You didn’t ask for proof; you asked for evidence. Correlation or corroborative evidence is perfectly acceptable in any court of law.
This one of the few times I find myself disagreeing w you. As a parent of private HS kids, none of us discuss the exact rack rate price of schools nor reveal how much discount (need-based or merit) we get.
@PrimeMeridian - I am not quite following your comment.
OK, @circuitrider , this isn’t a court of law, but I will concede the point that the evidence is allowable. However I remain highly unconvinced, since there isn’t a single testimony to the point.
@Zinhead Maybe you should say “Some parents”. For us personally, there is only a very very short list of schools (about five) for which we are willing to pay “5x times state flagship tuition rates”. For the rest there has to be significant merit money involved, otherwise, it’s not happening. Also in our community “conspicuous consumption” is frowned upon and considered crass, so flaunting it is out of the question. In fact we would always downplay it, even hide it as far as possible, dodging questions about “how much we are really paying”.
I would guess there would be many like us even here on CC?
Certainly, @Postmodern. Skepticism is a healthy thing. And since you led this discussion with a Latin quotation, I will signal my farewell with one:
You say, “Post hoc ergo propter hoc.”
I say, “Res ipsa loquitor.” :D/
You are correct. I should have added that qualifier as there are about dozen private schools/program that we would be full pay because of the ROI.
I made that statement with a high income friend of ours in mind. She casually mentioned that all the schools her daughter is looking at will cost them at least “$60,000”. When I asked her the schools, there was a roll call of small, non-elite LACs and private colleges. To this family, the choice of college seemed to be which bumper sticker would look best on the BMW.
Wow! That would be a nice position to be in 
Most people with new BMWs wouldn’t tolerate bumper stickers. Window stickers are acceptable, but not bumper stickers. Could mar the paint.
The only cars I routinely see with bumper stickers are the Prius with the requisite Obama/Biden stickers, or more recently Hillary/Kane sticker. The Obama/Biden stickers were so common that they might as well have been factory options.
Not surprising that people who drive Priuses–people who are likely concerned about climate change, pollution, greenhouse gases, and the environment more broadly–tend to support the party whose candidates are less likely to be full on climate change deniers.
But back to the topic: I agree that rankings are pretty lame, but one of the interesting things about them is examining their metrics and methodologies. Consumers have different values and priorities, and it’s useful to see which rankings correspond better to our preferences. ROI people, for instance, seem pretty interested in the new WSJ rankings, although I hope they dig deeper and realize that the salary data is woefully unrepresentative, as it’s only drawn from students who took federal financial aid and doesn’t reflect the schools from which they graduated, considering instead any school they drew federal aid to attend.
If current college rankings are a joke, then what would be a better ranking?
I will start by answering my own question. If I were to start my own ranking system, I would put 50% on student quality as measured by high school academic performance, 25% on depth of curriculum as audited by an independent body of subject matter experts, and 25% on faculty quality as measured by ranking of universities where they did their PhDs.
Just to troubleshoot this, I think “depth of curriculum” is vague–does it take breadth into account? Does that favor big U’s over LACs? I also think using faculty almas mater as proxy for “faculty quality” is problematic as well–and it’s also circular, as it uses a school ranking to inform a school ranking. How is that PhD program ranking going to work?
By depth of curriculum, I meant that whatever the kid majors in, (s)he has been challenged out and out in the subject. As for breadth, I do not feel that colleges need to have breadth, but I am sure others will disagree, and I respect that. The other way to measure faculty quality is amount of research. There are many ways to set up these metrics, but my broad point is that there are really 3 criteria for me: Are the kids smart? Are the teachers smart? Are the kids taught their subject of major in depth? However you measure it is another topic altogether.
You probably give consumers too much credit.
I think the vast majority of college consumers don’t even care what the metrics are. They just accept as faith that college ranking are Gospel, and the difference between position #25 vs position #26 is meaningful.
Is the difference between rank #1 and rank #25 meaningful?
Not if the distinguishing metric is irrelevant to you.
Let’s say you have your own preferred ranking system. Will you then consider #1 to be different from rank #25?
Possibly, but I can’t really concern myself with people like that–they’re also extremely unlikely to be reading my comments.
Not sure I can link to it but there was a great article on Huffington Post yesterday “Your Mom’s Guide to College Rankings”
It was pretty close to the ratings that my both my kids used in their search.