<p>There's an interesting wire service piece making the rounds that ponders aloud whether the Claremont McKenna scandal will result in the various ratings systems reforming themselves?
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But behind the furor over the fraud at Claremont McKenna College is a crescendo of calls from academics, politicians and parents for new rating systems that would measure what really matters: how effectively an institution educates. </p>
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<p>Interesting proposal. They are considering using a measure of critical thinking such as the CLA <a href=“Empowering Student Success through Council Engagement and Community Support”>Empowering Student Success through Council Engagement and Community Support; Do they plan to administer it to all students???</p>
<p>In order to be accurate they would have to - one for incoming freshmen and for outgoing seniors.</p>
<p>I’m sorry, but I can’t see any rating system that depends on more standardized tests as being any kind of improvement. So what’s the idea, that all college kids take standardized tests so the schools can report the results to USNews so it can sell magazines? Frankly, I wish that more colleges simply adopted Reed’s approach and told USNews to go to hell. I’d love to see an initiative led by HYPSM to not provide their info to USNews. My guess is that if those schools did it, others would follow suit.</p>
<p>Good luck in creating a better ranking system. The USNews, despite its shortcomings, remains the best in a sea of pure garbage. </p>
<p>The metrics are not that important. The integrity of the system is. And so is the transparency. While the creators of the CDS helped to organize a system for comparable reporting, they never had the power or the guts to challenge the participants and … Ferret the cheaters out. To the contrary, the USNews gave the highest percentage of its ratings to the least trustworthy of all. People with incentive to help themselves, their friends, or their past schools all the while punishing their foes and competitors.</p>
<p>The solution is not that hard to develop. It entails making the entire reporting PUBLIC and force the highest officials to sign the forms and surveys. The entire reports should include the much maligned and manipulated peer assessments. The blatant cheating in the survey responses dwarfs the trivial SAT boost of 30 points. </p>
<p>In addition, ranking organizations should be forced to show how their methology works in greater detail by publishing the data and making it available to researchers. </p>
<p>We simply have been forced to trust the wrong people for too long.</p>
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<p>Seriously?</p>
<p>Four-year graduation rate is highly correlated with student body wealth.</p>
<p>Student loan debt is also somewhat impacted by student body wealth.</p>
<p>But the best part is using Payscale and Who’s Who. Do you truly believe that payscale has any statistical value? (ask your Stats professor about self-reported, voluntary ‘data’. And then look up the definition of arbitrary.) </p>
<p>Does Who’s Who? (I was invited to join back in the dark ages and I’m a nobody.)</p>
<p>hahahahahahaha</p>
<p>“xiggi, Forbes ’ list iis streets ahead of US News’. Flawed, yes, but focuses on less arbitrary data.”</p>
<p>According to the esteemed OP, the defenders of CMC are unusually obsessed by rankings. Perhaps, I should oblige and change my position and adopt the rankings that are kind to CMC as the leaders in the genre. </p>
<p>Rather than deriding the work of Vedder, I should only look at the generous ranking given to CMC and applaud the 12th position. Humm, now I should go look at the Mother Teresa ranking, I think CMC did well in that one too!</p>
<p>Oh, I forget that no post of mine should be complete without a mention of Wesleyan. So, here we go. Let me go look how they did in the above rankings, and I’ll let you know if I still like them.</p>
<p>Yeah, CMC is dozen spots ahead of Pomona and close to dozens ahead of Wes. Must be a great ranking. Mea culpa!</p>
<p>^^Humm, yourself, xiggi. In the Mother Theresa poll, Claremont McKenna came in at #56.</p>
<p>Accidents happen and businesses continue. The short memory only lasts for two weeks.</p>
<p>JW, I knew I could count on you. Who is the rankings obsessed who fell in that silly trap?</p>
<p>^^trap?? Is that the new word for “falsification”?</p>
<p>[Essay</a> on the rankings scandal at Claremont McKenna | Inside Higher Ed](<a href=“http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2012/02/07/essay-rankings-scandal-claremont-mckenna]Essay”>Essay on the rankings scandal at Claremont McKenna)</p>
<p>The President of Colby is proposing a solution that is neither novel nor very helpful for the … educated “consumer.” While it is acceptable to attempt to diminish the negative aspects of the rankings and the inherent race to the top, calling for the avoidance of a full and transparent participation is simply self-serving. This is the same easy-out position advocated by mercenaries such as Lloyd Tacker. </p>
<p>The reality is that we need better information and information that has been, if not audited, verified. Students and their families should not be given fewer data, they should be given the assurance that the schools share them truthfully. For years, I have been suggesting that all surveys filled by the schools be made public in their entirety. And I mean every survey, including the secretive COFHE that are jealously kept away from prying eyes. Publishing the CDS is fortunately becoming a standard that is only rejected by the likes of Northwestern and Chicago. But, as we learned from the CMC example, that does not guarantee the information to be correct. For that reason, we should insist on a Sarbanes–Oxley type of statement by the highest executives or officials of a school. In addition to providing the statement by signing the documents, it is also important that those documents be subject to the scrutiny of … everyone. The practice of filling that abject peer assessment survey with impunity and anonymity should have never existed. Is there a reason for a President or Provost not to have the courage of his or her opinions? There is one and it has become apparent when the survey were made public at Clemson, Wisconsin, Miami, and a few others cases that showed how gamesmanship lives with anonymity. </p>
<p>However, we should not forget that the present is not about the cheats at Wisconsin or Clemson. The current focus is on Claremont McKenna. The deception cannot be ignored and needs to be addressed correctly. The onus is now on Pamela Gann to show the school can learn from its mistakes and NEEDS to show leadership. This means that detailing the “who, why, how, and when” for the deception at CMC is NOT SUFFICIENT. She should start a process that ensures more transparency and more controls, and she should seek the participation of her fellows. In the case of CMC, it should be simple as she should convince the other officials at the 5C to allow cross-audits of admission data. She should invite at least two members of other schools to verify the data of CMC, and in turn send an official to look at the other school’s files and reports. </p>
