Dickinson Announces New Rankings Policy

Colleges & Universities Dickinson College
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<p>Corbett:</p>

<p>US News can’t give us those numbers because the samplings aren’t random and there are not and can never be benchmarks. I’m quite sure that no factor analysis has been done or can even be done in the absence of benchmarks.</p>

<p>What I was trying to say is that I think I’m perfectly capable of interpreting the numbers, and US News publishes the weightings and the most of the numbers on which its rankings depend. In that context, the US News rankings are quite useful.</p>

<p>As for tiers, I don’t understand why ranking one school with, say, a score of 76 as “first tier” and another school with a score of 75 a “second tier” school could possibly be more useful than publishing the scores and the data points in rank order.</p>

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<p>Sore loser is a poor expression. However, Reed does not miss any chance to milk and exploit its position regarding the USNews rankings. I believe that USNews is making a HUGE mistake in listing Reed and other iconoclasts in the rankings: the school, as well as the remaining schools that have non-standard policies that allow them to manipulate the data a la Middlebury at will, should be delisted, or simply lumped in a special unranked category. </p>

<p>In the case of Dickinson, I applaud the school decision to seize discussing the issue–a welcome departure from Reed’s constant whining. I hope this would free the time and energy to publish meaningful data such as the Common Data Set, and let the potential candidates evaluate the school in comparison to Dickinson’s peers. </p>

<p>Schools that do not want play ball should not be given an uniform. Schools that are making a mockery of the system should be asked to return theirs.</p>

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<p>With all due respect to Mr. Massa, I find the quoted statement worthy of a challenge. </p>

<p>I have little doubt that Mr. Massa knows that the USNews has used the classifications of the Canegie Foundation to establish its categories. I believe that the number for the rankings was 215 or 217. Despite the recent reclassification by the Carnegie Foundation, I am not certain why Dickinson might opt to compare itself to 650 schools … except to reinforce the general consideration of being among the top 10%. For that matter, why not decree that Dickinson is among the top 1 or 2% of all colleges in the country? In the meantime, I’d most curious to read more about the Liberal Arts Colleges that could be listed/ranked from 218 to 650, and ascertain if they are indeed national, regional, or local colleges.</p>

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<p>On the issue of classifications, here’s how things are expected to change in the future at USNews:</p>

<p>Baccalaureate Colleges. Although our criteria for subcategories are unchanged from the 2000 edition, we have discontinued the use of the “Liberal Arts” terminology in favor of a term that more transparently describes the classification criteria. (Both “liberal arts college” and “liberal arts education” signify more than the proportion of undergraduates who major in traditional arts and sciences fields.) Note that the new Undergraduate Instructional Program classification offers finer differentiation of the distribution of undergraduate majors, while also identifying institutions where arts and sciences and professional fields are represented among majors in roughly equal proportions.</p>

<p>Because we increased the threshold level of master’s degree production separating Baccalaureate and Master’s institutions, some institutions that previously would have been classified among Master’s Colleges and Universities II are now included among Baccalaureate Colleges. Exclusively undergraduate institutions can be identified using the Enrollment Profile classification, and the Undergraduate Instructional Program classification can be used to determine the degree of correspondence between undergraduate and graduate programs.</p>

<p>"How will U.S. News and World Report use the new classifications in its annual college rankings?</p>

<p>Because the organizing framework of the U.S. News comparison groups is based on a conception of regional and national markets, and the Carnegie Classification does not use regional or national draw as a classification criterion, the Carnegie Foundation is hopeful that U.S. News will develop an approach to defining comparison groups that is better suited to its analytic framework.</p>

<p>Robert Morse, Director of Data Research at U.S. News, has provided this statement:
In late February 2006, Carnegie released the final “basic” classification of higher education institutions. There is not enough time for U.S. News & World Report to incorporate any of the finalized “basic” Carnegie Classification framework into the America’s Best Colleges rankings that will be published in August 2006, called the 2007 edition of America’s Best Colleges. </p>

<p>U.S. News will continue to use its pre-existing categories and schools for the upcoming 2007 edition of the America’s Best Colleges rankings to be published in August 2006. </p>

<p>U.S. News will now have enough time to thoughtfully consider how to best use and incorporate the changes to the “basic” Carnegie Classifications for the following year’s America’s Best Colleges rankings, to be published in 2007 called the 2008 edition of America’s Best Colleges."</p>

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<p>Xiggi,
Every school (including Claremont McKenna College) has the ability to manipulate data. At least certain colleges (including Middlebury) make their common data set data available to the public. The same cannot be said for CMC.</p>

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Using “tiers” doesn’t mean that you can’t also have data points. In fact, this is exactly what US News does for Tiers 3 and 4 in their “National University” and “National Liberal Arts Colleges” rankings. They include all of the data points for the schools in these tiers, even though they are all “tied” for ranking purposes, and so are listed alphabetically. Obviously any rating system – whether schools are ranked individually or in tiers – should include the supporting data.</p>

<p>US News implicitly acknowledges that many schools have rankings that are statistically indistinguishable: this is why all Tier 3 and Tier 4 schools are tied, and why many Tier 1 and Tier 2 schools are also tied (e.g. Caltech, Stanford and MIT are all “#4” this year). </p>

