
Why U.S. News' college rankings hurt students - jamesbritt
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505145_162-57602138/why-u.s-news-college-rankings-hurt-students/
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alanctgardner2
Wow, those metrics are dismal. Here in Canada we have a similar report that
Maclean's does, but it's focused on things like first-year class sizes,
student satisfaction surveys, and other, more academically-focused metrics. Of
course, the winning schools are usually tiny - 2013 looks to be Mt. Allison,
where my brother is studying right now. He's had some pretty dismal
experiences with the faculty there, but they do well because they have so few
students, and the cost of living in a small town on the east coast is tiny.
It's tough to say that any university ranking will be good, because there's a
lot of complexity, but I think Maclean's is at least not completely toxic.

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randyrand
"On the other hand, U.S. News put more weight on ACT and SAT scores, which are
correlated by family income."

Nit pick - but I didn't like this line because of how irrelevant it was. They
shouldn't throw around words like 'correlates' if they don't understand them.
Knowledge also correlates with income - whoopdydoo.

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tokenadult
There are a variety of college ranking schemes. I documented some of the other
sources of rankings and recommendations of colleges in a thread on College
Confidential,

[http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-
selection...](http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-
selection/437362-looking-good-college.html)

a place where I've used this screen name I use here for a long time. But even
better than my online list (which is alphabetical, removing the implication of
a strict rank order of colleges) is the free website by Education Trust called
College Results

[http://collegeresults.org/](http://collegeresults.org/)

which lets applicants or their parents dig into lots of data-based comparisons
among colleges.

[http://collegeresults.org/search1b.aspx?institutionid=166027](http://collegeresults.org/search1b.aspx?institutionid=166027)

You can decide what outcome measure is important to you, and use that
criterion to compare the colleges you are most interested in. People who are
smart about shopping for colleges don't limit themselves to the U.S. News
rankings, and you don't have to either.

AFTER EDIT: Another source of information for informed shoppers is the website
of a consulting firm that advises colleges,

[http://www.maguireassoc.com/](http://www.maguireassoc.com/)

telling colleges how to improve their financials and their rankings with
tricks like raising list price and then offering phony "merit scholarships"
that just bring out-of-pocket cost down to somewhat above the actual spending
by the college on student instruction.

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darkarmani
> At private schools, the percentage of students receiving need-based aid has
> actually declined!

..from 43% to 42%. This is not a significant amount. If the trend holds, we
have something to worry about.

~~~
caseysoftware
Considering most private schools are going to be significantly smaller than
state schools, that 1% difference is quite likely a few dozen people tops.

1% at my private undergrad would be 18-20 people now.

~~~
jlgreco
The number of students attending private and public universities are actually
pretty close ( _for 4-year schools_ ): _" Nearly 7.5 million students will
attend public 2-year institutions (source), and 0.5 million will attend
private 2-year colleges (source). Some 8.2 million students are expected to
attend public 4-year institutions (source), and about 5.6 million will attend
private 4-year institutions (source)."_

[http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=372](http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=372)

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mathattack
Rankings systems are a necessary evil. If the US News didn't create them,
someone else would. And they have flaws, as do all single measurements. (Stock
price, imperfect. Page clicks, imperfect. IQ, imperfect.)

That said, the article can be misleading. They claim that merit scholarships
are crowding out need due to the rankings. According to their charts, public
school aid is increasing very much and private school aid is flat as a % of
students. What isn't included is the quantity of aid. Most top ranked schools
(call it top 15?) have increased the amount of aid for people falling below a
certain threshold such that they can graduate near debt free. This helps at
Cornell and Chicago more than George Washington, but it's the winners who are
leading on need based aid.

The comments on reputation are a little strange too. They claim "High
reputation schools do well because they are high reputation." This misses the
virtuous circle of "Good reputation improves rankings" -> "High Rankings draw
better students" -> "Better students get better jobs and donate more money" ->
"More money enables investments in improving reputation"

Despite all of this, the rankings only go so far. That's why it's good to have
a lot of them, and other data points for choosing a school.

~~~
jeffdavis
Can you elaborate on the "vulirtuous circle"?

The good students will go somewhere. Why is it good that they go to the same
school as other good students? Is that good for the good students, or good for
everyone?

~~~
mathattack
Good for the schools that rank high and students that go there. It's a
reinforcing cycle. (As opposed to being static, "You're ranked high based on
an old reputation)

Certainly one can take a step back and say that employers should look for the
most talented people, not the highest ranked school, but that's another story.

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tobobo
My personal (though admittedly not dire) experience with college rankings
hurting students was with artificially constricted class sizes that were
strictly enforced in order to impress the rankings by having classes numbering
fewer than 19 students.

It seems that this is yet another consequence of the bizarre split
responsibilities universities hold—balancing the long-term goals of a large
institution with the needs of its students, for whom the experience is much
more ephemeral.

