USNWR vs. Forbes

College Search & Selection
1

Hi everyone. I was just wondering why USNWR has so much more cache then the Forbes rankings. Forbes methodology, focusing more on outcome then on things like selectivity and class rank, seems to make sense.

2

Forbes comes out with various rankings every week, which makes me think they don’t spend a lot of effort on each one.

I’ve seen some pretty crazy Forbes rankings, e.g., best college sports towns, where they had Palo Alto in the top 10, and didn’t include Columbus. I grew up in Columbus and live about 30 minutes from Stanford. I’d put Columbus in the top 5, and Palo Alto down around 100. Forbes also had a top 10 most beautiful cities in the world ranking, which included New York City, Tokyo, and London Those are fascinating and fun cities, but beautiful they are not. I figure they were included to make many of Forbes’ readers feel good.

3

There are multiple problems with outcome/ROI-based methodology:

  1. Variability in the cost of living (region vs. region, city vs. rural, etc.) gives some schools a leg up. The same job pays differently in different places. Outcome-based methodology favors schools in areas with a high cost of living.
  2. Students choose their major, and that choice can affect thir job and salary. Outcome-based methodology favors schools with a lot of Engineering, CS and Business majors.
  3. Per se, the real value of a school is its ability to educate and provide a great college experience. ROI does a pretty poor job of measuring that. If you're looking at output, you need to consider input too.
  4. Regional job markets differ. Most kids get jobs fairly close to where they graduate. A kid could get an A+ Engineering education but if the jobs were scarce in their area, the graduate might have a hard time cashing in that great education.
  5. With a nod to career placement services, it is the student who goes out and acquires the job. Again, that is largely up to personal choice.

USNews’ undergrad ranking at least tries to rank colleges based on academic quality and the quality of the experience. Leaning heavily on ROI to rank undergrad programs doesn’t really measure either.

There may be some value in using ROI to compare peer institutions with similar proportions of high-salary majors, in areas with a similar standard of living and job markets. You then would be ranking a school’s “connections” and career support.