U.S. News pulls Columbia University from its 2022 rankings • Hacker News Board

Re: U.S. News pulls Columbia University from its 2022 rankings

#61

Post by ameliaquining » Mon, Jul 11, 2022, 8:44 PM UTC

saalweachter wrote: post #33

kens wrote: post #26

There's a very interesting article "How to Game the College Rankings" about how Northeastern University's president focused on improving the university's ranking. In 1996, it was a "third-tier, blue-collar, commuter-based university" rated #162. The new university president had a singleminded goal: to improve the ranking. He got the university into the top 100 in 2006 and into the top 50 by 2013. https://www.bostonma…

Now the interesting question: did Northwestern^H^H^H^H^H^H^Heastern get meaningfully better for students between 1996 and 2013? Did they graduate in higher numbers? Did they have better career outcomes? Did more get into better(?) grad schools? What is their median income? Are they happier, did they enjoy college more?

Almost certainly yes, because the school could presumably attract a higher-quality applicant pool in 2013 than in 1996. This, of course, makes it impossible to tell how much of that value was produced by the university and how much was just selection effects.

Re: U.S. News pulls Columbia University from its 2022 rankings

#62

Post by dan-robertson » Mon, Jul 11, 2022, 8:45 PM UTC

lumost wrote: post #45

hackyhacky wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tak…

Why is small class size a good thing? Anecdotally, you get better class material and TA staff in larger lectures. Why aren't Universities able to innovate here?

1) they aren’t rewarded for innovating

2) I guess they can actually by having massive classes in the spring and comparing to the fall.

Re: U.S. News pulls Columbia University from its 2022 rankings

#63

Post by rr888 » Mon, Jul 11, 2022, 8:45 PM UTC

prepend wrote: post #24

twblalock wrote: post #10

The 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.

> An Ivy League school does not need help from the rankings I tend to agree, but why then did Columbia fudge the numbers? I think there’s some envy from the “lesser ivys” that they wish they were Harvard or Princeton. A high USNews ranking proves little, but I guess Columbia wanted to be tied with Harvard.

Ivy league is kinda obsolete now, esp with places like Stanford, Duke, John Hopkins better known than Dartmouth, Brown, Cornell.

Re: U.S. News pulls Columbia University from its 2022 rankings

#64

Post by genericone » Mon, Jul 11, 2022, 8:45 PM UTC

prepend wrote: post #24

twblalock wrote: post #10

The 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.

> An Ivy League school does not need help from the rankings I tend to agree, but why then did Columbia fudge the numbers? I think there’s some envy from the “lesser ivys” that they wish they were Harvard or Princeton. A high USNews ranking proves little, but I guess Columbia wanted to be tied with Harvard.

Columbia incentivized administration MBAs to increase the rankings, perhaps attached to bonuses. They did it unscrupulously by fudging the numbers and so Columbia will hopefully will dis-incentivize the behavior in the future, and so perhaps will other schools... doubt it.

Re: U.S. News pulls Columbia University from its 2022 rankings

#65

Post by lpolovets » Mon, Jul 11, 2022, 8:47 PM UTC

The influence of US News on colleges is wild. One absurd tidbit that I've heard: the rankings weigh freshman stats much more than transfer student stats, so a lot of competitive schools that won't let you in as a freshman if you would hurt their SAT/GPA/etc averages will happily let you in as a transfer because they'll make more revenue and your stats no longer hurt their rankings. *

The ranking formula is also changed arbitrarily based on the reactions of colleges and readers. My school went from #9 to #1 one year, there were a lot of "wth??" reactions, and the following year the formula was tweaked so that our ranking dipped down to #4. I'm pretty sure nothing changed materially in the school over those 3 years, but the ranking moved around a lot.

The whole system is a farce.

* I haven't researched freshman vs transfer data myself, but it's something I've heard from multiple startup founders in the college education space.

Re: U.S. News pulls Columbia University from its 2022 rankings

#66

Post by hardtke » Mon, Jul 11, 2022, 8:48 PM UTC

burlesona wrote: post #3

Per 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…

My kid just went through college selection process and I can assure you that the US News rankings are largely irrelevant in terms of decision making. The revealed preference score[1] or global university rankings[2] are much closer to how students, their counselors, and their parents rank the universities. For instance, any ranking that does not have Stanford first among non specialized US universities (i.e. excluding MIT, Caltech, Julliard, etc.) is suspect.

[1] https://www.parchment.com/c/college/college-rankings.php?pag... [2] https://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/world-un...

Re: U.S. News pulls Columbia University from its 2022 rankings

#67

Post by deltree7 » Mon, Jul 11, 2022, 8:49 PM UTC

lumost wrote: post #45

hackyhacky wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tak…

Why is small class size a good thing? Anecdotally, you get better class material and TA staff in larger lectures. Why aren't Universities able to innovate here?

It's a perfect example of reverse causation.

Great Classes Implies Larger Classes (pure supply / demand); Larger Classes doesn't imply Great Classes

Re: U.S. News pulls Columbia University from its 2022 rankings

#68

Post by ethbr0 » Mon, Jul 11, 2022, 8:50 PM UTC

mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote: post #32

burlesona wrote: post #3

Per 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…

This is a good example of Campbell's Law at work: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campbell%27s_law

An obvious takeaway in this case: US News shouldn't be the primary ranker.

If statistics were distributed in open format, transparently, and there were multiple rankers (each with their own weights and mixes), universities would be less incentivized to game "the US News metrics".

Re: U.S. News pulls Columbia University from its 2022 rankings

#69

Post by kupopuffs » Mon, Jul 11, 2022, 8:51 PM UTC

labster wrote: post #14

One down, 99 to go. These university rankings are absurd, and just a status game that school administrators feel they are forced to play. Individual programs may be outstanding at otherwise middling colleges — it’s better to learn about specific departments than try to reduce the school as a whole to a number.

Aren't there rankings for specific schools in schools? like Engineering, etc...

Re: U.S. News pulls Columbia University from its 2022 rankings

#70

Post by algoatecorn » Mon, Jul 11, 2022, 8:51 PM UTC

lumost wrote: post #45

hackyhacky wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tak…

Why is small class size a good thing? Anecdotally, you get better class material and TA staff in larger lectures. Why aren't Universities able to innovate here?

It's an interesting question, and that's probably why it ends up in so many econometrics and stats courses. You have the classic causality problem, along with ethical concerns of generating experimental data for such a study.

Controlling for as many of the relevant variables as possible, there does seem to be a strong negative correlation between class size and test scores. Beyond that, who knows, but it makes sense that small classes would succeed more often (at least up to a certain point of course)