<p>This practice should be extended to all schools. Could be trust the data submitted by Chicago if “verified” by Northwestern? Georgetown’s reviewed by Notre Dame? Stanford’s checked by Cal? You betcha! </p>
<p>However, the 5C should not wait for others to join. Pamela Gann should force this issue and push for the adoption of this measure at the five schools. Having the five schools accepting a full audit and disclosure would be a step in the right direction.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, what the proposal of the Prez at Colby is asking the public to trust the schools, and accept fewer disclosures. It is simply going in the wrong direction as it is akin to pretend one can reduce a fever by taking the temperature less often. </p>
<p>The problem is that the schools have yet to understand that the full and correct disclosure of all admission data is necessary. And that remains a hard pill to swallow in the world of academia with officials who prefer the hush-hush practices and secrecy of their ivory towers.</p>
<p>I like xiggi’s idea, as long as Michigan’s data is not verified by tOSU or MSU! ;)</p>
<p>I think you’d like MSU better than a team of Duke led by Goldilocks. Of course, you could nominate rjkofnovi for the trip to Durham. :)</p>
<p>Haha! I concede, Sparty it is.</p>
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<p>Not sure where he says that. He does advocate non-cooperation with the rankings system. But, that would only mean people would have to get their SAT mean score, median score, selectivity and class rank information from Peterson’s. No biggie.</p>
<p>A more accurate summary of the Pres of Colby’s basic position is this:
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<p>I see nothing wrong with trying to gather as many endpoints as possible. Everything else, it would see to me, is a surogate marker. And, as the present Mayor of Chicago once said, “Never let a disaster go wasted.” If we’re really going to go after the rankings game (and, that’s all it is – a game) root and branch, the time to do it is now.</p>
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<p>Given the larger picture of how we got to where we are, this is a little bit like trying to cure an OCD sufferer by telling him to “Pay attention!”</p>
<p>John, we can go in circles for a few rounds; the current “proposal” is not much different from others that have called for diminishing the “tyranny” of rankings. This would be acceptable if schools had any record in disclosing information before being forced to. If you believe that schools are interested in more controls, more disclosures, and more accountability to students, power to you. I simply do NOT trust them, and fwiw, based on persistent indictment of the officials at CMC, it appears that you share my view. Unless you really believe that other schools, including your own favorites, are beyond reproach and are not maximizing the rankings for all they are worth. </p>
<p>The history of school voluntarily disclosing pertinent information is sketchy at best, even when the disclosure would stop persistent questioning. The examples of the poor disclosures of racial preferences is indicative of the views of the schools. Why are schools so adamant in their refusal to provide fuller admission statistics with clear distinctions for race and … SES status? Bits and pieces is all we get, and that is what fueling the unabated claims for racial discrimination. </p>
<p>Although I am no fan of the USNews --something you fail to understand-- we should recognize that without the presence of similar outfits, we would live in an even darker place in terms of information on admissions. As I wrote the answer is not what in the school would like to do. It is clear why some officials support the work of for-hire-mercenaries such Thacker … the objective is to mitigate the impact of disclosures and keep the information for the “need to know” crowd. </p>
<p>My point is very simple. Every school that receives federal funds should make EVERY bit of their admission, college life, and graduation data available to the general public. Resist or refuse and you can learn to live without the largesse of the government. </p>
<p>Fwiw, here is a simple way for you to show how wrong I am. Wesleyan is a member of COFHE. Do YOU have access to that data? And, if you do, why don’t share the survey with us? And, why would that even be a matter of discussion. It should be on their website and available to anyone who might bother to check that information. </p>
<p>The bottom line is that the schools cannot be trusted to disclose anything unless they have no other choice. You want to go after the rankings. I want to go after the liars and the manipulators, and we know whom they are! I also want to go after whoever “fill” those USNews surveys and sign the documents without much attention. I do not want them to have another way out to revert to business as usual.</p>
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<p>We’re really talking about two different things: you want to plug holes in the old system; I want a new system altogether. It should go without saying, that under either system, cheating and lying should be disincentivized to the extent possible. FWIW, the biggest disincentive would be to suspend the offending college from the survey for a period of years. But, you don’t seem to be in favor of that, either.;)</p>
<p>the problem, John, is easily found in the following Colby prez’ quote/pablum:</p>
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<p>The fact is that academia has been trying to accomplish that for years, all to no avail. (It is not in their DNA to do so.) Think about the nearly 5+ years it took NRC to release a once-a-decade survey (grad rankings). Even then, the powers-that-be (academia) didn’t like the answers, so they came up with a split decision, solely designed to obfuscate.</p>
<p>USNews is dominant in this field of college rankings bcos it is the best of the worst. It found a consumer need and filled it. Colleges themselves could put USNews out of business if they wanted to, but they can’t bring themselves together to agree on what size the table that they should sit at, much less what they should report.</p>
<p>Or, take a look at IPEDS which is required by the Feds. While it has a wealth of information, some colleges just leave fields blank. According to IPEDS, for example, Northeastern Univ has a four-year grad rate of zero! (Obviously, that can’t be the case, but NEU is purposely choosing not to complete that data point for reason.) But the broader point is that even with mandated reporting, the academes pick and choose what they will allow the serfs to see.</p>