t save up to have multi-billion dollar endowments (because they’re spending them on statewide initiatives for growth, etc.) certainly hurts them. But that’s what the school is there for, so simply by being constructed to help their states, their reputation in magazines like US News is degraded. It’s shameful.</p>
<p>Almost none of what you said means a school in flyover country is a better school than a school in the northeast that can help you obtain a top job at a major institution.</p>
<p>An education that gets you a job on wall street is better than an education that gets you a job on main street.</p>
<p>I didn’t say public schools are better than, say, Ivy League schools. What I said is that public schools have been slipping for years now in rankings for reasons that have nothing to do with how good of an education one can obtain there.
And it is impossible to prove that an education at a school that’ll get me a job on Wall Street is better than one that will get me a job on Main Street. Smells like elitism to me.
I attended one intermediate econ class at Penn (which, I know, isn’t a good sample of classes in general) when deciding if I wanted to actually transfer there from Ohio State or not. The professor was not very good. My intermediate econ classes at Ohio State were, I would say, of a much higher quality, at least in this particular instance (even with a grad student teaching it). Again, I know it’s not indicative of education at the school as a whole, but I think it’s enough to poke a hole in some kind of blanket statement like [school–>Wall Street] > [school–>Main Street].
I, for one, would rather have a job on Main Street. Another hole in your logic: relativism.</p>
<p>schrute wrote: "How I lost respect for US News </p>
<p>"public schools …are the schools putting education on the table to the majority of this country. … reach out to communities all over their respective states, helping everyone–from teaching farmers about better crop irrigation systems to reaching out to underprivileged schools … publics (especially in the Big Ten, the only major conference I can vouch for) take it as their job, not as community service. "</p>
<p>There is a ranking that attempts to accounf for the public outreach mandate of the publics. I don’t know how to find the more current, but here it is from 2007:</p>
<p>Ivy League, Chicago Booth, Kellogg or any other so called ‘elite’ Business Schools will only get you through the 1st round of interview at best. Whether be the Goldman Sach or Mckinsey or any other top companies in the business world, if you don’t have what it takes, you will NOT make it into the 2nd round or in some cases, the 3rd round of interview…</p>
<p>“Probably the reason you deserve to be at Ohio State.”</p>
<p>There are countless famous and extremely successful OSU alumni who completed their undergrad study at The Ohio State University, from the Nobel Prize winners to the School President (current President of Case Western, former president of University of Michigan) to Billionnares (Leslie Wexner, hui-yan Yang), Top Company Executives, CEOs over the century, just to name a few. I will leave you do your own research. Please do not be ignorant!!</p>
<p>@DunninLA, thanks, I forgot about the Washington Monthly rankings. @informative, I’m not at Ohio State, I’m at Penn. But again, nobody can prove that a Wall Street job is better. It’s purely opinion. I don’t care that you’re an elitist, but at least respect that some people prefer a different lifestyle than you.</p>
<p>Now, now, informative, let’s try to be a little nicer. schrute raised a question about a “blanket statement” and you responded with an insult. How about backing your claim?</p>
<p>Bemidji State accounting graduates pass the CPA exam at a higher rate than the state average, and the school has a 240-acre private forest. I would have ranked it higher than 92nd among Regional Universities (Midwest). At least it earned a Tier 1 ranking.</p>
<p>Exactly. Schools are ranked highly largely because they are so selective that applicants have to have super high GPAs and test scores to get in. Then new applicants see that they’re ranked highly and apply, making the schools more exclusive. They aren’t just ranking the quality of the schools - in a way, they’re ranking how many people want to go there, because much of their perceived “prestige” and “selectivity” depends on the quality and large amount of applicants who want to get in.</p>
<p>…and why do they want to get in? For many, it’s because they’re “top” schools. Ergo, self-fulfilling prophecy.</p>