-
Iona College Admits to Inflating Rankings Data for 9 Years
Tweet Share on Facebook December 1, 2011 Comment (1)Given the degree and magnitude of Iona College's recent revelations of its data misreporting, U.S. News has evaluated how Iona's ranking in the current Best Colleges rankings would have changed. In the current, 2012 edition, Iona College is ranked 30th overall in the Regional Universities—North category. U.S. News estimates that Iona College's ranking would have fallen by approximately 20 places in that category, had we used accurate data instead of the data Iona first reported to us in April 2011.
Iona College posted a report on its website on Nov. 8, 2011, that said "we recently discovered inaccuracies in student performance data reported to external agencies. In response, we subsequently initiated a thorough investigation by outside legal counsel with the assistance of a third-party independent auditing firm."
-
U.S. News Debates Law Schools over Adding Diversity to Rankings
Tweet Share on Facebook November 23, 2011 Comment (1)I represented U.S. News at an early November 2011 meeting at St. John's School of Law in New York that was titled Opening Doors: Making Diversity Matter in Law School Admissions.
The symposium discussed that:
-
La Salle University Official Discusses Impact of College Rankings
Tweet Share on Facebook November 17, 2011 Comment (3)John F. Dolan, vice president for enrollment services at La Salle University in Pennsylvania has written to U.S. News about the process of supplying data for our Best Colleges rankings, how U.S. News has worked with La Salle to correct missing information for prospective students and our readers, and how to set up data reporting systems to prevent such problems from occurring.
In Dolan's words, this is what happened at La Salle after the 2012 edition of the Best Colleges rankings were published on Sept. 15, 2011:
-
U.S. News Meets With AACRAO to Discuss Future of College Rankings
Tweet Share on Facebook November 10, 2011 Comment (3)I represented U.S. News and participated in a serious discussion November 1 on ways how to improve the college rankings. Hosted by the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers (AACRAO), the half-day session, held in San Diego, was titled "College and University Rankings Discussion: Can We Improve How We Assess the Undergraduate Experience?" and was part of AACRAO's 2011 Strategic Enrollment Management Conference.
The event follows the recent publication of numerous articles on college rankings in AACRAO's College & University Journal. AACRAO's ranking discussion at the conference focused on one of the journal articles, "Rating (Not Ranking) the Undergraduate Experience: Principles from a National Discussion," by Jason Lane, a professor at University of Albany—SUNY and one of the panelists at the conference.
-
U.S. News Holds Historic Meeting With Medical School Deans
Tweet Share on Facebook November 3, 2011 Comment (1)U.S. News participated in an important half-day meeting about of our Best Medical School rankings with deans from many of our top ranked medical schools. The October 27 event, "The Impact and the Future of Medical School Rankings," was sponsored by U.S.News & World Report and Mount Sinai School of Medicine, and was held at Mount Sinai in New York.
The main purpose of the meeting was for those at U.S. News involved in producing our medical school rankings to discuss all aspects of those rankings with academics at leading medical schools. The medical school deans offered very sophisticated feedback on what aspects of the rankings were working and what areas needed to be improved.
-
A Look at Stats From the Most Connected Classrooms Rankings
Tweet Share on Facebook October 27, 2011 Comment (1)U.S.News & World Report just released its first-ever rankings of Most Connected Classrooms.
More than 300 public high schools from U.S. News's most recent Best High Schools rankings returned questionnaires this September on their uses of online technologies. Each provided information about its Internet speed and wireless access; computer availability to students and faculty; additional tools including cloud computing and digital labs, and efforts to electronically engage students, faculty, and parents from their homes.
-
5 Things I Learned in China
Tweet Share on Facebook October 20, 2011 Comment (8)I have just returned from the China Annual Conference for International Education 2011, organized by the China Education Association for International Exchange in Beijing. There were hundreds of participants, including educational leaders and other professionals working in the field of education from all parts of China and many other nations.
The presentations covered many of the crucial issues that will shape the future of education at all levels globally and in China, such as teaching innovation, improving STEM education, vocational and technical education, student mobility, continuing education, and cross-border accreditation. There were also many sessions dedicated to both national and global college rankings, how and why the rankings are done, and their implications for students, parents, colleges, governments, and society as a whole.
-
U.S. News Education Team Introduces Academic Insights
Tweet Share on Facebook October 13, 2011 CommentTraditionally the U.S. News education team has solely focused on prospective students and their parents by adding features to our web site such as advanced search tools and College Compass. We've also added functionality that allows these same users to benefit from the power of social media. We are constantly looking for solutions that will enhance our offerings for the higher education community. In September, we launched a new product built specifically for those who work at higher education institutions: U.S. News Academic Insights.
For many years, schools have requested information on historical rankings and data for benchmarking and peer analysis, both at the graduate and undergraduate levels. Answering those inquiries has been difficult, time consuming, and, many times, impossible for our data team to accomplish in a timely manner. To promote easier access to our historical data, our product team has developed U.S. News Academic Insights. Our goal is to help colleges, universities, and graduate programs track and analyze their own data as well as the data of their peer group in a format that is easy to use and understand.
-
Best Colleges Ranking Updates
Tweet Share on Facebook October 5, 2011 Comment (2)U.S. News depends on the schools themselves to provide accurate and complete data for the Best Colleges rankings. Where it's possible, U.S. News cross checks reported data and fills in missing data using other public sources, such as the U.S. Department of Education. When a school has missing data, U.S. News does make estimates of that data based on what was reported for that data point by other schools in the same college ranking category. Those estimates are used in the rankings but are not published.
It's important to note that if a school does not provide data, it can have a significant impact on its rankings when the value of its actual data would have been greater than the estimate we used. Here is one example from the latest rankings:
-
University of Illinois Law School Admits to Submitting Inflated Admission Data
Tweet Share on Facebook October 5, 2011 Comment (1)In late September, University of Illinois posted a press release on its website that said "in an investigation into the past 10 years of University of Illinois's College of Law test scores and grade point averages (GPA), the ongoing University-initiated review has determined that inaccurate data were reported for four of those years."
The University of Illinois College of Law data that was reported inaccurately to the American Bar Association was for the law school's classes that entered in fall 2008, fall 2009, and fall 2010. This same inaccurate admissions data was also reported to U.S. News by the school and was used to compute our Best Law Schools rankings for the 2010, 2011, and the most recent 2012 edition, which is on our website now.