<p>My feeling is that the US News ratings would be more realistic, and would better serve both the schools and the public, if the criteria for such equivalency were broader, so that there were a lot more tied schools in Tiers 1 and 2. If you look at the total scores, you can easily spot gaps that separate clusters of schools, and where you could draw lines between “subtiers” in Tiers 1 and 2.</p>

<p>This approach would also create much more stability in the rankings; schools would be much less likely to fluctuate up or down in the rankings every year. This would arguably reflect reality more accurately than the current system.</p>

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<p>Arcadia, haven’t I responded to that in a previous thread? I still find the lack of public posting of the CDS by Claremont McKenna unacceptable. </p>

<p>However, the issue is not that the CDS is not made public; the issue is that the SAT optional policies and creative reporting by Middlebury have been misleading for years and STILL are–despite your claims that they changed in response to prior “complaints.” Based on the reporting of a ridiculous number (745 I believe) as 75th percentile, I might concede that incompetence might play a bigger role than dishonesty, but it remains that the CDS forms and scores reported by Middlebury are simply inconsistent with the truth. As far as the other numbers, only the future will tell the degree of “model manipulation” that took place. </p>

<p>Lastly, you also seem to miss the bigger issue: SAT optional schools such as Midd, Bates, Mt Holyoke, and others, should NOT be listed by USNews in the same category and compared to schools that do not have such policies.</p>

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<p>Xiggi,
I do recall you saying that you dislike the fact that CMC doesn’t make its data publically available. However, I don’t recall you responding to WesDad’s comment (reposted below):</p>

<p>Okay, more US News anomaly/sloppiness (xiggi should like this one): </p>

<p>2007 US News (class of 2009) lists CMC middle 50% SAT as 1310-1490. </p>

<p>But CB and PR have it as 1270-1480. </p>

<p>And, if you check, you’ll find 1310-1490 were the figures in the 2006 US New edition, i.e., the Class of 2008. </p>

<p>Perhaps someone forgot to update?</p>

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<p>I agree with you, Corbett. I would take it a step further and say that the really useful part of the USNEWS product is the sortable on-line database. This allows you to sort colleges by one of several different datapoints. For example, you can sort by “peer assessment” score. Interesting. Then, you can sort by admissions selectivity. Interesting. Or by median SATs. Interesting.</p>

<p>A truly wonderful product would be to extend the list of sortable data points. For example, sort by per student endowment. Or by percentage of minority enrollment. Or by percentage qualifying by financial aid. Or by percentage of varisty athletes. Or fraternity members. Or by percentage of students getting PhDs. Or by distance to the nearest Ethiopian restaurant. </p>

<p>Then, potential applicants could approach things in a rational, individual fit manner. What kinds of data points are important to that particular student? Sort the schools by those data points and see which ones rank highly on those. </p>

<p>Where these ranking systems all fall apart is in trying to establish some kind of overall numeric rank. This false precision, based on one arbitrary set of parameters, is counterproductive to an informed college search.</p>

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<p>First of all, hooray for Dickinson. Almost makes me want to send my daughter there.</p>

<p>As an economist who works with data, rankings, and a wide variety of statistical methods for a living, I am always amazed at the shallowness of many of the rankings that are put forward in the general media and used as the basis for articles. In the case of the US News Rankings, they use a reasonable method, but I think the motivation behind them is definitely an economic one. At one point, there was a lot less of this information generally available - especially with the ready accessibility now available - and US News found a very clever market niche and has done an excellent job promoting its publications. US News is clearly not Time or Newsweek, so this was a clever way to expand and this section of their business has become a ‘Cash Cow’ of sorts.</p>

<p>My intuition around the Liberal Arts colleges on the list is that between around 6 and 79 this year there isn’t really a whole lot of difference - every one of these schools is very good and provides a fine education. Whether or not it meets the needs of an individual student is an entirely different question.</p>

<p>I think the broader classifications of Most Selective, More Selective, etc. are a lot more valuable as they don’t tend to lend spurious accuracy to what is an inherently inaccurate process. Evaluating what school is best for a particular student is a very subjective process. In the end, there’s only room for one choice, but there could be a number of places that would be ‘bests’.</p>

<p>When I think of school like St. Olaf or Illinois Wesleyan, for example, someone very active in the arts would be much better of there than at MIT - so the numeric comparisons made basically become irrelevant at that point.</p>

<p>Looking at our recent trips to different colleges and my own senior’s interests might be enlightening. My daughter is a decent distance runner and would like to go to a school where that sport is reasonably popular and taken with some degree of seriousness. She also is a serious student but feels that she would be best off at a school that is not too large. Colorado College is relatively near us and appears like a reasonable fit based on those criteria. A visit to the school left us wondering if the admission counselor had a long history of drug usage, if all of the students were as overly dramatic as the tour guide, and if the school was generally as disorganized as their admissions office seemed to be. Those are things that are difficult to quantify - but there’s CC, well up on the list.</p>

