The Story Behind the Rankings
Then there's cost. The soaring price tag of college is a major cause of parental anxiety. Couple that with the American consumer's increasing desire for hard information he can use to make decisions, and the rankings—whether colleges, grad schools, hospitals, or other subjects we have in the works—become an essential resource. Given the various woes of higher ed, most notably the really slimy financial aid scandal (a story, by the way, that U.S. News first started reporting on four years ago), I was genuinely puzzled as to why these presidents were suddenly focusing so much attention on our rankings. If I were selling a product that cost as much as a house, had murky price information, and offered no way to measure what you got for your money, I might be worried that folks would stop buying. But that's their business. Our business is to make it easier to find your way through an expensive maze.
Could the rankings be better? Yes. The major limit is the data that are available.
There's a real hunger for output measures (except, perhaps, on the part of some colleges): What did students learn? Can they meet a minimum test standard? What kind of jobs did they get after graduation? But there's no standard way to gather that information right now.
And, yes, there's some unfortunate overreaction. Some folks make more of the rankings than they should. The difference between No. 10 and No. 23 is not that great. It's just one tool, one way to look at a complicated universe of schools and choices.
But if the Harvard alums want to argue that their Princeton brethren are way overrated, we don't see any harm in that. It might keep them away from the kind of mischief those Ivy League grads sometimes get into, like inventing new subprime mortgage loans or rigging the college financial aid system.
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