SGreenwell wrote: ↑1 year ago
Malcolm Gladwell had a two or three part podcast series on the failings of the rankings, but... The biggest factor in the rankings is a nebulous prestige factor that is determined by them asking the schools to rank one another, by sending questionaires out to school administrators. So basically, you're asking, say, an administrator at San Jose State to rank Arizona State, USC and Harvard. As sports fans, all you need to do is to look at the coaches polls for various sports to realize this is probably a poor way to rank schools. Coaches - or school administrators - are busy, and once you get past Ivy League schools, they're probably pretty hard pressed to tell you why URI is better or worse than UConn or UMass-Amherst or UMass-Lowell. (This will also shock you, but there's evidence that HBCUs were probably ranked far too low because of this factor for many years.)
Beyond that, schools are also rewarded for spending more per pupil... Except that they *don't* get a boost in the formula used for just raw numbers, IIRC. They also got called out for using "family income level of incoming students" as a judging factor, and have de-emphasized that, IIRC. These all compound with some of the issues that RIFan mentioned. If you're a larger state school, or an inner city school trying to provide a solid education to poorer people, you plummet down the rankings.
I understand why these rankings are popular - If you're a parent or a student, this is ultimately a five or six-figure decision for you in most classes. But the boring, practical advice is that college is almost always what you make of it on your own. Go tour a couple with majors and extracurriculars that gel with your interests, and pick.
I just lost a post because I guess I took too much time to write it and I was logged off since I had quoted someone. Should have saved it first. But anyway will try to replicate what I wrote. The above is a very good post. Many others have said similar things and I agree whole heartedly. What the USNWR rankings are based on are deeply flawed and the fact that they have become the end all and be all of the quality of a college for many is ridiculous. Google Northeastern and how they gamed these rankings as they can easily be manipulated.
A few years ago I took the time to analyze what actually is included and not included.
What they do not include:
1. Average price of a school that a student pays
2. Amount of the average debt that a student graduates with
3. What the typical graduate is earning 10 years after graduating
4. The job placement percentage
The above do not factor in to these rankings at all. Not saying these four items should be the end all and be all, but to not factor in at all is a joke.
What is included:
Outcomes (35%) Sounds great, outcomes are important. But most would think numbers 3 and 4 above would factor in. Nope not at all. More than one third of a schools rank comes from its success at retaining and graduating students within 150% of normal time (six years). Graduation and retention percentage is 22%. This is the number of first year students who return for their second year and the percentage who graduate in 6 years. Graduation rate performance is 8%. This is defined as "The actual 6 year graduate rate versus what was predicted by USNWR." Not sure what this means and clearly not a very objective stat, how is this predicted? The last item is noble but not sure how it tells you anything about the quality of a school. Social Mobility (5%) Schools success at promoting social mobility by graduating students who received federal Pell grants. OK I guess.
And if someone transfers from a school and graduates from another school, it hurts you because you did not graduate from your original school. Again outcomes to me means how someone does after they graduate college. This wholly focuses on graduating college in six years or less and what you do after means nothing in these rankings.
The second biggest item at 20% is expert opinion. Really?? Ok who are these experts?? Top academics, presidents, provosts and deans of admissions (15%) - asking them to rate the academic quality of peer institutions with which they are familiar on a scale of 1 (marginal) to 5 (distinguished). Sounds really objective. And they have no idea the academic quality of any school unless they went to that school. This will be who they are friends with, what they talk about at their national conventions, what they read in USNWR etc. I find this to be the most utterly useless of all of the criteria. Oh the other 5% is surveys sent to high school counselors.
So that is 55% of the rankings. The rest are 5% for Alumni giving (yes you cheap bastards not giving to your school hurts its ranking, who would have thought that), 20% Faculty Resources, 10% financial resources and 10% student excellence.
Faculty resources consists of:
Class Size (8%) This entire measure is based on class size, nothing else. Classes with less than 20 students get the highest credit, between 20 and 29 students second highest between 30 and 39 students third highest, 40 to 49 fourth highest and above 50 no credit.
Faculty Salary (7%) Not sure why they do this, I guess the more they make the better they are?? Doubtful, another measure that schools can use to play with the rankings.
The other five percent are proportion of full time faculty with the highest degree in their fields (3%), proportion of faculty who are full time (1%) and student faculty ratio (1%).
The last three items above to me are probably more of an indication of the quality of the faculty but they are only 25% of the score. The vast majority is class size and how much the faculty make. A small class is not inherently better than a larger class but this unequivocally says yes it is. And many professors paid the most do the least amount of teaching as they do a ton of research.
FINANCIAL RESOURCES (10%) Generous per-student spending indicates that a college can offer a wide variety of programs and services. Read this again, does not say they do, just that they can. OK so spend some money on that Rock Wall, or that new dining facility or that new whatever. Whether this leads to a higher quality of education is open for debate.
STUDENT EXCELLENCE (10%) Standardized Tests (7.75%) and 2.25% is high school class rankings. No issues with these, at least is based on objective criteria.
I have many clients that ask me about certain schools for their kids and they invariably bring up these rankings. They really believe that they are an objective ranking of the academic quality of a school. I always ask them do they know what these rankings are based on and most have no idea. When I tell them what they are based on they are quite surprised.
When I look at colleges, I look at the value of a school. And for me that means how much does that school cost and how much will I make (the average graduate of that school) after graduating. I know there are many rich people and intellectual elites that would be horrified by that criteria and many of those are located in New England. But most people going to college are looking for exactly that. Back in the day, this is exactly the way Smart Money used to rank colleges. And URI was ranked very high using that criteria. And I would bet it would be highly ranked today if it was based on that same criteria. I know where I was when I entered URI and where I am today. I am very grateful for URI for the great education I received at URI. The fact that USNWR tells me otherwise is useless to me. And it should be for anyone that knows what these rankings are based on.