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U.S. News Presents at Association for Institutional Research Forum
Tweet Share on Facebook May 27, 2011 Comment (4)I just returned from the Association for Institutional Research's 2011 annual forum, "Passport to New Ideas, Better Decisions," held in Toronto. AIR's members work at almost every U.S. college and university where, among other things, they study higher education trends on their campuses, conduct surveys of students, complete surveys (including the one used for the U.S. News Best Colleges rankings), and do comparisons among peer schools. U.S. News has worked closely with AIR's members for many years and their suggestions have led to improvements in the Best Colleges rankings.
My colleagues Sam Flanigan, U.S. News's deputy director of data research; Diane Tolis, U.S. News's data collection manager; and I gave a presentation at the forum called "U.S.News & World Report's Best Colleges: Details Behind Last Year's Methodology Changes and What Will Be New in 2011." We discussed the methodology changes that were made in the 2011 edition of the Best Colleges rankings (published in August 2010).
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Pro-Con Discussion of College Rankings Goes Global
Tweet Share on Facebook May 19, 2011 Comment (1)I just returned from the UNESCO Global Forum: Rankings and Accountability in Higher Education: Uses and Misuses held in Paris on May 16-17. The conference was the first organized by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the World Bank. Representatives of the major global, regional, and national rankings, like U.S. News's Best Colleges, were in attendance from around the world. Also participating were high-level government policy makers, academics, representatives of the media, students, and employers. It provided a unique opportunity for rankers to engage in a vibrant exchange with policy makers and other stakeholders on the merits and shortcomings of rankings and their uses. There was an examination of the policy implications of rankings for institutions and governments, an analysis of why they have become so widespread and their influence so strong, and a discussion of the significant differences between national and global rankings and an examination of their use by schools, policy makers, governments, students, and the general public.
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More Top-Ranked M.B.A. Programs Now Accept GRE
Tweet Share on Facebook May 12, 2011 CommentA growing number of M.B.A. programs are now accepting the Graduate Record Exam, or GRE, for admissions. This new trend gives prospective M.B.A. students more testing options, because almost all M.B.A. programs only accepted the Graduate Management Admission Test, or GMAT, for admission as recently as 5 years ago. One key reason why M.B.A. programs are adding the GRE as a testing option: it enables them to broaden their applicant pools and get more potential students to consider going to b-school.
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U.S. News Looks At the Rise in Merit Aid at Law Schools
Tweet Share on Facebook May 5, 2011 Comment (2)David Segal of The New York Times has started a large buzz among the legal blogosphere with his recent article Law Students Lose the Grant Game as Schools Win. Segal reports about various issues regarding merit aid awards given to first-year law school students, some of whom lose their merit award because they can't meet the necessary first year grade point average to maintain the merit awards beyond the first year.
Part of the story is a discussion of the pivotal role the U.S. News Best Law School rankings have played in the rapid growth of law school merit aid awards over the last 30 years. The main reason for merit aid at some schools is to raise their admission statistics so they can rise in the U.S. News law school rankings, Segal contends.
