Purporting to rank schools numerically is akin to debating how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. A large part of the USNWR methodology relies on responses to questionnaires sent to thousands of college academics and high school guidance counselors asked to rank over 1500 institutions. Not all respond, and, of those who do, very few have direct experience of more than a handful of institutions. I suspect that I have far more experience studying at or teaching at universities than most academics, and yet I do not believe for a minute that I am qualified to make meaningful qualitative comparisons among the hundreds of schools listed. I would be comfortable making only broad generalizations concerning a relatively small universe of institutions. STEM2017 is probably correct when he suggests that the best that can be achieved with any degree of accuracy would be a ranking by deciles or tiers.
It read to me like he was saying he had more experience and was better qualified overall. And yes, he is claiming a rank of colleges when discussing a person whose job he is criticizing is… ranking colleges.
He also mentioned the number of degrees and experience in academia.
Some may feel he is better qualified. But whether or not they do, labeling it “elitism” is as irrelevant to the conversation as anything, IMHO.
Am I missing your point? Please feel free to correct me if so.
For the record, can someone find me something that we don’t numerically rank?
Restaurants, albums, college football teams, automobiles, movies, places to live, beaches, things to do in***, presidents, books, historical blunders, mobile phones, games, etc etc etc
From this article about ranking films: https://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2016/06/23/why-rank/uCwSC2aSUyDaAAozaO81RM/story.html
““When you feel this need to learn about something, you’ll look for a manual or some sort of checklist, and that often takes the form of a canon or a list,” says Lee, who chronicled his efforts to watch all of the 1,000 films on the master list of cinematic masterpieces compiled on the website They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They?”
There’s a difference between ranking and rating. Most of the things you list are rated and not necessarily ranked. But I get your point.
I can find a published ranked list on each of the above categories easily with Google.
http://www.theworlds50best.com/
http://www.billboard.com/charts/greatest-billboard-200-albums
http://www.cbssports.com/collegefootball/rankings/cbs
http://usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/cars-trucks/rankings/
http://www.livability.com/best-places/top-100-best-places-to-live/2016
http://www.cntraveler.com/galleries/2015-02-24/top-10-most-beautiful-island-beaches-hawaii-australia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_rankings_of_Presidents_of_the_United_States
Yes, we do seem to have a need to rank things numerically. This is fine and harmless when it is ranking films or books on a bestseller list. My concern is that young and perhaps somewhat naïve 16 and 17 year olds may be making important life decisions based upon school x being ranked 17th while school y is only ranked 21st.
When I take in information I make it a practice to “consider the source.” I do not know Mr. Morse other than the fact that his undergraduate degree is from a school his own ranking places in 140th place (it does not matter whether it is public or private, does it?). To my knowledge he has never been a student or an academic at any highly ranked (by his own metric) institution. The fact that seemingly every year he makes changes to his methodology is a de facto admission that virtually all of his previous rankings was flawed. His annual attempts to improve his methodology may seem to some a worthwhile endeavor; however, to me, he is on “a fool’s errand,” and that errand does not assume more seriousness the more it is performed.
To be clear, I am not arguing that I am in a better position than is Mr. Morse to rank colleges. I do have more professional experience in the institutions he purports to rank; but frankly, neither I, nor Mr. Morse, nor anyone else I know or can imagine is capable of making meaningful qualitative comparisons among hundreds of institutions. That includes each of the individuals responding to Mr. Morse’s questionnaire I dare say
Edit, middle paragraph: “virtually each of his previous rankings was flawed.”
Uh Oh. Get ready for some hate from die hard Dukies on CC :))
I have calculated using Fourier Transformation that the exact number is 1,657 provided they are doing the Salsa. If they are doing Merengue on the other hand, it is 1,726.
I love it, VLP!
I think we really need a way to break ties in the USNews ranking. Students can’t live with 3 universities being the same rank. How will they make a decision now? So USnews should do further rankings within the same ranks. So there should be 18.1, 18.2, 18.3 etc. Better still schools should be given RPA’s (Rank point averages) and force ranked to their 4th or 5th decimal.
Great suggestion! I’m sure Mr. Morse is looking for ways to perfect his methodology for the 2018 USNWR Rankings. At what point does he realize-- or does he ever realize–that he is polishing a turd?
Unfortunately, as long as USNews keeps raking in the dough I’m sure he will keep right on polishing.
I think the high school guidance counselor ratings are especially problematic. I can just imagine a GC at a school that has never sent a kid to Harvard or Stanford giving those schools top scores because, well, everybody knows Harvard and Stanford are the best schools because they get rated first and second (in USNWR) every year.
Asking a GC from a town where 90% of the kids go to either X State or University of X to rate a dinky LAC like St. Lawrence or Willamette or to expect GC’s to put aside their regional snobberies may be overly optimistic. There are some great college counselors out there who have deep knowledge of schools, but I think too many are busy worrying about larger teen issues and helping college-bound kids get in some place they can afford to have the time and energy to get to know colleges in any meaningful way. How many HS counselors have ever stepped foot on the campuses of the schools they’re rating?
I wonder if these ratings are just self-perpetuating.
If he has any talent, he realized that long ago. But given that rankings are paying the bills at USNWR, I doubt he cares.
Agreed that the guidance counselor ratings are especially problematic. They account for 7.5 % of a school’s rep. ranking. Deans and Provosts count for 15%. Anyone who reads the 2016 methodology will also find that of the 2,552 GCs who were sent questionnaires in 2015 for the 2016 Ranking only 7% responded. Ludicrous. And I don’t mean to suggest that if the response rate were higher the rankings would be more accurate.
IOW, 179 guidance counselors are determining 7.5% of the rating of every school on the US News list. Wow.
There’s a new platform that colleges are now using in addition to the common app; people use it to apply to college. It’s called the Coalition. It encourages colleges to be affordable and not to advantage rich families. I wonder if–within the next few years, when the Coalition becomes even more popular–US news will eventually change its methodology in accordance with today’s changing views of what makes a college good.
Coalition will have the opposite effect.
@marvin100 explain^
Top 25 National U’s for the 2017 USN&WR:
- Princeton
- Harvard
- Yale
- (Logjam #1) Stanford, UChicago, Columbia, MIT
- Penn
- Duke
- (Logjam #2) Caltech, Dartmouth, Brown, Northwestern, JHU, Cornell
- (Logjam #3) Rice, Vanderbilt, Washington University, Notre Dame, Cal-Berkeley
- (Logjam #4) Georgetown, Michigan, UCLA, UVA, CMU, Emory
LACs (not counting the academies):
- Williams
- Amherst
- Swarthmore
- Pomona, Middlebury
- Bowdoin, Wellesley
- Haverford
- Carleton
- CMC, Wesleyan
- W&L, Davidson, Vassar
- Harvey Mudd, Hamilton
- Grinnell
- Smith
- Colby
- Oberlin
- Colgate
- Bates
- Bryn Mawr
- Macalester
- Barnard, Scripps
(remember, USNews doesn’t like Reed… or vice-versa… so Reed is vastly underranked on their annual list)
I think it would be more helpful if schools were grouped by common features – call them peer groups – than ranked.
What might some common features be?
- Environment (rural/urban/suburban, location/weather)
- Academics (degree programs, academic calendar, class sizes, selectivity, pre-prof vs. intellectual, etc.)
- Public or private
- Social vibe (prevalance of activism, prevalance of Greek life, student orgs, sports & party scene, etc.)
- Cost and aid
…in other words, grouping schools according to “fit” variables. I think if a magazine came out and placed schools – say, the top 300 U’s and top 300 LACs – into such groups, that would really help kids choose where to apply.