Colle
ge rankings are good for selling magazines and college guide books, but are they good for students? Most likely not. “No current ranking system of colleges and universities directly measures the most critical point—student performance and learning,” said former Secretary of Eduction Margaret Spellings. Not only are the various criteria for rankings debatable, they often do little to help students understand what kinds of programs are compatible with their learning styles, interests, social lives and financial needs.
Each Ranking Has Bias
There is no numerical value that can describe a college. So reviewers have to invent various types of criteria that can be quantified. Some of these criteria are fairly straight forward: tuition, acceptance rate, teacher to student ratio. Firstly, how much these factors impact the student experience is debatable, and the weight each criterion is given is subjective. Secondly, there are kinds of criteria that must be gathered from answers that are themselves subjective.
U.S. News values the number of full-time professors, financial resources, graduate performance, and alumni giving. While this is valid data, it is also favors colleges that have big endowments and wealthy student bodies. On the other hand, Forbes claims to rank colleges from the student’s perspective. This leads to a bias towards schools where students’ values cohere closely with those of the college. While this is not a bad thing, neither is ideological diversity. Just because students see faults in their college or have disagreements with the administration doesn’t mean that they are receiving a poor education.
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