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

forbes.com

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

#261

Post by MaysonL »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #236
smugma wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In California, schools get paid on daily attendance. I believe it would be considered fraud to not take daily attendance. They suspended this during the heart of the pandemic but it came back last fall. Because daily attendance is down relative to pre pandemic, Public schools are facing a significant revenue gap (5-10% is typical)

In contrast, Michigan Public K-12 schools take attendance on specified Count Days to account for the number of students they serve to determine state funding. Fall count day is the 1st Wednesday in October and represents 90% of state funding. Spring count day is the 2nd Wednesday in February and represents 10% of state funding. As you might imagine, getting students in school on these days is a Big Deal. Teachers tak…

How often have Count Days been snow days?

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

#263

Post by pyuser583 »

cozos wrote: post #243
pyuser583 wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 high…

bit OT but I'm curious what a college that ONLY selects extracurricular leaders would look like. This is coming from a software job where career advancement depends on being the lead in projects. IME people are mostly chill and happy to do the "grunt" work, but what if EVERYBODY wanted to be "team lead"?

West Point, Naval Academy, etc have a reputation for recruiting extra curricular leaders. And have good graduation rates.

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

#264

Post by sokoloff »

jancsika wrote: post #211
rglullis wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My uncle was a math teacher in Brazil - mostly test-prep course schools for university exams, later he opened some of his own private schools. He used to say two things: that he has estimated to have taught at least 100 thousand people in his life (seems just crazy boasting, but feasible when you are working in 5-8 different schools per semester and each class has 100-250 people) and that a teacher is always teaching…

This doesn't pass the smell test. If you teach a class of 250 students, you aren't even aware of the bottom percentile until the first exam is graded. That's many weeks after you've already taught many lectures. So how would your uncle even figure out how to tailor those initial lectures to that bottom percentile? Where this matters is in something like a lab or music practicum where the communication between instruc…

> If you teach a class of 250 students, you aren't even aware of the bottom percentile until the first exam is graded.

You don’t need to know which specific 50 students are in the bottom two deciles, just that they exist and that your policy is to teach to what you’ve estimated is the 3rd decile and above.

You will find out who they are in the exams, but you know they exist in next year’s class even before that class is admitted to the uni.

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

#265

Post by kragen »

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?

If what you need is lectures, you'd download them from MIT OCW or watch them on YouTube or Khan Academy. Or possibly just read the textbook, which may also be free online, or you can download it from Library Genesis (if that's legal in your country), or buy it used for US$35. Also, I can strongly recommend Wikipedia and... visualization videos that aren't exactly lectures, like 3Blue1Brown stuff.

You wouldn't pay tens of thousands of dollars in tuition for lectures unless you were the kind of person that universities like Columbia try very hard to not admit.

Classes, however, are very valuable. You can ask questions when you don't understand things, you can talk with the other students to build shared understanding, you can get your homework graded and confirm that the things you weren't sure about on it were actually correct, you can take exams and test your skills. And those things are much, much better when there are 16 of you in the class rather than 128 or 512.

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

#266

Post by ipaddr »

troupe wrote: post #235
hobo_in_library wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Acceptance rates is a really poor choice of input for college ranking It's basically saying "other people seem to think this college is good, so we'll nudge them up a few points" In other words, it's attempting to measure public perception about the college instead of the actual results it produces. How the public _thinks_ a certain college is shouldn't factor into how good you _tell_ the public that that college per…

Imagine college A that 100 apply for and all 100 get in vs. college B where 10,000 people applied and only 100 got in. If both colleges are choosing students based off of some measurable criteria, let's say the SAT score. Would you expect to have higher average scores at college A or college B? Obviously college B would have students with better SAT scores simply because they are so much more selective. Assuming that…

It depends if school A costs 100,000 and school B almost free. I would put my money on the 100 who spent 100,000 over the free 10,000.

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

#267

Post by kragen »

bdowling wrote: post #247
gofreddygo wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny how this reminded me of a PG essay[1] The most damaging thing you learned in school wasn't something you learned in any specific class. It was learning to get good grades. [1]: http://paulgraham.com/lesson.html

The problem with that quote is that if you don't learn to get good grades (e.g., because you are actually learning and not studying for the test), then the resulting bad grades can be extremely damaging to your future.

How is that a problem with the quote? It sounds like a problem with the system, a problem the essay correctly identified.

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

#268

Post by physicles »

thomasahle wrote: post #185
sam-2727 wrote: post #94

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.…

> Trying to rank institutions of higher education is a little like trying to rank religions Did anyone try to make a ranking for religions similar to those for universities? Sounds like it would be a fun project making a great point. Measures like "Fees", "Diversity", "Alumni Salary", "Financial Aid Provided" would all be interesting to see for each religion.

I’d love to see that too. Mormonism for example would rank very high in “Alumni Salary” and “Quality of Alumni Network”, but low in “Diversity”, “Fees”, and “Amount of Bullshit You Need to Swallow”.

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

#269

Post by dccoolgai »

greymalik wrote: post #116
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…

Goodhardt’s law in action.

Ctrl+f for "Goodhar" right away to see who called it first +1

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

#270

Post by nerdponx »

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?

Subjectively, I imagine that it did. Northeastern has had a good reputation for as long as I've been aware of it.
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