US News' 2024 College Ranking Boosts Public Universities (cbsnews.com) 28
U.S. News & World Report's 2024 college rankings features many of the usual prestigious institutions at the top of the list, but also vaults some schools much higher after the publisher revised its grading system to reward different criteria. From a report: U.S News' ranking algorithm now based more than 50% of an institution's score on what it describes as "success in enrolling and graduating students from all backgrounds with manageable debt and post-graduate success." The system also places greater emphasis on "social mobility," which generally refers to an individual making gains in education, income and other markers of socioeconomic status. Overall, more than a dozen public universities shot up 50 spots on the annual list of the U.S.' best colleges, while several elite private schools largely held their ground, the new report shows.
"The significant changes in this year's methodology are part of the ongoing evolution to make sure our rankings capture what is most important for students as they compare colleges and select the school that is right for them," U.S. News CEO Eric Gertler said in a statement. The change comes after a chorus of critics complained that the publication's rankings reinforce elitism and do little to help students find schools that suit their academic needs and financial circumstances. A growing number of schools, including elite institutions such as Columbia University and the Harvard and Yale law schools, also have stopped participating in the ranking and publicly criticized U.S. News' methodology.
"The significant changes in this year's methodology are part of the ongoing evolution to make sure our rankings capture what is most important for students as they compare colleges and select the school that is right for them," U.S. News CEO Eric Gertler said in a statement. The change comes after a chorus of critics complained that the publication's rankings reinforce elitism and do little to help students find schools that suit their academic needs and financial circumstances. A growing number of schools, including elite institutions such as Columbia University and the Harvard and Yale law schools, also have stopped participating in the ranking and publicly criticized U.S. News' methodology.
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That is correct. They added factors such as how well they served "underrepresented" folks, and similar items that provide pluses for places that do affirmative action. (Not what they teach, but of course it correlates.)
Junk (Score:3, Interesting)
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âoe graduating students from all backgrounds& (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:âoe graduating students from all backgroun (Score:3)
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Re:âoe graduating students from all backgroun (Score:2)
Because some groups need extra help and outreach. Culturally African American culture has been less pushy about science except I think Nigerian culture. If the culture can promote STEM the same way they do music and sports that would be great. The thing about sports and music is that it is more instant feedback and also easier to prove your way upward.
https://www.ft.com/content/ca3... [ft.com]
Basically what I am saying is that it’s likely not some genetic prevalence thing that would require difficult gene iden
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more fixable issues that can be solved with outreach.
Then why does the presence of those outreach programs negatively correlate with the actual diversity numbers?
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Citation?
Re:âoe graduating students from all backgroun (Score:4, Insightful)
The idea is to measure improvement rather than selection criteria.
Also, they address the costs too it looks like (based on summary).
A change I would like is a shift to tiers rather than rankings, since it's pretty stupid to pretend the difference between 100 and 150 is going to be that big.
Re:âoe graduating students from all backgroun (Score:2)
What do diversity numbers have to do with the ability to get a job and repay my six figure loan? The rankings should be the post graduation employment numbers, their salaries, and their relevance to the degree.
It's not so much diversity that matters for a useful ranking but rather personalization for one's individual characteristics and circumstances. If the rankings are based on predictions for rich white people, then it's not clear if they apply equally for poor or non-white people. It's like Netflix or Yelp ratings based on the total population, which are largely useless for specific individuals. It would be much more useful for these university rankings to show how specific colleges can help people with di
Average student debt at time of graduation is $27K (Score:4, Informative)
... the ability to get a job and repay my six figure loan? ....
Well since we are talking about public universities the average student debt at time of graduation is $27K. Pretty far from six figures.
What are the Rankings For? (Score:3)
I think the U.S. News is having trouble figuring out what the rankings should be for. Historically, the people (besides the universities themselves) who have paid attention to their rankings were middle and upper middle class strivers figuring out where they should apply. Whether the school is good at elevating disadvantaged populations isn't relevant to them. The under-privileged high school students are more likely to go to either a local school or somewhere that provides a generous scholarship, so they don't really need the rankings either. The only people left are university administrators who want to feel good about themselves.
Re:What are the Rankings For? (Score:4, Interesting)
I would think "success in enrolling and graduating students from all backgrounds with manageable debt and post-graduate success." Is pretty relevant to the middle class.
Sure, they could narrow that to middle class backgrounds, and perhaps it'd be more relevant to the middle class, but it certainly seems a pretty relevant metric.
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I've never heard of an employer doing that. It would be deeply silly. Yes, if you want to attract Harvard graduates you probably need to pay more, but you don't need US News to tell you that. I've never heard of an employer paying more because State University X is ranked 5 slots higher than State University Y.
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https://www.forbes.com/sites/s... [forbes.com]
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Again, nobody needs the rankings to compare UNC vs Harvard. People use them to compare UNC to the University of Michigan (which is silly on its own).
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With respect to reputation, I think it's more that reputation impacts rankings than the other way around. Schools do move up and down the rankings, which may help a bit, but the core underlying reason for those moves is money. So you have a school like Washington University St. Louis which was relatively unknown nationally 30 years ago. The thing is, they have a big endowment and threw that money around in a way that caused their ranking to go way up. So you do have high school kids applying to WUSTL becaus
Very little will change at the top (Score:4, Interesting)
The schools that can and will do this will be the ones that have enormous endowments. It just so happens that these schools already dominate the top 20 national universities.
It costs money to give these sorts of advantages to students, and doing so without onerously high tuition (which would work against the metric) to other students can only come from endowments.
Why not a BYO score (Score:2)
Why not a Build-Your-Own personalised score? Have the ability to place the different scores in order of importance to create a personalised ranking. You could even include distance to home, average student rent, employment opportunities while studying and so on.
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In Germany we have around elections the "wahl-o-mat" which is some website where you can do that with parties.
It prompts you a bunch of questions to different points on the agendas and in the end you can weight some questions double or exclude questions from the evaluation.
Then you can compare how well your answers match with all the parties.
It is obviously not perfect and all the caveats that also apply to rankings apply also to such tools, but it has been done and can be presented in a way even genpop can
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Good news (Score:1)
When it comes to research (Score:1)