Brilliant … But Bouncy

Then They Make a List.

I have a real issue with college rankings. If this sounds like a rant, so be it. But before anyone complains that I don’t know what I’m talking about, please read Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be. It’s got way more factual backup than I could ever provide in this blog.

Many parents – and students – are driven only by college rankings. People are obsessed with attending one of the “best” colleges in the country. What’s ironic is that there is no “best” college.

Back in 1983 – coincidentally while I was attending college – U.S. News and World Report published a report called America’s Best Colleges. They didn’t have any special training in determining what made a good college; they just selected some random criteria. They asked around, did some research. They contacted colleges and used data supplied by staff. No one is sure if their data was (or is) accurate; they just used whatever they got.

And if a college didn’t respond to their request for data, it didn’t get ranked, simple as that. In fact, more than 35 years later, U.S. News is still making that annual list with virtually the same criteria. Of the nearly 4,000 institutions of higher education in the United States, only 1,466 have been ranked. U.S. News hasn’t even compiled data on more than 2,000 colleges in this country.

I won’t delve into the statistics used to determine the “best” colleges because they are random and useless. (If you really need to know, click here.) U.S. News gathers random data, just like they did in 1983, and sometimes they ask “experts” for their opinions.

Then they make a list. They could just as easily be listing the “best” candy.

After that, the insane American public takes over. If it’s ranked, it must be good! Princeton is #1? My kid must go there!

And the longer this goes on, the worse the situation becomes.

Case in point: a college with a low acceptance rate must be a good college, right? Well… no. A low acceptance rate literally means that the college rejects a ton of highly qualified students.

But thanks to U.S. News, and the crazed folks who believe that “quality” and “ranking” mean the same thing, the colleges that are ranked highly get even more applications, which means they reject even more students. So their acceptance rates go down, while the quality of the college doesn’t change even a tiny bit.

There’s nothing “better” about ranked colleges. But by being ranked, the college name becomes synonymous with quality (even if quality was never determined) – which leads to name recognition – and name recognition will supposedly provide a better future to the college graduate.

It doesn’t really work that way, but that’s what people believe.

I’m not saying that the 1,466 colleges that have been ranked aren’t good schools – or that some aren’t better than others. I’m just saying that U.S. News is not qualified to decide. Their claim to fame is that they are “a recognized leader” in rankings – and they rank everything now, including high schools – but who recognizes them as a leader?

Well, anyone who reads their lists and believes their hooey considers them a leader. So they are certainly “recognized.”

But U.S. News has absolutely no idea how to analyze a college, nor do they care. They’re making a fortune by sitting around, compiling data and opinions, and turning those things into lists.

But there is currently no uniform, accepted definition of what constitutes a quality college. And until there is, there simply can’t be any accurate college rankings.