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<p>It means that the best record for social mobility goes to UTEP, and yes I’m sure lots of community colleges could credibly compete for the same title. Are you proposing community colleges be added the rankings?</p>
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Is there any solid benchmark for “academic excellence” and, if so, who would find that useful?</p>
<p>I think you spotted a substantial issue with this ranking: Washington Monthly apparently assumes that everyone should go to college. Certainly, UTEP deserves some credit for doing more than most schools with what they are given. However, I am not convinced that it is a great public service to admit students with a 30% chance of graduating, even if they are able to graduate 35% of them in actuality.</p>
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<p>I agree, and I think this is something symptomatic of the US in general. I don’t believe there is any other nation that sends as many high school graduates (or the foreign equivalent) to universities as the US does, and that maybe isn’t such a bad thing. Americans have this expectation that college is necessary for anything more than a minimum-wage job, and as a result they go to college as almost a prerequisite, leading to tons of college loans (although that also has something to do with the higher cost of education in the US) as well as tons of subpar colleges that exist solely because all of those 1200 SAT kids need somewhere to go. Apologies if that sounds overly elitist.</p>
<p>Also, even though the $2500/year net price for El Paso seems comparably low, it’s still a significant sum for (I’m assuming) low-income kids who have a one-in-three chance of even graduating; and that’s not even considering the likely low job prospects of a UT El Paso grad.</p>
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<p>Since the organization behind this WM ranking already separates LACs from universities, it is doubtful that it would consider adding CC, or mixing them with schools. It is also doubtful that the data to be “analyze” is available at that level. </p>
<p>What I am proposing, or suggesting, is that people understand what such rankings actually mean, especially before declaring them to “make more sense” or being better than the much criticized USNews. For all its problems, USNews makes its scope and outcomes pretty clear. </p>
<p>Of course, I would be naive to expect more readers to do that. My parents mentioned that in El Paso, the local TV stations reported this as “UTEP, again Harvard of the Border,” a term that had been coined decades ago. See [The</a> Big Apple: Harvard on the Border (UTEP nickname)](<a href=“http://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/harvard_on_the_border_utep_nickname/]The”>Harvard on the Border (UTEP nickname)) . The scope of the story was that UTEP did just as well academically than Harvard. Leave it to the media to twist and turn facts as they please. </p>
<p>Please note that this is not an “attack” on UTEP. The school does what it is expected to do in Texas. There are a number of lower level schools that carry the label UT or TAMU, and were created to serve a specific community. However, nobody would ever think that the truly mediocre versions in El Paso, San Antonio, Corpus Christi, or Prairie View are comparing to the flagship in Austin and College Station. Just as community colleges, they accept almost everyone and most have minimal qualifications. In fact, a case could be made that the EPCC (community college of El Paso) does a better and less cynical job in matching students with the opportunities of education. </p>
<p>All in all, the issue is not about UTEP; it is about a bunch of “media analysts” having developed an incredibly poor methodology for the sole sake of being different. And, fwiw, speaking about the different rankings that compete with USNews, one might know that the “esteemed” Vedder is on record of declaring that a school like UTEP should be … closed! </p>
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<p>So, here you have it. The “the brains” behind the Forbes rankings openly attacking the school that is listed as Numero Uno in social mobility (whatever that is) of the WM.</p>
<p>Bottom line? Between the Mother Teresa and the RateMyProf awards, I’d rather spend a few bucks on the USNews. Even if the USNews has gotten worse and worse over the past decade. While it never had the integrity it pretends to have, the usefulness of the presentation of the details has decreased.</p>
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<p>Really, Xiggi? You have this much contempt reserved for people who find something interesting about socio-economic mobility in the U.S. and the different missions of the private and public sector and how they might intersect?</p>
<p>What a way to miss the point, JW! My “contempt” is directed at the originators of this misleading crap.</p>
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So you like the full PA from academics vs. the mix with guidance counselors? Why not keep it simple and go back to 100% PA? Or is there some other change factor you were referring? :)</p>
<p>Xiggi, the guidance couselors that USNWR surveys belong to the most elite high schools and boarding schools in the U.S. Surely they know a thing or two more about the quality of undergraduate education than university presidents who are monitoring a school from a macro perspective and are decades removed for their undergraduate days!!</p>
<p>Xiggi wrote:
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<p>Well, let’s try this from a dfferent angle: if a ranking system could be designed that measured social mobility as an attribute of attending a particular college, would that, in your opinion, be something worth doing?</p>
<p>]quote]So you like the full PA from academics vs. the mix with guidance counselors? Why not keep it simple and go back to 100% PA? Or is there some other change factor you were referring?
