Wait, tuition is directly linked to the ranking? Seriously? That makes no sense at all.
And to percentage of kids living on campus? That really sucks. I hated living in a dorm for the year I did it.
Matt, I think it's "expenditure per student" that's directly linked. If you spend a lot of money inefficiently, hey, it's still a lot per student.
Because there's no easy way to measure or learn about educational outcomes (as if that's what students wanted!) a lot of people choosing colleges use US News rankings as a proxy for prestige. It affects applications like you wouldn't believe. If you ever have a chance to talk to a big-league admissions director, you will be amazed by how much students sound like widgets.
Yeah, the school where I teach has no dorms, and tuition is kept low. The education they get is pretty phenomenal; at least, my students are getting a much more thorough and interesting education in English than I got for 30K/year at Nerd U. But it's not like anyone cares about classroom experience, anyway.
if you're teaching them in rooms of 200+, students are widgets, or near enough.
Well, it's worthwhile to note the other half of Carey's point, which is that universities strongly resist instituting accountability and reporting schemes which would allow people to get a clearer sense of their educational worth. So you end up using a lot of proxy measures.
6: they're widgets for institutions that cap at 25/class, too. Not that this is a bad thing, per se, but admissions is definitely on the business side of things.
7: well sure, admissions people are all the same that way. The question is how the rest of the university looks at them.
6: Do you know of any accountability and reporting schemes worth more than the paper they are printed on? Or are we really looking at NCLB v 2.0?
It's even worse than this. There was a NY Times piece a while back about how some schools that were relatively good bargains in terms of price/quality relationship found that by significantly increasing their price, they got a far better applicant pool to choose from, even before that had any effect on the US News rankings. And a better-quality applicant pool, guess what, moves you up in the rankings.
So why, just by raising tuition significantly and doing nothing else, did these schools get better applicants? Because parents are using price as an informational signal, the same way that I might use price to tell me which brand of premium salsa in Whole Foods might be the best if I have no previous experience with any of those brands. But yeah, that means there really isn't any kind of information out there at all about some of the things that might help parents and prospectives make genuinely good choices, or at least you have to really look long and hard to find out.
For example, do you want to know precisely how much "value added" comes directly through teaching at a given institution? (e.g., how much the actual teaching changes what you know or can do, compared to just being at the place and in the company of smart peers?) Good luck: there aren't any real measurements of that, and not much interest in trying to do so. But that's the kind of thing you'd really like to know if you're trying to make a more sensitive selection than, "They have a good faculty/student ratio at that place".
I remember being so entirely frustrated by this when applying to colleges. None of the information seemed to mean anything -- I made decisions based on grossly perceived prestige, and whether I liked the people I met on campus visits.
Same as 12. Every college presents itself as being exactly the same. Every college claims to have everything. Except St. John's College. So all else being equal, they differ in location, and in price, and in perceived prestige.
And it happened again at grad school, EVEN THOUGH every grad school department knows exactly what thing (often exactly one thing) it specializes in, what kind of students it wants, and what it does not bother with teaching people at all. I tried and I tried to figure out what the differences were between the programs, but they all present themselves as exactly the same. I didn't realize that I should have looked at what classes were required. I can't even imagine how hard it would have been to figure out the differences between the programs in the days before departmental websites that list the faculty interests.
Tom Wolfe has a great section on the US News Rankings in Charlotte Simmons. From the perspective of the university president:
U.S. News & World Report--what a stupid joke! Here is this third-rate news weekly, aimed at businessmen who don't like to read, trying desperately to move up in the race but forever swallowing the dust of Time and Newsweek, and some character dreams up a circulation gimmick: Let's rank the colleges. Let's stir up a fuss. Pretty soon all of American higher education is jumping through hoops to meet the standards of the marketing department of a miserable, lowbrow magazine out of Washington, D.C.! Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, Dupont--all jumped through the hoop at the crack of the U.S. News whip! Does U.S. News rate you according to how many of the applicants you offer places to actually enroll in your college and not another? Then let's lock in as many as we can through early admissions contracts. Does U.S. News want to know your college's SAT average? We'll give it to them, but we will be "realistic" and not count "special cases" ... such as athletes.
It's worth noting that US News and World Reports doesn't just rely on coordination problems and game theory to prevent colleges from opting out of their crack-addled system; they actively punish schools which grasp at sanity.
Man, that's Tom Wolfe, all right. But I thought US News was actually higher-brow than Time and Newsweek.