<p>Williams and Willamette (W obsession?) are also on my daughter’s list. Well, there’s Williams #1 in everything (#2, though, in Division III XC) and there’s poor Willamette down the list a ways (a Top 20 DIII XC school). Despite the fact that a friend of mine went to Willamette undergrad and went on to get his PhD at Yale, there is this lurking monster in the back of my mind asking if I would be destroying my daughter’s life if I encourage her toward poor old Willamette as opposed to Williams. Objectively, I think no but seeing these types of rankings causes me, at some visceral level, to wonder what type of horrible father I must be to do such a thing! </p>

<p>A system that had Williams and Middlebury in a top tier with Willamette in a second tier would do a lot to diffuse this type of overreaction, which I have to imagine is even worse amongst those who don’t possess a particularly quantitative bent for interpreting statistics in the first place.</p>

<p>So on our family will go with the process and I’ll hope my daughter never bothers to look at the US News rankings. They aren’t necessarily bad and they are well thought through, but the bottom line is that if you left your decision to the rankings, you could be extremely misled about what type of educational situation would be the best fit for an individual.</p>

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<p>“Reed does not miss any chance to milk and exploit its position regarding the USNews rankings.”</p>

<p>Can anyone point me to where Reed has milked and exploited? xiggi cannot or will not (having been asked).</p>

<p>“Reed … non-standard policies that allow them to manipulate the data” </p>

<p>Meaning that Reed’s low ranking is due to their manipulation of the data?</p>

<p>“Schools that do not want play ball should not be given an uniform.”</p>

<p>Reed agrees, and has asked USNWR to omit them from the rankings, to no avail.</p>

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<p>For a really simple “ranking” of colleges, I would suggest that per student endowment would probably tell you more than any other single indicator (real or arbitrarily derived). With few exceptions, it mirrors the results of all the USNEWS hocus pocus, except that it is much more intuitive to recognize that the differences between a school with $205k per student endowment and one with $210k are insignificant.</p>

<p>Here’s a partial list put together by the Questbridge folk:</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.questbridge.org/resources/applying/endowment1.html[/url]”>http://www.questbridge.org/resources/applying/endowment1.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Just pull the LACs from this list. The nice thing is that using a hard data index like this is that it removes the regional bias from the equation – a bias that penalizes non-New England schools like Grinnell and Pomona in the USNEWS lists.</p>

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<p>i went to Dickinson college for CTY! their library… so AMAZING!!!</p>

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<p>Interedad, I don’t know how you think endowment per undergrad student is useful at all…endowment includes med, law, business, research, dollars an undergrad never sees</p>

<p>SAT scores are by far the most useful single number indicator, and that still has many problems (I guess the US News raw score doesn’t count since its a culmination of several numbers)</p>

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<p>we need schools like amherst, williams and swarthmore to come out and say this usnwr ranking is bs in order to add any weight to the argument. or at the very least oberlin, colby or barnard. i can see why many view dickinson as a sore loser and i must admit i agree entirely. a school ranked outside the top 40 does not carry enough weight to convince anyone that the ranking is flawed. if the school is so great, there shouldn’t be any reason to explain how great it is or why it is so great. such statement like it is one of the oldest LAC’s in the nation doesn’t have anything to do with its quality. take the college of williams and mary and stanford for example, one is found in 1693 while the other in 1891. how many people today think w&m is at the same par as stanford? dickinson is a good school but not great and definitely not top 10, let alone top 40. it is sad if you think that there are 3000+ colleges in the US and being among the top 300 qualify you to say dickinson is in the top 10.</p>

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<p>Not for liberal arts colleges. All they do is undergrad education, thus the school’s resources are all directed towards undergrads. Of course, that focus on undergrad education is precisely the advantage that LACs have over universities.</p>

<p>From a financial standpoint, it makes for a very clean analysis. The only anomolies are exceptional cases like Berea College, which uses its substantial endowment to fund tuition-free education for all of its students, focused exclusively on low-income students.</p>

<p>I agree that you have to discount the endowment per student number for universities, since they are generally spending 1.5 to 2 times as much per student for graduate/professional school students than they are for undergrads. Using the enrollment numbers and those rule of thumb multipliers, you could work backwards and estimate how much of the endowment is really meaningful to undergrad customers.</p>

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<p>Ohhh OK sorry, I misunderstood you earlier</p>

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<p>Ha. Since those three schools have swapped the top 3 spots back and forth among themselves exclusively for the entire 25 year history of USNEWS rankings, I wouldn’t hold your breath!</p>

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<p>I applaud Dickinson’s decision, too. It’s the middle-tier colleges that are their overlaps that make the most public use of positive numbers from US News/PrincetonReview, et al. The decision to not use such rankings thus seems especially principled and positive . . . hardly “sore losers” in my book!</p>

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<p>See, Dickinson has a very bad attitude when it loses ranks. GOSH, Why schools like Dickinson can’t just accept the fact that their school are no way better than whatever schools ranking above them.</p>

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<p>Nah, I think it might be construed as a case of sore-loser…but not really…Reed on the other hand is totally sore loser and talks about how crazy and awesome they are for being against the US News</p>