U.S. News pulls Columbia University from its 2022 rankings
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Re: U.S. News pulls Columbia University from its 2022 rankings
#2US colleges foresee a future where they are under attack for being absurdly selective, what some are now calling being "highly rejective". I think they want to avoid being targeted by the fairness wonks anymore than they already are.
Also, US News and World Report rankings have major problems, for instance, the ranking algorithm considers campus aesthetics and food quality, but doesn't account for price, giving schools incentive to raise prices to fund campus improvements that boost rank, in turn boosting applications, in turn reducing % acceptance (the principal indicator of "quality" in US schools). This was how TCU went from a meh christian school to a "selective private college" in just a couple of years. World Report now publishes a "best dollar value" report to account for this, but few read it.
Re: U.S. News pulls Columbia University from its 2022 rankings
#3Per the article this came in response to questions raised by a Columbia faculty member critiquing the university's data. I thought that report[1] was actually more interesting than the original article.
As per the quote at the top of the report:
> Rankings create powerful incentives to manipulate data and distort institutional behavior for the sole or primary purpose of inflating one’s score...
It would be shocking to me if Columbia was the only institution that fudged its numbers a bit in pursuit of a higher US News ranking. Given how important that ranking has become in US culture, I wonder if it's time for the methodology to change to require audited/auditable metrics rather than continuing to allow self-reporting.
1: http://www.math.columbia.edu/~thaddeus/ranking/investigation...
Re: U.S. News pulls Columbia University from its 2022 rankings
#4Re: U.S. News pulls Columbia University from its 2022 rankings
#5Per the article this came in response to questions raised by a Columbia faculty member critiquing the university's data. I thought that report[1] was actually more interesting than the original article. As per the quote at the top of the report: > Rankings create powerful incentives to manipulate data and distort institutional behavior for the sole or primary purpose of inflating one’s score... It would be shocking t…
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Re: U.S. News pulls Columbia University from its 2022 rankings
#6US colleges foresee a future where they are under attack for being absurdly selective, what some are now calling being "highly rejective". I think they want to avoid being targeted by the fairness wonks anymore than they already are. Also, US News and World Report rankings have major problems, for instance, the ranking algorithm considers campus aesthetics and food quality, but doesn't account for price, giving schoo…
"the fairness wonks"
Re: U.S. News pulls Columbia University from its 2022 rankings
#7Per the article this came in response to questions raised by a Columbia faculty member critiquing the university's data. I thought that report[1] was actually more interesting than the original article. As per the quote at the top of the report: > Rankings create powerful incentives to manipulate data and distort institutional behavior for the sole or primary purpose of inflating one’s score... It would be shocking t…
Your suspicion is correct.
I've taught at several US universities, and it's an open secret that the administrative takes steps to manipulate numbers in order to secure better rankings.
Typical example: a small, prestigious liberal arts college always has smaller class sizes in the fall semester than in the spring semester. Why? Because classes with less than 30 students are ranked higher by US News, but they only take into consideration the fall semester. No one cares about class sizes in the spring.
Re: U.S. News pulls Columbia University from its 2022 rankings
#8Per the article this came in response to questions raised by a Columbia faculty member critiquing the university's data. I thought that report[1] was actually more interesting than the original article. As per the quote at the top of the report: > Rankings create powerful incentives to manipulate data and distort institutional behavior for the sole or primary purpose of inflating one’s score... It would be shocking t…
Which begs the question - if you want to get top in rankings
wouldn't you simply design the school around the objective ranking parameters and nothing else?
Ripe for abuse...
Re: U.S. News pulls Columbia University from its 2022 rankings
#9In the same way that one restaurant flouted Yelp ratings[1], couldn't all the Ivy League schools just refuse to participate in US News' annual rankings? What would happen if Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, et. al. decided that this ranking is not helpful, so they won't supply any info?
Readers of US News would more likely start to lose trust in the rankings rather than move their assessments of the Ivies downward, right?
[1] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/09/why-t...
Re: U.S. News pulls Columbia University from its 2022 rankings
#10The US News rankings were already a bit of a mess, but leaving out one of the Ivy Leagues is only going to be bad for US News.
An Ivy League school does not need help from the rankings -- but rankings that leave out one of the most prestigious and well-known universities in the country are useless.