My daughter is a junior in HS, so we are just starting to look. Of course, being the sophisticated consumers that we are ranking don't mean anything. Her school had the Director of Admissions from Union give a pep talk the other night. He advised the "t shirt" principle. If you can buy a t shirt from the bookstore and wear it with a straight face then you should apply. Now, why one would try to say this has nothing to do with rankings is beyond me.
I thought US News was actually higher-brow than Time and Newsweek
No.
A lot of the problem could be solved if they just grouped the schools into tiers within which the schools would be unranked (since there's really no global difference between the top ten, and then the next thirty or forty schools). But of course they won't do that.
My daughter is a junior in HS, so we are just starting to look.
Way to disadvantage your kid.
I suppose you'll complain about the BCS next.
Furthermore, the students/parents are being sane and rational at recognizing that degrees from well-ranked schools carry more weight than degrees from worse-ranked schools in the job market.
I personally do not believe this amounts to a hill of beans. I am of the opinion that a decent state school can launch you to any career path you're capable of. But I think reasonable parents and students believe that their degree had better be from a well-ranked school in order to compete on the job market.
If only all American high schools had competent and passionate college counselors, this wouldn't be an issue.
"passionate college counselors"
I had many, many links from which to choose.
A lot of the problem could be solved if they just grouped the schools into tiers within which the schools would be unranked
So true. False precision is a big enemy in life.
2: I really liked living on campus in college. There was a lot of camaraderie in my House, and I got to run our IM crew team.
When I moved out to a strange town to go to professional school, I wish that I could have lived in a dorm my first year, because it would have allowed me to get my bearings. Unfortunately the supply of graduate housing was very limited, and with the exception of married student housing law students weren't allowed. We were on a different calendar (semester) from the rest of the school which was on a quarter system. I think that the ABA requires it. (This really sucked, because we'd been in school for a month or so before the other students got back, and the health center was only half open.) I think that this was the ostensible reason for not allowing law students to live in the dorms, but I think that the real reason was that a few years earlier, a couple of students had found a loophole in the contract, and gotten out of staying in the dorm for the whole year.
In a lot of places, I think that there ought to be more on campus housing, because the private rentals in close proximity are really expensive--especially at large state schools like Cal. Berkeley is just an outrageously expensive place to live. Tuition is cheap, but the off-campus housing is probably more expensive than room and board at an Ivy.
In some of those areas, there's a real town/gown issue. Students drive up the cost of living for long-time residents.
I am pro- US News college rankings. I think the system would otherwise be much less transparent.
But joe, it's not transparent, because the rankings are totally fuxed.
Reed College quit reporting data to USN some time ago. USN then put them in the second quartile of national liberal arts colleges, where previously they had been ranked in the middle of the first quartile (and in the top ten, by other services than USN.)
Only one of Reed's USN deficiencies that hurt them with USN was education-oriented -- "retention". Reed takes chances on bright students with deficiencies and peculiarities, more example Jesus and I, but also demands that they shape up when they're at Reed, so there's a high drop-out and transfer-out rate. (Also because after 2 years some students decide they want a more specialzed program and transfer out.
The whole interlocking network of rankings, including grad school rankings, really has a constricting effect on education. Differences in approach, philosophy, and content are translated into rankings on a single quality scale, leading to a conventional and thoughtless uniformity. There was a recent episode when Notre Dame's econ department, which took an original, critical approach, was low rated, so that ND management basically split the department and left the critical economists to wither off by themselves. (Talented, ambitious students will all choose the orthodox department if they want careers). Max Sawicky tried to get some of the big economists to protest, but none did IIRC.
Heebie, Texas is among the top state schools, I think, right below Madison, Ann Arbor, and Berkeley. I don't think that Oregon or Oregon State are good starting points.
I was just looking up an article on the rankings by Reed's president. Here it is.
Reed was one of the few colleges that was enthusiastic about accepting students from the hippy no-grades alternative high school in my hometown.
Heebie, Texas is among the top state schools,
I didn't go to Texas for undergrad. (Okay, I went to Ann Arbor. Point?) But there's a bunch of successful people from NMSU, (New Mexico State U), Jammies included, in my circle of friends, and they're all coworkers with Cornell and Duke and Penn people, etc.
Texas is among the top state schools, I think, right below Madison, Ann Arbor, and Berkeley
You know, it's not as if the Harvard, Yale, Stanford, MIT, Caltech, and the other few toppest of the top schools would drop out of consideration if they stopped participating, except, perhaps, among people you wouldn't want to associate with anyway. What's keeping them in the game?
32: When I was interning in the Senate, there were more interns in our office from NMSU than from any other school. Note that NMSU is the second-best public university in New Mexico.
What's keeping them in the game?
Since the rankings change every year, relative position and the possibility of being declared the best school in the country.
