College Rankings

[Not A Serious Person]

While US News is the standard, its ranking has been rife with scandal, inaccurate data, prison time(!), and bad calculations.

Colleges have admitted they submit inaccurate data to boost their rankings
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/education/2022/09/12/columbia-university-incorrect-data-us-news-college-rankings/10358383002/
https://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/2014/08/26/how-northeastern-gamed-the-college-rankings/

In addition to the above, this article points out that Villanova, USC, Claremont McKenna, Emory, and Penn have also cheated.
https://washingtonmonthly.com/2022/10/13/why-the-u-s-news-college-rankings-are-subject-to-cheating-and-how-to-fix-them/


A dean from Temple is serving prison time for cheating on their ranking!
https://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/former-temple-business-school-dean-moshe-porat-denied-bail-prison-sentence-to-begin-may-9/3226762/

So, given this checkered past, US News revamped its ranking for its 2024 edition (released in September) in response to a rebellion where schools stopped reporting data to them.
https://theweek.com/education/1023446/the-college-rankings-rebellion

Responding to critics, the publication made its biggest changes to its method in four decades. But it’s unclear whether that is enough to quiet the naysayers.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/18/us/us-news-college-ranking.html

It did little to stop the criticism, and in late October, US News admitted it screwed up (again!) and revised the 2024 ranking.
https://www.usnews.com/education/blogs/college-rankings-blog/articles/2023-10-27/corrections-to-the-2024-best-colleges-rankings

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At this point, it is fair to conclude that the US News rankings are beyond useless, and, in fact, all rankings should be considered useless. While I'm sympathetic to this view, here is the hard reality: rankings still matters.

40% of U.S. adults who are aware of U.S. News World & Report’s college rankings and nearly half of college alumni (48%) say student/alumni assessment is more important in determining the university rankings than peer assessment by academics.
https://pro.morningconsult.com/analysis/us-news-college-rankings-polling

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Enter the WSJ

The Wall Street Journal has published a U.S. college ranking since 2016 and, working with our research partners College Pulse and Statista, take a different approach.

We no longer reward colleges’ wealth or reputation in and of themselves. Gone is the survey of academics on schools’ reputations. Gone are the rewards for instructional spending and the assumption that the quality of education is largely dictated by how expensive it is to produce.

In their place we’ve expanded the importance of student outcomes: graduation rates and graduate salaries. Critically, we now put greater emphasis on measuring the value added by colleges—not simply measuring their students’ success, but focusing on the contribution the college makes to that success.

https://www.wsj.com/us-news/education/wsj-college-pulse-college-rankings-methodology-f010fc11

Here is their 2024 ranking list
https://www.wsj.com/rankings/college-rankings/best-colleges-2024

Some notable rankings (subjectively chosen by me)

12 Georgetown
16 Duke
23 Illinois Institute of Technology
25 Northwestern University
26 Washington University in St. Louis
27 Lake Forest College
32 University of Notre Dame
35 University of Illinois Urbana - Champaign
37 The University of Chicago
55 University of Illinois - Chicago
56 Marquette University
62 Villanova University
67 Brown University
70 Carnegie Mellon University
74 UCLA
79 University of Wisconsin - Madison
84 University of Virginia - Main Campus
99 Johns Hopkins University
113 DePaul University
118 The University of Texas at Austin
135 Providence College
154 Indiana University - Bloomington
160 University of Iowa
166 New York University
176 Creighton University
198 The University of Kansas
205 Loyola University Chicago

[Uncle Rico]

lol

[The Hippie Satan of Hyperbole]

They’ve always been useless. Congrats on finally figuring this out.

[Not A Serious Person]

They’ve always been useless. Congrats on finally figuring this out.

You have made it clear for years that you detest these surveys, as we discussed in previous threads here.

But just because you think they are worthless does not mean everyone else agrees with you. Not everyone agrees with your worldview, nor are they required to be like you want.

I posted the survey above directed at you specifically.

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At this point, it is fair to conclude that the US News rankings are beyond useless, and, in fact, all rankings should be considered useless. While I'm sympathetic to this view, here is the hard reality: rankings still matters.

40% of U.S. adults who are aware of U.S. News World & Report’s college rankings and nearly half of college alumni (48%) say student/alumni assessment is more important in determining the university rankings than peer assessment by academics.
https://pro.morningconsult.com/analysis/us-news-college-rankings-polling

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So go ahead and diatribe why they are worthless. And I will largely agree with you. And when you're done, the simple reality is they matter.

Why do you think all the schools cheated, and a dean is imprisoned for cheating? Because they all agree with you that they are worthless?

[Uncle Rico]

lol

[Skatastrophy]

So go ahead and diatribe

[The Hippie Satan of Hyperbole]

You have made it clear for years that you detest these surveys, as we discussed in previous threads here.

But just because you think they are worthless does not mean everyone else agrees with you. Not everyone agrees with your worldview, nor are they required to be like you want.

I posted the survey above directed at you specifically.

-----

At this point, it is fair to conclude that the US News rankings are beyond useless, and, in fact, all rankings should be considered useless. While I'm sympathetic to this view, here is the hard reality: rankings still matters.

40% of U.S. adults who are aware of U.S. News World & Report’s college rankings and nearly half of college alumni (48%) say student/alumni assessment is more important in determining the university rankings than peer assessment by academics.
https://pro.morningconsult.com/analysis/us-news-college-rankings-polling

----

So go ahead and diatribe why they are worthless. And I will largely agree with you. And when you're done, the simple reality is they matter.

Why do you think all the schools cheated, and a dean is imprisoned for cheating? Because they all agree with you that they are worthless?

They’re worthless.

And you complaining about others diatribing broke my irony meter.

