The Value of U.S. News Rankings

Whether or not you have used or even seen a college ranking from U.S. News & World Report, you are probably aware of the controversy regarding college rankings; can a college or university really be condensed to a number?

I first read about the issue in Michelle A. Hernandez's "A is for Admission." Though the book is now fairly dated (1997), the impression of U.S. News rankings has been a problem in academia since the rankings' inception in 1983.

The basic argument against the rankings is that squeezing a school into a set number ranking is unfair to the colleges because a number can't represent the "intangibles" of a college. Many colleges believe that such numbers based rankings of schools are making students numbers obsessed and limited in their applications to only the most highly ranked schools, thus eliminating applications to schools that can't compete in the numbers game.

I think that my own viewpoint can be condensed into the following quote from U.S. News Report Editor Robert Morse (2007):

"in terms of the peer assessment survey, we at U.S. News firmly believe the survey has significant value because it allows us to measure the "intangibles" of a college that we can't measure through statistical data. Plus, the reputation of a school can help get that all-important first job and plays a key part in which grad school someone will be able to get into. The peer survey is by nature subjective, but the technique of asking industry leaders to rate their competitors is a commonly accepted practice. The results from the peer survey also can act to level the playing field between private and public colleges." [citation from U.S. News]

"Some higher education experts, like Kevin Carey of Education Sector, have argued that U.S. News and World Report's college rankings system is merely a list of criteria that mirrors the superficial characteristics of elite colleges and universities. According to Carey, '[The] U.S. News ranking system is deeply flawed. Instead of focusing on the fundamental issues of how well colleges and universities educate their students and how well they prepare them to be successful after college, the magazine's rankings are almost entirely a function of three factors: fame, wealth, and exclusivity.' He suggests that there are more important characteristics parents and students should research to select colleges, such as how well students are learning and how likely students are to earn a degree." [Citation NAICU]

Among organizations opposing the rankings, the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities (NAICU) has pledged to make its own system of rankings which will focus on aspects like graduation rate and the actual quality of education, criteria which U.S. News has now preemptively adapted into its rankings.

There are still a plethora of problems with the rankings, though, notably how seriously they are taken by readers. From a Stanford University School of Education article,

• within 3 days of the rankings release, U.S. News website received 10 million page views compared to 500,000 average views in a typical month
• 80 percent of visitors access the ranking section of the website directly rather than navigating via the magazine’s home page
• the printed issue incorporating its college rankings sells 50 percent more than its normal issues at the newsstand

Stanford University President Gerhard Casper criticizes the rankings in the following letter in which he demands to know how a university like Johns Hopkins could shoot from 22nd to 10th in a single year. In this sense, the rankings are more like football team rankings, including the most outrageous of leaps simply to sell magazines.

For me, the quantity, quality, and consistency of U.S. News and World Report's yearly rankings has kept me coming back to subscribe to the "premium online version" for three years now. The websites wealth of information (not just statistics!) is far better than any comparable site's, including the College Board's. Much has changed since the two Stanford University sources above were written in 1996. Their arguments still stand to a a lesser degree, but the magazine has become much more stable in its rankings. Overall, I'm impressed with the way the rankings have changed in the past few years, now including a peer survey and focusing on more "intangible" aspects of colleges rather than merely admissions numbers such as test scores and yield rate.