The Problem with College Rankings
College rankings are one of the most commonly used data points by students and parents when deciding where a student should apply, and they do have some value, especially as employers and graduate schools often look at the same lists to determine the quality of education that an applicant has received. However, I worry about the overall validity of these rankings, and the effects that they will have on our higher education system if students, parents, employers, and the institutions vying for spots on the lists continue to prioritize rankings.
Though there are a variety of ranking lists out there, let’s focus on the one most commonly used by students and parents: The US News and World Report. The general criteria for the rankings, which can be found here, is a mixed bag in terms of how much they tell you about a school. The rankings employ some well-worn quality of education statistics, such as graduation rate and faculty resources. These are certainly valid statistics to determine the quality of a school. If well-educated, well-resourced faculty are getting students through the curriculum in a reasonable amount of time, we should be happy with that school. However, some of the criteria seem less useful. 20% of the rankings are based on a survey of high ranking university officials that asks them to answer questions about the universities with whom they compete. Honesty may not always be the best policy for those filling out the survey in that system. Average alumni giving rate (5% of the rankings) is intended to measure satisfaction, but there are many reasons why alumni may or may not donate to their university. Student selectivity for the incoming class (10% of the rankings) requires schools to self-report the average SAT/ACT score and high school class rank of their incoming class. Schools have admitted to deliberately misreporting this information. It also puts larger universities at an immediate disadvantage because a higher enrollment target makes it quite difficult to only admit students from the top 10% of their graduating class, and forces schools to think long and hard about test optional or test blind admissions policies, which can increase racial and socioeconomic diversity on their campus.
Beyond the specifics of the rankings, the idea of objectively ranking the 3,000+ four year colleges and universities in this country is absurd. A small, private liberal arts college in New England, a large flagship state university on the west coast, an HBCU, and a state university that primarily serves commuter and/or non-traditional students are all incredibly different places with different areas of focus and different missions. Trying to compare one against the other is mostly futile. How can anyone truly say that a 2,000 student school in rural Massachusetts is better or worse than a 50,000 student state university in California? They’re completely different places.
More importantly, the rankings give colleges and universities with non-traditional missions an incentive to change their mission to one that conforms with the ranking system, or risk devaluing the degree that their students are earning. Many commuter schools have low graduation rates for a variety of reasons, but can largely be explained by demographics. Students at commuter schools are more likely to be of non-traditional college going age or to be from a lower socioeconomic background, which usually means that they have more responsibilities outside of school, such as a full-time job or children to take care of. Because of those increased responsibilities, they are less likely to enroll full-time or stay consistently enrolled, which makes them less likely to graduate in 6 years or less, which makes up 22% of the rankings. There are also strong links between socioeconomic status and SAT/ACT score, so a commuter school is more likely to have a lower average SAT/ACT score than a more traditional campus, which also hurts its rankings. If a school’s rankings are lower, and everyone is looking at the rankings, then it makes it harder for that school to enroll students, which threatens the existence of that school. That is bad for students who need the commuter option, which, as it turns out, are predominantly students for disadvantaged backgrounds, first-generation students, and students of color - the people who benefit the most socioeconomically from a college education.
While it may seem alarmist to suggest that predominantly commuter schools could cease to exist or drastically change their mission in order to survive in the ranked world, it has happened. Northeastern University was founded in the Huntington Avenue YMCA in Boston as the Evening Institute for Younger Men in 1898. It’s express purpose was to provide professional skills to the people of Boston to help them climb the ladder socioeconomically. For about 100 years as it morphed into Northeastern University and expanded down Huntington Avenue, that is exactly what it did. However, as college enrollment generally boomed and the US News and World Report started their rankings list in the mid-1980s, Northeastern began to have some problems with enrollment. In the mid-1990s, they embarked on a multi-decade (and incredibly successful) mission to climb in the US News and World Report rankings. They dropped the average class size, which is an improvement though in some cases they just lowered the cap from 20 to 19 to make sure that classes stayed under 20 students. They made a point of glad-handing other college presidents at conferences. And, most importantly to the US News and World Report, they built more dorms, and shifted their admissions focus away from the greater Boston area, and hiked the tuition from less than $10,000 per year to about $52,000 this year. Without making any sort of substantial change to the curriculum or faculty, Northeastern rose from 127th in the rankings in 2003 to 40th in 2020, and limited itself as an option for the population of students that it had traditionally served. While in many ways Northeastern University can and should be deemed a success story, it is also a warning sign for what the rankings prioritize and what it could do to higher education.
I’m all for providing as much information as possible to students and their families when it comes time to decide where to apply, and rankings can be an asset in that endeavor. However, I think it’s important to recognize their weaknesses and ensure that we don’t focus so much on the rankings that we limit the diversity of educational options in our system of higher education, or eliminate options that make a four-year degree more accessible to diverse populations.
