http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/09/18/opinion/sunday/why-college-rankings-are-a-joke.html can’t easily copy text from the phone so help would be appreciated . From today’s NYT.
It’s largely an article about UMBC. We have several relatives who went there.
I have a relative who went there and got a master’s at JHU. I think the author waaaay overstates how many students/parents live and die by USNWR though. It’s an isolated, mostly upper middle class phenomenon. The vast majority of hs students in this country look at the nearest and cheapest school that has their desired major, and that’s that.
He is mostly criticizing the uselessness of a particular sublist, i.e. best colleges for veterans. I did notice how he relies on the very prestige of schools like Stanford and Duke in order to make his points about UMBC. That pretty much ruined his argument, in my opinion.
The USNews rankings are seen as gospel in certain overseas and immigrant communities.
Sad but true.
Did anyone else notice that he begins and ends with the rankings on veterans, but the whole huge middle part about UMBC says nothing about enrolled veterans? It’s like two completely different stories.
This is poorly written. Initially mentions the new US News rankings, then moves to the veterans rankings. Then The endless and anecdotal UMBC section is way too long and how it supports the thesis is questionable. Then circles back to veterans.
It is almost as if he learned to write at a State University. Lol
@TheGFG: Why?
I agree that Bruni could have written this article better, but how does using the prestige of Stanford and Duke invalid his contention that the USNews ranking (which I’m sure he’d agree is a ranking of prestige) isn’t a good tool to use to evaluate the quality of education?
@PurpleTitan
He simply fails to make a clearer point, other than the lack of a meaningful veteran rank. So what? No one looks at it. He just sounds like he has an axe to grind.
Negative tone, irrelevant support, space filler rambling anecdote, misleading title. He needs to put in more effort.
Probably wouldn’t get an ‘A’ even at a grade-inflated Ivy.
Bruni is a well known author about college related issues. FWIW
Bruni pretty much is trying to prove that USNWR rankings are useless because they unfairly treat wonderful schools like UMBC.
I think it is time for NYT to start producing their own college ranking and put Bruni in charge. Then he will be able to drop useless criteria like graduation rate from consideration, replace alumni giving rate with number of openly gay math professors, etc. and finally supply us with a useful ranking.
Not sure what his colleagues, who mostly have their kids in Ivy League schools, will think…
Articles like Bruni’s would be better if their authors 1) argued straight out either for abolishing rankings or fixing them, and in either case explained how; 2) gave quantitative evidence for the specific kinds of damage they see being done by rankings; 3) named the institutions they and their families attended.
PurpleTitan, isn’t it a bit hypocritical to employ prestige in your argument against prestige rankings? He attempts to convince us that UMBC is great because a successful student turned down Stanford to attend UMBC, and that a graduate of their honors program is now affiliated with Duke Medical School. By doing so, he is essentially acknowledging that certain schools constitute a standard of excellence. But students shouldn’t strive to attend those excellent schools, though. No, they obviously should attend a school he has to write an article about to convince us it’s great.
I’ve heard all good things about Maryland, but his argument is lacking.
Wow. So much anti-Bruni animus. I think he pokes some big holes in the whole USNews notion that it is the one and only arbiter of what is the best college for everyone and he does it by citing one glaring example of overreaching - its “Best College for Veterans” ranking and one example of a constituency it has failed completely - minority STEM majors. Actually, there is a thirty year history of USNews penalizing colleges for pursuing affirmative action, hiring professionals in their field who don’t hold Ph.Ds, and generally not coloring within the lines in other different ways. Their ham-handed approach to “faculty resources”, for example, even punishes colleges for making new hires straight out of graduate school (because it dilutes the salary pool.) I thought Bruni did a good job of shedding light on some of the more pernicious aspects of trying to numerically rank colleges.
If you don’t like a given objective appearing list ranking things that are subjective, bad mouth the list. If you like the list, champion and praise it. But don’t despair if you don’t like any given list as there are other objective appearing lists ranking the subjective which produce different results. You may well like one of those which you can then champion and praise. If not, you can always shout at clouds.
I thought he fell into his own trap a bit. UMBC is ranked 159 on the current USNWR national university list. Given there are close to 3,000 colleges in the US, UMBC is considered a more selective school. Could it be argued that it should be ranked higher? Possibly. Should there be other criteria considered in choosing a college, of course. But I don’t think things like graduation rate, acceptance level, retention of students, financial resources and even peer assessment are irrelevant in comparing colleges.
And others pay close attention to the rankings as well. USNews has best hospital rankings, best high school rankings and what else?
I heard that a top 15 school sent alumni request for donations mentioning their rank just went up. Aren’t hospitals and school districts celebrating when their ranks go up too?
I’d like to see more rankings from more sources and we get overloaded without knowing what to do. But we do, with or without the rankings.
Bruni has an axe to grind because he is one of the few folks at the NYT who does not have an Ivy League undergrad degree. He actually went to a state school** if you can believe it. The shame…
**UNC-CH as a Morehead scholar (which is pretty fancy stuff). Plus a grad degree from Columbia.
Ever notice how most of the people writing the books on how your college doesn’t matter have degrees from the schools that most people think do matter?
Here’s my analysis of USNWR’s ranking criteria & weights. I’ve rearranged the criteria and regrouped them into themes that lend perspective on the rat race, and I added my thoughts on how colleges can (or cannot) manipulate the criteria.
** 22.5% “Your incumbent Congressman always gets reelected” **
- 15.0% College peer assessment survey
- 7.5% High school counselors’ ratings
Nearly a quarter of the USNWR ranking is based on a popularity poll by college administrators and HS guidance counselors. Once a college is ranked, it’s nigh impossible to budge it for the same reason your Congressman always gets reelected no matter how awful he/she is: INCUMBENCY. If Penn State didn’t get dinged in the popularity polls for its leadership covering up 15 years of child molestation, then little known schools like UMBC don’t have a chance in Hades to move up.
** 25.1% “Buy your way up” **
- 10.0% Financial resources per student
- 8.1% SAT/ACT scores
- 7.0% Faculty compensation
Another quarter of the ranking is based on how rich a school already is. Unless the Endowment Fairy suddenly puts another billion dollars under your pillow overnight, you’re not going to be entering your yacht in this race. I included SAT/ACT scores in this bucket because at 1/12 of the overall weighting, test scores are weightier than faculty paychecks. With a fat merit-money fund, if the college can pay… then the college can play. Northeastern & USC have rocketed up the rankings by playing this card well.
** 30.0% “Don’t upset the customers” **
- 18.0% Average graduation rate
- 7.5% Graduation rate performance
- 4.5% Average first-year student retention rate
A whopping 30% is simply making sure the customer is happy. USNWR generously awards schools for keeping their customers from leaving. One shortcut colleges can employ to manipulate this metric is grade inflation. UN Chapel Hill deserves a special gold medal for handing out free A’s in fake courses for basketball players for nearly 2 decades. High five!
** 13.0% “Rearranging deck chairs” **
- 8.0% Class size
- 3% Percent Faculty w terminal degree in their field
- 1% Psrcent Faculty that are fulltime
- 1% Student-faculty ratio
USNRW doesn’t ding schools for using part-time instructors (1% weighting). The school just needs to pay them well. A school could balance more part time hirees w more pay to get the avg class size down. The low weighting for Percent Faculty w a terminal degree reflects that it’s a buyer’s market: PhDs are cheap and plentiful.
Other stuff:
- 5.0% Average alumni giving rate
- 3.1% High school class standing in top 10%
- 1.3% Acceptance rate
Alumni trump valedictorians any day. Acceptance rate is the size of rounding error.