<p>"Northeastern University executed one of the most dramatic turnarounds in higher education. Its recipe for success? A single-minded focus on just one list."</p>
Freeland swept into Northeastern with a brand-new mantra: recalibrate the school to climb up the ranks. “There’s no question that the system invites gaming,” Freeland tells me. “We made a systematic effort to influence [the outcome].” He directed university researchers to break the U.S. News code and replicate its formulas. He spoke about the rankings all the time—in hallways and at board meetings, illustrating his points with charts. He spent his days trying to figure out how to get the biggest bump up the charts for his buck. He worked the goal into the school’s strategic plan. “We had to get into the top 100,” Freeland says. “That was a life-or-death matter for Northeastern.”
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<p>An interesting article. At first, NU simply focuses on the metrics (increasing graduation rates, building new dorms to increase retention rates, hiring additional faculty to reduce student to faculty ratios, etc..). More recent steps feel more like it's "gaming" the system.</p>
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Aoun also began using spring enrollment to his advantage. In 2007 the school introduced N.U.in, a program that invites students with lower grades and SAT scores to spend their first semester abroad and begin their on-campus experience in the spring. U.S. News does not collect data for spring entrants, so those students’ lower grades and scores are excluded from the rankings. Editor Brian Kelly explains that U.S. News doesn’t require spring data because the federal government doesn’t either, but he concedes, “It’s possible that is a gaming window.”
<p>@gator, fascinating article. Thanks for linking. I had to literally lol a few times cynically at the ruthlessness of what Northeastern did. Do I blame them? No. Northeastern did what was rational for its survivaal. USNWR has really opened a Pandora’s box. </p>
<p>I remember reading that article that was mentioned, about how much the univ of rochester wd have to spend to budge from its stubborn ranked position in the 30’s. That was an interesting read, too.</p>
<p>I believe that University of Southern California also figured out how to game the rankings because it moved up from around 75th in the 1990s to 23rd today, a 50 point move over 25 years…</p>
<p>In any case, that’s why I prefer to look at less gamable alumni success metrics (the Forbes subcategories of “American Leaders”, prestigious student awards, and PhDs as well as percentage in to elite professional schools).</p>
<p>By those metrics, many LACs do well, Rochester is better than Vandy, and NEU trails a ton of public flagships.</p>
<p>^^^Interesting. About 10-15 years ago USC began recruiting high scoring students like gangbusters. By making offers that many couldn’t refuse- half to full tuition and honors status with perks for scoring well on the NMSQT- their numbers started to climb quickly. Money will buy brains in the academic world, but not all institutions have that kind of money to burn. </p>
<p>Regardless of what was done or not done, the bottom line is students (and their parents) bought into it with applications and enrollment. A marketing success story by all accounts. </p>
<p>Most of what Boston Magazine describes as “gaming” is perfectly fair. In an attempt to boost the rating, Northeastern:</p>
<p>Added faculty
Increased the number of classes under 20
Increased application outreach
built new dorms (which didn’t exist before. Thus, transitioned away from being a “commuter school.”)
built new academic facilities (science/engineering)
recruited star faculty
chatted up college presidents
pointed out the inequities in the measurement standards vis a vis the Co-op program
dropping international SAT scores
spring enrollment/first term abroad for freshmen</p>
<p>Put together, it’s a different institution. This year, more and more colleges are marketing themselves as pre-employment centers; in the modern setting, the co-op program would be ground-breaking, were it instituted last year. </p>
<p>A number of other colleges have first-term-abroad programs for freshmen, or spring enrollment. Is that gaming the system, or an attempt to decrease the critical mass of freshmen on campus in September, thus enabling the college to enroll more students?</p>
I think that one probably is gaming the system. Much of the other points in your post are absolutely correct and good for the student. This one and dropping international scores is pure gamesmanship IMO.</p>
<p>If NU is giving college credit for the fall study abroad then it is more than just gaming… </p>
<p>But what the magazine calls,‘gaming’, I say is good for students. Win-win:</p>
<p>“Added faculty
Increased the number of classes under 20
Increased application outreach
built new dorms (which didn’t exist before. Thus, transitioned away from being a “commuter school.”)