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velodrome
I think that the general US News College Rankings are useless. The rankings
more specific to the major are more useful.

College is what you make of it. Learning should not stop after college - it
should be an ongoing quest.

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aaron695
Normal FUD.

> 2\. The rankings ignore job prospects.

I think says it all. I certainly didn't go to university for job prospects,
McDonalds would have taken me I'm sure.

I did it to learn but also so I'd get a job that I enjoy and was a valuable
member of the community in.

This particular ranking list might suck compared to others, but this article
certainly didn't show it.

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zwieback
There are maybe 20 million students in the US and the top 10 schools in the
rankings have maybe 50000 or 60000 students. That's less than 0.3%, just
sayin'.

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rayiner
I agree with the general proposition that the rankings hurt college students,
particularly because schools raise tuition in order to be able to afford more
merit aid, but I find some of the comments to be tropes:

"1\. College rankings hurt low and middle-income students. "

It's hard to argue why offering aid on the basis of merit as opposed to need
is a bad thing.

"2\. The rankings ignore job prospects."

True, but mostly irrelevant. The rankings are broadly correlated with job
prospects.

"3\. The rankings don't care about learning outcomes."

College isn't about learning, and it's not clear there is much difference
between colleges in this regard anyway. You don't go to Harvard because you
think it'll teach you better than Penn State. You do it to associate with the
other people who got into Harvard.

"4\. U.S. News runs a beauty pageant."

The side-effect of the beauty pageant is that it tends to echo preconceived
notions hiring managers already have. Arguably it does a huge disservice to
say drive students away from Yale on the basis of a bunch of things like
"learning outcomes" that nobody else cares about.

"5\. College rankings fuel ever greater college costs.'

This is the real takeaway point. Overhead per student is a major component of
the rankings, and it helps fuel the ridiculous construction craze that's
happening with universities right now.

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aswin8728
Although I agree with the initial premise that college rankings are flawed, I
still believe they serve a purpose: to inform students and parents of the
schools that are the most popular. Brand recognition plays a paramount role in
getting hired at certain companies, and the HR/hiring departments definitely
keep an eye out for lists like this. It would be in someone's best interets to
find the school that is most compatible with their future goals, but also keep
in mind that going to a "top 20" school can impact their future signficantly.

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nwhitehead
I agree with everything in the article, U.S. News' rankings are terrible and
have hugely bad effects. There are better lists. For example, Affordable
Colleges Online has a list of the best return-on-investment CS degrees [1]. It
has it's own questionable methodological choices but it's a much better start
for anyone thinking about getting a degree.

[1]: [http://www.affordablecollegesonline.org/college-rankings-
onl...](http://www.affordablecollegesonline.org/college-rankings-
online/computer-colleges-roi/)

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gojomo
"When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law)

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adamzerner
I agree, and I started a website to address this:
[http://www.collegeanswerz.com/](http://www.collegeanswerz.com/).

~~~
w1ntermute
[http://www.collegeanswerz.com/colleges](http://www.collegeanswerz.com/colleges)
is returning the Heroku error page.

~~~
adamzerner
Yea, I'm working on something
([http://stackoverflow.com/questions/18681232/trouble-with-
fix...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/18681232/trouble-with-
fixedheader)). It should be better in a day or two. If you want to see
colleges, just use the search bar.

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vermontdevil
My college president, Bill Destler of Rochester Institute of Technology, has
decried these rankings too. But he knows it's going to be promoted heavily by
all the colleges that are not in the top 50 or so.

[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-destler/the-ultimate-
absu...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-destler/the-ultimate-absurdity-
of_b_3247841.html)

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mapcar
The author doesn't think that reputation is just an academic number with no
significance? Regardless of any metrics used by ranking agencies, if you go to
a school that people hold in high regard, that's going to open doors for you.

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bnejad
The first point makes no sense... Universities should be motivated to recruit
students with better test scores. Rewarding students based on merit seems like
the logical approach. Not to mention, the difference in the two is a couple
percent?

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notdrunkatall
College rankings are bullshit, and anyone who doesn't realize that the
difference between the #1 and #10 schools is negligible is an idiot.

~~~
L_Rahman
The problem is that it seems to matter in terms job prospects. I'm a
biomedical engineering undergrad, so I thought I made the right decision
turning down Harvard to come to Hopkins.

However, our recruitment is abysmal compared to Harvard even for biotech and
I'm seeing peers who went to a much less rigorous undergraduate engineering
program that also has grade inflation getting the jobs I want simply because
those companies are not hiring from Hopkins.

~~~
jrs99
There are lots of kids at harvard saying the same thing. They think
(understandably) just graduating from harvard should get them some decent job
in their field of choice somehow. I don't think it's completely a matter of
hopkins vs harvard.

