The Economist's US college rankings • Hacker News Board

Re: The Economist's US college rankings

#21

Post by mfoy_ » Fri, Oct 30, 2015, 5:48 PM UTC

impendia wrote: post #9

I 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 provide…

It's "ranked by alumni earnings above expectation"

It's not "ranked by alumni earning".

Re: The Economist's US college rankings

#22

Post by jpatel3 » Fri, Oct 30, 2015, 5:49 PM UTC

_gwlb wrote: post #4

This 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.

any time data is shown in the article, it should be best to provide access to raw data as anyone can analyze with their own angle. When I see static graphs and analysis I smell distorted facts. (of course in this case you can do search, but giving access to raw data would be more useful.)

Re: The Economist's US college rankings

#23

Post by jldugger » Fri, Oct 30, 2015, 5:50 PM UTC

hackuser wrote: post #5

The 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 high…

> (Personally, I think the most valuable things gained in college or in any education don't happen to have much monetary value.)

Well, someone does, because they're charging for it.

Re: The Economist's US college rankings

#24

Post by rayiner » Fri, Oct 30, 2015, 5:54 PM UTC

impendia wrote: post #9

I 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 provide…

Yale is also in the bottom bracket. I imagine at least Yale and Caltech have similar problems: attracting people who could be bankers (Harvard) and sending them into liberal arts (Yale) or engineering (Caltech).

Re: The Economist's US college rankings

#25

Post by seibelj » Fri, Oct 30, 2015, 5:54 PM UTC

If a college has a huge communications program and a smaller engineering program, it would be ranked less because of pay disparities. This methodology is simply inaccurate

Re: The Economist's US college rankings

#26

Post by et2o » Fri, Oct 30, 2015, 5:55 PM UTC

This is hilariously bad. Schools that produce academics as opposed to those who go into high-paying professions are penalized, when in fact (at many of the top institutions) producing academics is one of the main goals.

Re: The Economist's US college rankings

#27

Post by stagger87 » Fri, Oct 30, 2015, 5:57 PM UTC

et2o wrote: post #26

This is hilariously bad. Schools that produce academics as opposed to those who go into high-paying professions are penalized, when in fact (at many of the top institutions) producing academics is one of the main goals.

This is not bad. It is simply one of many possible ways to rank colleges.

Re: The Economist's US college rankings

#28

Post by the_watcher » Fri, Oct 30, 2015, 5:58 PM UTC

impendia wrote: post #9

I 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 provide…

That's not what the rankings are ranking schools by. It's entirely about value v. expected value. For example, say College State University had an expected income of $0, and the median income of their alumni was $15K. That would be a top 10 school by this methodology, despite no sane person thinking that it would represent an upgrade over going to a school with an expected income of $75K and a median income of $74K.

Think of it as a supplementary rankings system, rather than a definitive one.

The biggest problem with the methodology, to me, is it doesn't consider average cost of attendance to students at all.

Re: The Economist's US college rankings

#29

Post by the_watcher » Fri, Oct 30, 2015, 6:00 PM UTC

et2o wrote: post #26

This is hilariously bad. Schools that produce academics as opposed to those who go into high-paying professions are penalized, when in fact (at many of the top institutions) producing academics is one of the main goals.

That doesn't make this ranking list bad. The rankings system explicitly explains, in painstaking detail, that the system is designed to measure return on degree, empirically. That means they must use empirical data.

Re: The Economist's US college rankings

#30

Post by forgetsusername » Fri, Oct 30, 2015, 6:01 PM UTC

impendia wrote: post #9

I 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 provide…

>This is obviously wrong.

"The analysis goes against my gut feeling, therefore it's wrong."

Did you bother to read the article?

The Economist’s first-ever college rankings are based on a simple, if debatable, premise: the economic value of a university is equal to the gap between how much money its graduates earn, and how much they might have made had they studied elsewhere.

That's what they did, and those were the results. They even say it's debatable. Using a different analysis or metric, the results would be different.

>In summary: Bullshit.

As opposed to the anecdotes regarding your Alma Mater and rich friends.