101–110 of 348 posts
For context, U.S. News and World Report used to be a trusted periodical that reported national and international news. In the 80's they started ranking colleges and selling it as a separate publication, which turned out to be pretty profitable, so they repeated the trick by ranking hospitals (1990), cars (2007), and then states (2017). The news business went online only in 2011, then shuttered in 2015. Since then the…
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…
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. excludin…
LOL wut? Stanford is modestly well known, but obviously Harvard is the one that is unambiguously first.
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…
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...
I really wonder why Columbia even cares: it's a globally well known ivy league school obviously producing a good education and is in NYC.* Doesn't US News need Columbia more than the other way around? * No I have no connection to the school except I do have some friends who teach there and some others who attended decades ago.
That said I agree that being an Ivy in NYC certainly was a major contributor to its more recent rise in the rankings and applications.
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…
I took an Econ class with northwestern’s president and he said that they straight up lie about their middle 50 gpa and standardized test scores. Can’t say I was super surprised. Every top 25 school is saying 25% of their students got a 35 or better on the ACT, the numbers just didn’t add up.
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. excludin…
The beginning of the conclusion of the original study [1] is worth repeating: No one should try to reform or rehabilitate the ranking. It is irredeemable. In Colin Diver’s memorable formulation, “Trying to rank institutions of higher education is a little like trying to rank religions or philosophies. The entire enterprise is flawed, not only in detail but also in conception.” Students are poorly served by rankings.…
https://jeffhuang.com/computer-science-open-data/#bias-in-co...
US 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 gap between the schools' rhetoric and reality is pretty funny; I was just writing about it the other day: https://seliger.com/2022/07/06/nonprofit-boards-of-directors... : You can see a lot of hypocrisy that’s uncritically accepted by a lot of organizations, including nonprofits. Exclusionary higher education is a particular notable example, given the soaring rhetoric of “inclusion” spouted by some people involve…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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. excludin…
> For instance, any ranking that does not have Stanford first among non specialized US universities (i.e. excluding MIT, Caltech, Julliard, etc.) is suspect. LOL wut? Stanford is modestly well known, but obviously Harvard is the one that is unambiguously first.