[warriorchick]

Everyone knows (or should know) that the only metric that matters is acceptance rate.

[MU82]

Everyone knows (or should know) that the only metric that matters is acceptance rate.

blk%

[JWags85]

We all know the rankings are a joke so no need to get stressed about it, but Lake Forest College slotting in alongside NW and Wash U is objectively hilarious.

I randomly knew a bunch of LFC grads when I lived in Chicago.  Solid people but certainly not Ivy-level academics.  I remember two specifically that I was closer with.  One from the Northern Chicago burbs chose between a final two of LFC and DePaul.  And the other was from an affluent family in STL, didn’t even sniff admission at Wash U despite her father being an alum, and she was also denied from Purdue and Emory.

Definitely the profile of a top 25 uni

[MU82]

UIC over MU = STFU

[Uncle Rico]

UIC over MU = STFU

Where’s St. Thomas ranked?

[The Hippie Satan of Hyperbole]

blk%

I laughed.

[ChitownSpaceForRent]

We all know the rankings are a joke so no need to get stressed about it, but Lake Forest College slotting in alongside NW and Wash U is objectively hilarious.

I randomly knew a bunch of LFC grads when I lived in Chicago.  Solid people but certainly not Ivy-level academics.  I remember two specifically that I was closer with.  One from the Northern Chicago burbs chose between a final two of LFC and DePaul.  And the other was from an affluent family in STL, didn’t even sniff admission at Wash U despite her father being an alum, and she was also denied from Purdue and Emory.

Definitely the profile of a top 25 uni

Lake Forest College has changed their profile quite dramatically over the past 5-10 years.

Now, you’re right not Ivy level, but it’s certainly up there for academics at the DIII level

[JWags85]

Lake Forest College has changed their profile quite dramatically over the past 5-10 years.

Now, you’re right not Ivy level, but it’s certainly up there for academics at the DIII level

Sure, but come on.  You can change your profile but not like that.  They're 5 spots ahead of Williams, 10 ahead of U of Chicago.

NJIT is a fine school, but its literally ranked level with Cal Tech.  Both are behind Rose-Hulman, another solid school but certainly not the best tech school in the country after MIT.

Oh, and top 20 BYU, lolz

[Not A Serious Person]

Sure, but come on.  You can change your profile but not like that.  They're 5 spots ahead of Williams, 10 ahead of U of Chicago.

NJIT is a fine school, but its literally ranked level with Cal Tech.  Both are behind Rose-Hulman, another solid school but certainly not the best tech school in the country after MIT.

Oh, and top 20 BYU, lolz

I believe many agree with what you wrote here.

Is it because we got so used to 40 years of scandals and corruption within US News Rankings that despite it coming to light recently, we still accept their rankings as the benchmark?

Why else would many agree with what you wrote above (again, I am not picking on you)? What basis do we have to judge one school from another other than US News?

Our understanding of rankings has been wrong for 40 years, thanks to US News. And so have our understanding of the prestige of a school's academic reputation.

And MU has always been 20 spots better than Madison!

[The Hippie Satan of Hyperbole]

lol. The fact that this is all news to you says more about you than anything.

[PorkysButthole]

Interesting Thread!   Porky generally shares Not Serious' view on this topic.   Rankings and acceptance rates are not all that meaningful and fraught with all kinds of issues and manipulation to the point where they are borderline useless.  Porky would argue that they're not relevant in any practical sense in terms of why people pursue higher education and what it's supposed to accomplish.

That said, rankings and yes even acceptance rates still matter to the extent that top students (let's define top students as those bound for national universities or national liberal arts colleges ranked in the top 125) because they play a significant determining factor in terms of WHERE students ultimately choose to enroll.   Perhaps rankings are not THE determining factor, but Porky would argue that they are absolutely one of them.  Porky's son is a current HS Junior just starting to explore options, and rankings are an important if not the most important consideration for all of his peers.  Granted he goes to one of the top public high schools in the state that is absolutely a pressure cooker environment of the first order, so Porky will be the first to acknowledge that Porky lives in a bubble, where people place a much greater emphasis on this kind of nonsense than they should.   

But consumer behavior being what it is, rankings and acceptance rates still matter to a school like MU, because it impacts enrollment.  There's no way for MU to know how many accepted students turn them down due to their ranking and high acceptance rate, but that number is definitely not zero, so to a school like MU with a very low yield where every student matters and even a 30 student deficit has a negative impact on the operating budget, it's foolish for a school like MU to dismiss the issue out of hand.  Wish they could afford to but they can't and MU is not going to unilaterally change consumer behavior on rankings.   As long as they remain a determining factor in where people enroll (and they do) they will always matter, no matter how ridiculous they are.
Fortunately the current provost understands this, and they've course corrected slightly.

[The Hippie Satan of Hyperbole]

Nope. Things have changed even in the last couple of years. Acceptance rates and rankings are completely useless. Net price is what consumers are driven by now more than ever. Especially in an economy such as this where higher education is less in demand.

[Not A Serious Person]

Nope. Things have changed even in the last couple of years. Acceptance rates and rankings are completely useless. Net price is what consumers are driven by now more than ever. Especially in an economy such as this where higher education is less in demand.

What helps keep the net price down is donors to the school.

Now that is changing.

[4everwarriors]

I've been told Buffoonomics is workin' swell. Guess not Fluffy, hey?

[The Hippie Satan of Hyperbole]

I've been told Buffoonomics is workin' swell. Guess not Fluffy, hey?

It’s simple demographics

[The Hippie Satan of Hyperbole]

I've been told Buffoonomics is workin' swell. Guess not Fluffy, hey?

And actually the price of higher education decreasing is a direct result of a good economy so…