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The Economist's US college rankings

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Re: The Economist's US college rankings

#71

Post by haberman »

obastani wrote: post #65
krstck wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They're basically arguing that you're better off going to a school in the middle of nowhere because "hey, for being in such a crappy location, you did pretty well!". Well, no, not exactly. It's a subtle distinction, but what it's actually ranking is how well that school exceeds expectations , not best outcomes . This is not necessarily a list that will give a student the best school to go to, but rather (what it sa…

That's my point -- who decides what expectations are? Their results are incredibly dependent on the model specification. I imagine if they changed which indicators they used, the results would vary widely. Here's another way to see my concern. Suppose you had a classifier that achieves 1.0 R^2; then since it perfectly predicts each school's expected value, it'll assign each school a score of 0. I'm pretty suspicious…

> Suppose you had a classifier that achieves 1.0 R^2; then since it perfectly predicts each school's expected value, it'll assign each school a score of 0. I'm pretty suspicious of an approach where the results get worse with better predictive power.

If I'm understanding correctly, that result would indicate a world where the college you attend has no effect on your earning power. ie. choose any college you want, because you'll earn the same amount regardless of which one you choose.

This would only apply to colleges that people in your demographic group actually attended though. If the dataset doesn't contain any information about people like you who went to Harvard, then maybe Harvard would indeed increase your earning potential if there was a way for you to actually go there.

Re: The Economist's US college rankings

#72

Post by colbyh »

6stringmerc wrote: post #6

The 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 mon…

very interesting that a few schools (Babson, Harvard, Rensselaer) score highly in both models.

Re: The Economist's US college rankings

#73

Post by [deleted] »

obastani wrote: post #49

This analysis doesn't make any sense to me. Even by their own intent (i.e., best added value based on salary), their methodology is nonsensical. For example: Why should CalTech get hurt for being near L.A.? They're basically arguing that you're better off going to a school in the middle of nowhere because "hey, for being in such a crappy location, you did pretty well!". In an absolute sense you are better off going t…

[deleted]

Re: The Economist's US college rankings

#74

Post by 6stringmerc »

btilly wrote: post #55
6stringmerc wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After reading through your response, I believe you missed my point. What I was referring to is that for a large population of potential students - those who wish to simply make more than if they do not go to a higher education program - going to a two year or vocational path school is exceptionally smart. Leaving that out of consideration is...not smart...highly biased...as in, how many readers of The Economist would…

Read the article again. The Economist controlled for a variety of factors. Family socioeconomic status was among them. That said, one of the shortcomings of their metric is that they only had data on students who took out federal loans. How predictive this result is for others is open to question.

Well, then, it's even more glaringly bad-form to leave out two-year and vocational schools from their approach then, if socioeconomic status is a factor, now isn't it? My perspective is yes, it's bad. It seems we'll just keep talking around each other, but I'll stand by my thumbs up toward the Brookings version and give the hairy eye to The Economist's method.

Re: The Economist's US college rankings

#75

Post by jldugger »

impendia wrote: post #51
jldugger wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's important to distinguish that this system is not rating graduates, but institution performance. Sort the table by expected earnings, and Rice is on the front page. Students admitted to Rice are smart and successful people the moment they step into classes on day one. The question they're trying to answer is: once a smart and successful person chooses a college, how much value does that college add? Looking at th…

I definitely agree with you. I wasn't trying to explain how I think the article is flawed; rather, I was just trying to argue that its conclusions can be dismissed immediately. In particular, I believe that your (3) describes what I see as the biggest flaw with their methodology; that (at least for elite colleges) what they are largely measuring the proportion of students that choose to go into high-paying profession…

I just find your kneejerk response of "Anything that rates my school poorly is wrong" and pocket dismissal is counterproductive to actually rating school performance. Selection bias is an actual demonstrable problem in school rankings, and coming up with some way of separating the effect of a school's selectivity from it's educational results is critical if we wish to improve the productivity of educated professionals.

I actually don't think that 3 has much explanatory power. Rather, I think the bulk of the variance is beyond 10 years. Yale's strongest suit is likely professional programs like law and medicine. These are high paying professions, but they require additional years of education beyond a 4 year bachelor's, and that subtracts earning years from the 10 year cutoff.

I don't know much about Rice, but I suspect it's particular problem is being a highly selective school in a low cost of living area. If an average Rice CS student randomly selected into other schools with comparable SAT scores, they'd be going to a much more expensive region, and their controlling for location may not sufficiently model how a CS degree differs from community college nursing.

Re: The Economist's US college rankings

#76

Post by cozzyd »

rayiner wrote: post #24
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).

Or worse (better), physics!

Re: The Economist's US college rankings

#77

Post by noelsusman »

The methodology feels odd. The results are essentially just errors in their prediction model. They're assuming that the model errors represent the school's contribution to median income. They're also assuming that those contributions are normally distributed around zero with constant variance.

I understand why they made those assumptions but they're almost certainly not true, which isn't exactly ideal. Then again I can't quickly think of a better way to do it without more granular data. Maybe use a mixed effects model with multiple years of data from each school....

Re: The Economist's US college rankings

#78

Post by alistairSH »

Something feels "off" about a methodology that basically ranks all of the "top" state schools as poor values.

Take the top-3 state schools in Virginia (by most other rankings, that's UVA, W&M, and VT). All three are nationally recognized. And all three are competitive that you need very good grades and a solid set of extra-curricular activities to be accepted.

UVA ranks the lowest of the three, yet has the highest actual earnings. VT is ranked significantly higher with the middle earnings value.

What does a student do with this? Cost of attendance at the three is similar. Should they attend VT with it's higher ranking, despite lower average earnings?

Similar comments can be made about UNC-CH, UW-Seattle, UT-Austin.

Also lacking from this analysis seems to be the loan burden borne by students. Georgetown and Villanova both rank very high in this list. But, both are insanely expensive to attend. Even with high actual earnings, it could take a decade or more for many students to pay off a potential six-figure loan.

Re: The Economist's US college rankings

#79

Post by rconti »

fiatmoney wrote: post #13

There seems to be a major issue with cost-of-living adjustments as well. Several rather obscure California colleges are highly ranked, and I assume this is because both wages and costs are higher in California, where many of their graduates stay after college.

I'm not so sure. My generally-highly-regarded college in California (bay area, no less!) is almost bang-on average ($-33) despite being in a very high cost of living area.

Re: The Economist's US college rankings

#80

Post by rconti »

rconti wrote: post #79
fiatmoney wrote: post #13

There seems to be a major issue with cost-of-living adjustments as well. Several rather obscure California colleges are highly ranked, and I assume this is because both wages and costs are higher in California, where many of their graduates stay after college.

I'm not so sure. My generally-highly-regarded college in California (bay area, no less!) is almost bang-on average ($-33) despite being in a very high cost of living area.

To reply to myself, the comments include this mention from "DR" of The Economist:

----- Geography (both city and state) are variables included in our model. Colleges in the Bay Area are not rewarded for the high salaries available there--they have to surpass a higher "bar" of expected earnings. That is why our eighth-ranked college is in West Virginia, and the ninth in Laredo, Texas. ------

Now, I don't know how they compensate for this. Cost of living at the place where the student ends up? Or where they study?

If you study in a high cost of living area but move to Podunk, Iowa, your return will be far lower than expected, if they're only controlling for CoL at the college's geographical location.

If they control for CoL at the student's new home, then okay.

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