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<p>Haha, UCB, you are so predictable. So predictable that I fully expected your comments and went back to ADD the qualifier of last decade, and avoid intimating that the early 80s version of the USNews was … better. </p>
<p>Fwiw, my comment was not really about the inclusion and changes in the PA. Regardless of the addition of GCs, the PA is still nothing else than a beauty contest that lacks much rhyme or reason, let alone knowledge and integrity. At least, in the current model used by USNews. For the record, please remember that I have often suggested that a PA MIGHT be interesting and valuable were it to be correctly curated and expanded, as well as subject for FULL PUBLIC DISCLOSURE of the information and the person who takes FULL responsibility. In so many words, get those presidents to sign a document fully knowing that ANYONE could read their answers. And that means no mas tomfoolery a la Clemson and Wisconsin! </p>
<p>Now that that is cleared up, my point about the degradation of the USNews was that there is NO betterment in integrity/accuracy of the data (think Columbia reported numbers and your alma mater** and Middlebury data obfuscating shenanigans) and that the useful data has become harder to locate among those junky graphics, especially on the premium models. </p>
<p>** Fully expecting you to frown about that often repeated “point” of mine!</p>
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<p>No, they represent 1,787 public high schools that made the US News Best High Schools list for each state—which doesn’t even mean US News thought they were the best nationally, just the best in their state. So the best public high school in Mississippi, Pass Christian High School, gets a vote even though it scores only a 20.2 (out of a possible 100) in “college readiness,” i.e., right around the national average. Some 350 high schools in California came out with higher “college readiness” scores; only some of them get to vote. In West Virginia, not a single school was strong enough to be eligible for a national ranking yet presumably some schools get votes as the best in the state. </p>
<p>Then there are another 600 representing the largest private schools in each state. Not the best, mind you, but the largest; there’s often little or no correlation, sometimes even a negative correlation, between size and quality. Take Massachusetts, for example. Forbes says 5 of the top 10 private high schools in the country are in Massachusetts; of those, only 1 ranks among the 25 largest private high schools in Massachusetts, most of which are large Catholic schools. No doubt some of the Catholic schools are quite good, but we are not talking about GCs from the "“best schools,” we’re talking about GC’s from the “biggest private schools,” which in many, many places will be Catholic schools. Perhaps that’s one reason schools like Notre Dame (4.6 HS Counselor score, 3.9 PA), Georgetown (4.7 HS Counselor score, 4.0 PA) and Boston College (4.3 HS counselor score, 3.6 PA) are rated so much higher by HS Counselors than by university Presidents and Provosts–whose full-time job it is, by the way, to know where their school stands in the pecking order and to do what they can to improve it, which means they need to be constantly watching, learning from, emulating, and trying to steal a march on the competition.</p>
<p>Mostly, though, I think HS Counselors are likely to be little more than an echo chamber, reading the US News rankings and feeding them back as inputs at the other end.</p>
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“Quality of undergraduate education” is an amorphous term that isn’t measured in any meaningful way. Elite boarding school counselors and university presidents are equally incapable of assessing that for the benefit of prospective students.</p>
<p>The big insight of The Washington Monthly rankings is that state schools, because of their scale, have big impacts in raising the socio-economic level of large number of students. Duh! All the other stuff is bunk. </p>
<p>Other rankings, most notably USN&WR, are largely rankings of prestige which almost aways correlates with endowment level.</p>
<p>“Mostly, though, I think HS Counselors are likely to be little more than an echo chamber, reading the US News rankings and feeding them back as inputs at the other end.”</p>
<p>I concur completely bclintonk.</p>
<p>I personally don’t find a problem with the Washington Monthly College Ranking. Three Virginia publics, William and Mary #24, Virginia Tech #44, and UVA #48, in the top 50. Gettin’ it done in the Old Dominion folks! :)</p>
<p>That is one strange list. I never thought anyone would categorize colleges based on the Peace Corps. But I like how they account for things like financial aid given to students.</p>
<p>“Mostly, though, I think HS Counselors are likely to be little more than an echo chamber, reading the US News rankings and feeding them back as inputs at the other end.”
And that is why HS counselors are pretty much useless nowadays.</p>
<p>I really think there should be a metacritic type site of college rankings for colleges. Its pretty horrible to say one rankings-list is the best, why not give all of them to the student and let the student read each one and its methodology</p>
<p>Xiggi, my alma mater’s chancellor agrees with you:</p>
<p>[Chancellor’s</a> final back-to-school briefing has the ring of success](<a href=“Berkeley News | Berkeley”>Berkeley News | Berkeley)</p>
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<p>I was agreeing with you Xiggi. Not sure why you started to argue with me</p>
<p>Yep, yep, UCB, the pompom-weaving dude also declared "This year’s ranking, Birgeneau said, is “a measure of how good a job we’re doing of educating outstanding young people,” and shows that Berkeley is “one of the top universities in the world, public or private.”</p>
<p>Care to point out how the Chinese luminaries measure how schools are educating outstanding young people? Oh yes, it must be all those Nobel and Fields awards! Must be because none of the other criteria comes close to an educational measure.</p>