The Economist's US college rankings
economist.com
The Economist's US college rankings
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Re: The Economist's US college rankings
#2It would be very cool if you could sort by percentage differential between the over/under and expected earnings. I think sorting by that parameter would produce some really interesting results.
Re: The Economist's US college rankings
#3Does anyone know of a good diy college ranking system? One where you can pick that factors that actually matter to you. I'm always happy to see options other than U.S. News but I'd love to be able to tweak the algorithm myself.
I think these one size fits all rankings are all flawed by their inherent nature.
Re: The Economist's US college rankings
#4This tool would be a lot more useful if it allowed for filtering by chosen course of study. For example, University of Washington has a median earnings that is slightly below expected, but I can pretty much guarantee that their computer science graduates are earning well above median.
Re: The Economist's US college rankings
#5The Brookings study [1] mentioned by the the Economist offers this interesting analysis:
1. Graduates of some colleges enjoy much more economic success than their characteristics at time of admission would suggest. Colleges with high value-added in terms of alumni earnings are often focused on training for high-paying careers in technical subjects. ...
2. Four college quality factors are strongly associated with higher earnings for alumni:
Curriculum value: The amount earned by people in the workforce who hold degrees in a field of study offered by the college, averaged across all the degrees the college awards;
STEM orientation: The share of graduates prepared to work in STEM occupations;
Completion rates: The percentage of students finishing their award within at least 1.5 times the normal time (three years for a two-year college, six years for a four-year college);
Faculty salaries: The average monthly compensation of all teaching staff
3. Value-added measures are fairly reliable over time. ...
(Personally, I think the most valuable things gained in college or in any education don't happen to have much monetary value.)
[1] http://www.brookings.edu/research/reports2/2015/10/29-earnin...
Re: The Economist's US college rankings
#6The concept of studying in Higher Education for more opportunities, job stability, and income during one's lifetime is not to be dismissed.
That said, if the predominant value of education is in the pursuit of money, then I think using the Brookings Institute model (which The Economist references) that includes two-year and vocational education entities is a much more pragmatic and practical approach. That is, if money is the goal, only focus on money as the outcome. Conflating money with prestige is, to me, foolish. A University is a prestige degree, insofar as there's a pursuit of knowledge, in theory, to produce a well-rounded, educated person...in theory.
I say this as a graduate of two generally highly ranked Universities, who occasionally gets the feeling that I'd be making more money if I'd taken my education budget, got trained in HVAC service/repair/sales, and started my own company.
Re: The Economist's US college rankings
#7Does anyone know of a good diy college ranking system? One where you can pick that factors that actually matter to you. I'm always happy to see options other than U.S. News but I'd love to be able to tweak the algorithm myself. I think these one size fits all rankings are all flawed by their inherent nature.
The economist article linked here references (and uses in their rankings) data from https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/, which is put out by the US Dept of Ed. Looks like there's some additional metrics in there that may be useful.
Re: The Economist's US college rankings
#8This tool would be a lot more useful if it allowed for filtering by chosen course of study. For example, University of Washington has a median earnings that is slightly below expected, but I can pretty much guarantee that their computer science graduates are earning well above median.
It assumes you select a school that is focused on your field of choice, so if you pick an art school, your preference is for art, and if you pick an engineering school, your preference is for engineering.
Re: The Economist's US college rankings
#9I am a proud alumnus of Rice University and I see that it is on page 64, fifth from the bottom. Also, even more surprisingly, very near the bottom is Caltech.
This is obviously wrong. If their methodology says that Caltech is in the bottom 2% of US colleges, then one concludes that their methodology is worthless, or at least that what it's predicting is not very closely related to the quality of the education provided. I suspect that many Caltech undergraduates decide to pursue grad school and academia, which is not an especially lucrative career, and which is probably not highly corrolated with political leftism or "reefer madness".
I can also tell you that my friends at Rice who were looking to make a lot of money after they graduated, by and large succeeded.
In summary: Bullshit.
Re: The Economist's US college rankings
#10Does anyone know of a good diy college ranking system? One where you can pick that factors that actually matter to you. I'm always happy to see options other than U.S. News but I'd love to be able to tweak the algorithm myself. I think these one size fits all rankings are all flawed by their inherent nature.
I made a simple DIY ranking system using the same College Scorecard data last week. Here you go: http://bsudol.com/1PUPohk
You can select which variables are important and how much, and it generates a top/bottom 50 list.
This was inspired by this article from NPR (http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2015/09/21/441417608/the-new-...)