New WSJ-Times Higher Education Rankings

[dragonmom3]

I live in CA and I have a son (Chemistry) and a nephew (Economics) who are graduates of UC Berkeley.
I would consider it a vastly over-rated undergraduate experience.
HUGE class size,-think 700±sketchy dorms, and poor guidance for job placement and grad school.
Now they seem to be sending kids across the bay for classes in office complexes in SF and housing them in dorms on other college campuses.
Their high ranking is for research and recognition at the graduate and post graduate level.
Just my observation.
This is likely true of most, if not all, of the UC’s.

[circuitrider]

Knowing that something happens is quite a different thing from knowing how it happens or how much it happens. It’s also problematic that it only includes federal FA–there are many other avenues of FA (I know, I had and repaid a good deal of it haha). @circuitrider

Is there a single, solitary, college ranking system that answers the question, how learning happens, or how much it happens? Why pick on Scorecard?

[marvin100]

I’ve answered that before @circuitrider , but here goes again: all the ranking systems are cripplingly problematic. Scorecard makes a big deal about being objective and measuring outcomes, though, and the fact is that it can’t do that in any meaningful, reliable way. I don’t hold it up as a particularly terrible ranking (they’re all terrible in their own ways!) but it’s disingenuous about what it’s doing, and its creators know it (they’re smart people!).

[Cookiegod]

So according to the ranking Stanford has more resource than Harvard.
I’m not an expert or anything, but Harvard has $37 BILLION endowment, 15 more than Stanford, and it’s considered the best in the world by many, on what basis is Stanford more resourceful than Harvard?

[roethlisburger]

I guess my question is, knowing full well that wealthy students are likely going to skew the results, isn’t excluding them actually a good thing?

I’m with circuitrider on this. Excluding wealthy families whose connections could help their kids get high paying jobs might result in a less biased estimate of the value added of a given college. A better criticism of the scorecard data is 10-years after entering college may be too soon to measure earnings for some careers that require extensive graduate or professional school.

[circuitrider]

I’ve answered that before @circuitrider , but here goes again: all the ranking systems are cripplingly problematic. Scorecard makes a big deal about being objective and measuring outcomes, though, and the fact is that it can’t do that in any meaningful, reliable way. I don’t hold it up as a particularly terrible ranking (they’re all terrible in their own ways!) but it’s disingenuous about what it’s doing, and its creators know it (they’re smart people!).

It’s like the Electoral College. The numbers are objective. It’s not their fault if people want to read more into them than justified.

[websensation]

@dragonmom3 Agree. That’s why our kid is going to Stanford rather than any UC even if Stanford costs double the UC.