

How Clemson manipulates their US News ranking - DocSavage
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/06/03/rankings

======
ShabbyDoo
I once suggested to an alumni association official that the university host
free parties for recent graduates and have a concerned donor hand out $20's at
the door with the request that a donation be made inside. The bump in rankings
would lead to more cash coming into the university and have a multiplier
effect on the cash dispensed. I wonder what the definition of "donation" is --
Could a rich alumnus send $20 bills in late December, each in a separate
envelope with the names of an alumnus who had not yet given that year? I
suppose the binary nature of this statistic was chosen to avoid bias toward
schools that pump out investment bankers over those who produce <insert lowly
paid profession here>.

Obviously, all these numbers can be gamed, and we know this from reading
Joel's articles on measuring programmers. However, I wonder if universities
might be rational in gaming the system, even to an extent much greater than
Clemson. Five years from now, few will recall the talk featured in the
article, but the positive feedback loop initiated by such a strong bump in the
rankings might continue for decades. Why not take the short term ethical hit?

Years ago, my alma mater gave up on application fees, supposedly for
socioeconomic justice. The reality, I suspect, is that they wanted to
encourage more applicants so that they could lower their acceptance rates. The
trick is to make sure that the additional applicants are complete losers that
are easy to turn down and not Stanford applicants adding a safety school to
the list. Why not go a step further and offer free iPods for applying? A
couple of years ago one university offered cash (bookstore gift cards) to
already accepted students if they retook their SATs and obtained higher
scores, so there's a precedent here.

~~~
jbert
> Why not take the short term ethical hit?

Because it's unethical?

[Edit: add a little more of my thinking.

Ethics should count towards your reputation. A reputation for honesty or
dishonesty should be important professionally and publically. I think that
honouring and rewarding those who get results unethically is corrosive to
public expectations, leading people to expect less of others. When this
percolates into public life and people have low expectations of the ethics of,
say, politicians and police officers, systemic abuse of power is more
possible/encouraged - since the main counterweight to such abuse is public
opinion, which has had it's expecations neutered. End repetitive rant.

~~~
Retric
Most collage ranking systems start with a list of top schools and work from
there to the ranking system. It's often more a question of how close you are
to Harvard than anything else. (Or MIT / Cal Tech for tech schools etc.)

PS: It's not that Harvard needs to be in the top spot, but if Harvard and Yale
don't make the top 10 buisness schools they are going to start over.

~~~
ShabbyDoo
Good point. Any ranking system that doesn't pass a "laugh test" when viewed
won't be influential.

------
preview
I'm surprised at the university representatives who were disturbed by
Clemson's gaming of the system. Shouldn't this make those people (and US News)
question the validity of the ranking? Instead of making a display of outrage,
why not find a better methodology?

The most troubling aspect of this is that good schools feel the need to become
arbitrarily more selective in order to boost their ranking.

~~~
nickb
As if they're not using the same techniques... The 'outrage' is probably just
a façade. You can bet that they took notes and will be using some of the same
strategies when they get back and start having meetings.

~~~
noodle
speaking as a clemson alumni, the outrage is either for show, or because
someone outed secrets in public.

none of the things that clemson did are secrets or new. the only thing that
_could_ be considered to possibly be unethical, imo, would be the class size
shifting. but, again, this isn't new. my high school actually did this as
well, in order to improve its appearance from outside metrics. and it isn't a
secret. students received somewhat regular updates on what the president was
doing/implementing, and i distinctly remember this being mentioned. maybe not
worded the same way, but the concept was communicated.

------
ivankirigin
I transferred from UCLA to NYU between my sophomore and junior year of
undergrad. UCLA counts me in its matriculated stats because I graduated from
_a_ university, despite leaving.

I already thought at that point that any rankings were bullshit. That kind of
manipulation makes anything +/- 10 or maybe 20 positions to be irrelevant. The
problem for US News is that everyone already knows a rough ranking, and
doesn't need to be told that UCLA & NYU are somewhere in the top 50 but not
top 10.

~~~
sachinag
You know, I submit that lateral transfers are probably one of the highest
possible signals there could be. Now, if that was a part of the formula, they
schools would game it. So you'd probably have to sit out a year, like players
in Div. I sports (all sports, or just revenue generating sports?) have to. Ah,
progress.

------
zach
I wonder if there are highly-paid "educational supplement optimization"
consultants who get low-ranking learning institutions higher in the annual
results...

