Could be getting pressure from the Board of Trustees too. I have heard a number of College Execs say just that (or for the publics, pressure from State DOE’s.)
I was excited about that tool but I could never get it to behave in a reasonable way for me. But more of that, please!
By the way, I found this poll report cited by Chancellor Diermeier really interesting:
https://www.artsci.com/studentpoll-volume-17-issue-3
It did in fact give me some comfort that maybe not so many kids are really using US News rankings, or any generic rankings, in a really adverse way.
More kids, though, are looking at the information underlying rankings. Which is fine with me, actually, with appropriate caution.
I agree with your point.
Maybe these rankings have so much sway because the universities are starving the average consumer of critical information, so they are unable to make educated decisions?
In that case, the rankings serve an important purpose and the universities should also share in the blame.
2 Likes
Is there something specific you have in mind?
I note I think the essence of what most people say they want most is some sense of how much choosing college A rather than college B will add to their kid’s future career prospects.
Obviously they can figure out the costs for themselves, and in my experience they are usually pretty comfortable evaluating whether various non-career-motivated college experiences are worth paying for or not. However, they really want to know if there is going to be some career payoff if they pay more for college A (or alternatively sacrifice others things they would otherwise prefer about college B), and they are not sure.
But this is not information that college A and college B have and yet are hiding. Trying to answer this question requires comprehensive data about what happens to their graduates that these colleges typically don’t have available, and even then you would have to have lots more individualized data about those graduates, their non-college-created strengths and weaknesses, their choices and priorities, and so on.
So I don’t think these institutions have the “consumer” information that these families really want. I don’t think anyone does.
1 Like
Well, I’m even less bashful.
Merced would do a fine job of helping a professional-class kid become a professional-class adult, so that’s not the real problem. The actual issue is the social mix. Colleges in the United States are as much about mixing with the “right people” as they are about the education. Students from the Central Valley are not the “right people.”
2 Likes
For pre-professional careers, the institutions have that information and it seems to have become less publicly available over the years.
I’m actually not aware of what you have in mind. Can you point me to an example?
Yes, the truth is from everything we know, career-value-added is basically a pretty large tie for most such kids, at least as long as it is a non-profit, four-year college with a decent financial situation and the academic program(s) they want.
So the big variables are more cost and then OTHER stuff besides career-value-added. And I am sure at least for many such parents/kids, what you mentioned would be among the “other stuff” reasons they would prefer a different college.
1 Like
Table 3 looks right to me. I don’t doubt my method for rankings would pretty much track this – each university gets 5 - 10 development spots which go to the highest bidders in an open auction. Rankings then based on the total of successful bids.
1 Like
I’ve mentioned in the earlier linked thread that my niece graduated from Merced and had a good experience. She was from So Cal. She’s my niece, so I hope that makes her one of the “right people.” I get that it’s about perception but if USNWR continues to remain influential, over time, the perception will become reality. I think we all know of a certain northeastern college that did the same thing, thanks in large part to USNWR.
8 Likes
Subtle 
14 Likes
I noticed at one point there were a lot of colleges my S24 liked (and me too) which did well, but not extremely well, by that measure.
I think in a few cases things might have changed a bit since then, but I also think it reflected a fundamental truth that what he liked in colleges did not necessarily perfectly track what the average highly-qualified kid would like.
Which is fine! I dare say that is actually a worthy goal when building a selective college list–find the selective colleges where you like them better than the average kid with similar qualifications, and you might actually have a good chance of ending up at one! Maybe even with merit, if you are after that.
Yep. With CA salaries no wonder CA is at the top 
2 Likes
I think with your method CalTech and MIT would drop while schools such as NYU would rise. The rich do not prefer grind schools.
Any relative of yours is the “right people.” (Actually all the students at Merced are the “right people” in my book.)
However I don’t think Merced is going to follow the path of a certain northeastern college. First, Merced doesn’t seem to be gaming the system. Second, Merced doesn’t have a hot city setting such as Boston to give it cachet.
Still, I do hope that Merced continues to rise. I know a couple of the profs at Merced and they are terrific.
4 Likes
C’mon now. That’s not true, at all. I know plenty of affluent students grinding it out at Chicago, Harvey Mudd, CMU, MIT, JHU, and more.
9 Likes
The web and flow is interesting though. In our corner it appears that the “hot” schools this year are Duke, BC, BU.
1 Like
For this analogy to work as intended, one would have to believe that UPenn is the best school in Pennsylvania.
There is a difference between regular “affluent students” and the sort of affluence that would make someone the highest bidder in an open auction.
1 Like