built new academic facilities (science/engineering)
recruited star faculty”</p>
<p>I didn’t know USNews didn’t include international students’ SAT or ACT scores. I see no reason why it shouldn’t include those scores. On the other hand, there’s no reason to assume the scores would be low, would there? Other than the language difficulties. However, many foreign countries are very good at teaching academic English. I can think of a number of students I’ve met from Europe and Asia who may write more accurately and grammatically than American students.</p>
<p>The category I would drop from USNews would be the reputation question. It gives older universities a huge boost, yet may not have any correlation with the education students receive in class, nor with the quality of the research performed. It would be interesting to see side-by-side ratings with reputation, and ratings without reputation factored in.</p>
<p>@Periwinkle USNews does include international students SAT/ACT scores. However, NEU no longer requires that international students “Submit” the scores, hence it doesn’t have to report them. The article did say that international students scores are lower than the average. </p>
<p>When other schools go test “optional”, one possible reason is that it raises the average SAT scores, as those with lower scores would not “submit” the scores. </p>
I believe that’s the ONLY reason schools go test optional. If someone can think of another reason, I’d love to hear it. Test scores are useful information, but if an applicant is very appealing in all other regards, the school is free to overlook weak scores. And if a school really believes test scores are not useful, they should just exclude them from every application–but that would pose a heck of a problem for the USNWR competition! The whole “test optional” thing is so disingenuous.</p>
<p>If you are talking about the reputation surveys of HS guidance counselors, I agree. The reputation survey of the academics correlates heavily with the quality of the research performed. Maybe the guidance counselor survey should be replaced with an employer survey.</p>
<p>Haha, they simply borrowed a couple of pages from the Chicago and Columbia playbook. After all, the only surprise is that it took Chicago that long considering they might arguably have the best people on the planet to break the “Morse Code.”</p>
<p>Gaming the USNews is truly childplay if one is prepared to give up a couple of metrics, think outside the box, accept to cannibalize future and sustainable growth for an immediate boost, and not to be afraid to be “caught” by the incompetent and uninterested group of scientists on Morse’s payroll. That group has allowed schools to play games --read Middlebury and Cal-- without blinking an eye. </p>
<p>The biggest surprise is that there are not more schools that understand the metrics correctly. </p>
<p>Lots of colleges are doing the first semester abroad thing, and in many cases it has nothing to do with rankings and everything to do with (a) marketing something exciting to accepted students and (b) making efficient use of campus housing space. NEU may have done it to exploit a loophole, but that’s not the only reason to do it.</p>
<p>I agree that most of the changes NEU made were substantive changes that arguably improved the quality of student experience, at least as USNWR defines quality, and that increased awareness in the broader educational community of what NEU was doing. Like most of us, I am very ambivalent about USNWR rankings, but I think it is a plus that the rankings encourage colleges to make improvements like this.</p>
<p>In theory, the GC survey should yield a better and more valuable metric for … aspiring undergraduates. Being better than the manipulated and cronysit Peer Assessment is easy to accomplish, as that metric, in its current formulation, is grossly unrelated to the purposes of USNews, or what it pretends to measure. It is nothing that a moronic beauty contests without rules or reason! The saddest part is that the PA could be saved by adding a few steps such as making all the surveys public, asking the “expert” to sign and assume the responsibility of their responses (and stop delegating to some junior admin or secretaries that copies last year’s entries" and most importantly GREATLY expand the categories to be measured from the simplistic … please rank the schools according to their “distinguished” reputation, and DIRECT all answers to be related to the undergraduate departments! </p>
<p>The negative of the GC survey is that they polled a subset of the high schools only, and probably mostly looked at the worst possible group in the genre. </p>
<p>But that is simply how Morse and the USNews operate! </p>
<p>At some schools, “gaming” may be another word for “flatout lying”.</p>
<p>Google “usc engineering rankings rigging inside highered” and read the comments. Another school that you talked about is mentioned there.</p>
<p>Seems a bit more unethical than just plastering all 17-year-olds in the world with spam.</p>
<p>My favorite method is still Columbia’s. Have 2 undergraduate colleges open to HS students. Then have another undergraduate school open only to non-trads. Only report the numbers of the HS students. Pretty soon, based on the stupendously low acceptance rate out of HS, some kids start lumping you in with HYPSM (yet you still get tuition from everyone, especially since there’s no fin aid for Columbia GS).</p>