a huge shift over the last 10 year and most visible in technical roles is the elimination of college rankings. i used to work at a company that had a ceo mandate “all resumes must come from top 20 schools”. saying something like that now as an engineering manager would raise questions and probably make you look dumb. there’s many reasons for this but the biggest is it’s impossible to do this with a global workforce. this is great for high school students, one less area of pressure
U.S. News pulls Columbia University from its 2022 rankings
151–160 of 348 posts
Re: U.S. News pulls Columbia University from its 2022 rankings
#152Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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. What a bizarre and totally unnecessary restriction.
You add a simple and reasonable (until it gets abused) assumption to your model which allows a lesser data collection burden on thousands of universities. I wouldn't call it a restriction.
> which allows a lesser data collection burden on thousands of universities.
How's it supposed to do that? Universities all already collect the data on enrollment for every class they offer.
Re: U.S. News pulls Columbia University from its 2022 rankings
#153For 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…
Wow fascinating - so US News is now a rankings company.
If you think of clickbait as a crowdsourced ranking of emotionally manipulative hyperbole, that could be said of any corporate press rag.
Re: U.S. News pulls Columbia University from its 2022 rankings
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
Applications are also a revenue source.
Apparently there’s a common application thing now where you can apply to large numbers of schools for undergrad without spending large amounts of money.
The common application just means you don't have to fill out unique admission forms for every school. You still pay an application fee to every school.
Re: U.S. News pulls Columbia University from its 2022 rankings
#155Earlier quoted context omitted.
I work at a university, and honestly have never heard of this ranking that you referenced in [1]. Also seems super weighted towards military academies. What's their model? Are kids in the states now looking at more global options ?
> What's their model? Are kids in the states now looking at more global options ? According to their methodology[1] page, it looks like for student who gets multiple offers they do an Elo style ranking. The first problem; and which probably explains the weight to military academies, is that students tend to self select into tiers of colleges, so a group of students who are interested in the Air Force might not even a…
So this would favor specialized schools in general?
Re: U.S. News pulls Columbia University from its 2022 rankings
#156Earlier 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?
Small class sizes are better precisely because the class can then become more than a lecture. I am a professor, and if you give me a hall full of students I’ll give a lecture, because that’s all that can really happen under those circumstances.
If it’s a small group, I can actually learn everybody’s names, get to know them, personalize the material more and spend big chunks of the class just answering your questions and starting discussions based on them. The class becomes less of a mere information dump and more of a mentorship.
Re: U.S. News pulls Columbia University from its 2022 rankings
#157Re: U.S. News pulls Columbia University from its 2022 rankings
#158There'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?
Most colleges have the ability to graduate close 100% of their students.
If a school only admits students who have at least two years at another college with high grades, their graduation numbers will skyrocket.
A highly selective college, like Harvard, could even refuse to grant credit for those two years.
There are less nefarious ways of selecting a class of likely graduators: leadership in extracurriculars is highly correlated with post-secondary graduation.
Foreign students with limited English fluency have very low graduation rates. They could (should?) be excluded.
Re: U.S. News pulls Columbia University from its 2022 rankings
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
Just a note that this is Northeastern (in Boston) not Northwestern (in Illinois). Northwestern was and is typically a very high ranker. As for what the improvements are like... hard to say. Some ways to improve the rankings like getting more students you don't want to come to apply (so you can appear more selective) don't actually help at all, while things like small classes even if done to "game" the rankings could…
What about North Central?
Re: U.S. News pulls Columbia University from its 2022 rankings
#160US 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…
A big problem: admitting too many students actually decrease the number who apply.