Reed was able to do it because it already had a solid reputation (and lot of faculty connections to grad schools) and also already admitted a particular type of student. It isn't competing for the typical Ivy-Stanford student, but for the atypical Ivy-Stanford student.
Yeah, right, relative positions. But why do they care about that? Harvard's going to get worse entering class if they're third instead of second or first one year? Come the fuck on. The other schools might actually have a legitimate reason to be worried, but not the ones actually at the top.
As for the possibility of being declared the best school in the country, well, this just confirms Aristotle's criticism of the honor-seeking life, to wit, you are dependent for your acclaim on people of questionable worth.
This paper has an interesting ranking on Page 28:
http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/hoxby/papers/revealedprefranking.pdf
Colleges are ranked by the preferences of students admitted into multiple schools. It gives a bump up to religious schools like Brigham Young and Notre Dame.
38: I doubt any of very top schools are concerned about the effect on their incoming classes (except to the extent that students admitted to two or more top schools choose the highest-ranking one, which probably doesn't happen much). You'll note that they're not the ones doing all the crazy stuff to increase their rankings. I suspect it's pretty much all for pride and bragging rights, despite Aristotle's warning.
Apropos of nothing, but seeing as how this is the academia-related thread:
Wanted: someone to write a paper for an ethics class
I give it a 60% chance I'm being trolled, but still.
I believe that dropping from 9th to 11th or from 19th to 21st has a massive effect.
Transparency is good, but objectified rankings are crazy. I'd like to see some sort of game-theoretic or other statistical analysis of the way the feedback loops between undergrad admissions, undergrad rankings, grad school admissions, grad school rankings, and PhD job placement work.
Heebie! Get thee (please) to the "Submitted without comment" thread. I need your help.
everyone i knew who lived offcampus as freshmen regreted it.
OT, I just had a virus of some sort called "Gubbish Remover". It must be very new because Google finds no mentions except by the Gubbish people and a couple of seeming fronts of theirs. Lavasoft found and removed it for me, I think -- it was marked as dangerous.
It purported to be a viru scan.
Anyone know about the proper authorities?
I am of the opinion that a decent state school can launch you to any career path you're capable of.
Ayup.
It's interesting that "expenditure per student" = high rankings for colleges, while otoh people just love to argue that money doesn't "necessarily" improve education in K-12.
I had a friend from Last Chance U. who said that in grad school (philosophy, Texas) you pretty much could tell who the successful grad students would be, because they could buddy up to the professors based on people they had in common. He did not say that these people were smarter, just had more social capital and knew what the up-and-coming topics would be.
When he was there the department recommended that about half the grad students transfer out. They weren't flunking but the dept. didn't think that it could place them on the job track. In part this is an admirable concern for students who'd be wasting their time, but it also feels vaguely like restricting entry to the cartel, especially combined with other things going on.
I personally do not believe this amounts to a hill of beans. I am of the opinion that a decent state school can launch you to any career path you're capable of. But I think reasonable parents and students believe that their degree had better be from a well-ranked school in order to compete on the job market.
I think it's the "any career path you're capable of" bit where it gets tricky. Connections and credentials can go a long way toward making up for middling ability. There are kids who will shine at whatever they try regardless of where they went to school, but there are also kids for whom a prestige degree may be the difference between making it onto the first rung of prestige career and having to compete on a more equal basis with people of equal or greater ability from less-advantaged backgrounds. So if you're from the privileged classes, getting your kid into a prestige school can be a way of giving them one more safety net, and we're all about safety for our kids.
I've talked to several Ivy types who were all about connections and networking. They seemed not to have any subject-matter interests.
IME that is very common among Ivy-types.
This thread is not getting nearly enough love, condom-ized, BCP-ed, anal, or otherwise.
40: My top-10 southern university (undergrad, current grad student, and yeah, there's really only one) would certainly see applicant profiles change in response to ranking, lacrosse cases, and the like. It's not Harvard, MIT, or CalTech, but it's essentially tied for next.
50: That worked for me - standard smart kid from a small town, I woulda been one more smart chucklehead if I followed the path at my local state school. Instead I got into a snooty undergrad and doors opened.
I vaguely remember reading a report about 10 years ago that UC Berkeley was drawing students from wealthier families than in earlier decades because people were realizing that you could you could get a very good education for a lot less than at a private school. I don't know if the escalation of housing costs in the late 90s has affected this.
55
Wealthy families aren't going to send their kids to UC Berkeley instead of Harvard to save money. They might send their kids to UC Berkeley if they can't get into Harvard.
Harvard isn't the only expensive private school out there, you know.
41: The ethics paper ad has been deleted.