Gaming the USNWR rankings

Parents Forum
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We certainly see a lot of that here in Minnesota, but in-state private colleges and OOS publics are also well represented.

Here are the undergraduate institutions of our 8 House members:
Chadron State College (NE)
University of Northern Iowa (IA)
St. Olaf College (MN)
St. Catherine University (MN)
Wayne State University (MI)
University of Alaska-Fairbanks (AK)
Minnesota State-Moorhead (MN)
University of Minnesota-Twin Cities (MN)

Our governor (Yale) and US Senators (Yale and Stanford) break the mold, but the current governor isn’t seeking re-election. The leading contenders to replace him (both major parties) graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Chadron State, the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, and Concordia College (MN). Both Senators are up for re-election (one in a special election to fill the remainder of Al Franken’s term) and both are heavily favored, but their leading opponents are from the University at Buffalo (NY) and St. Cloud State (MN) respectively.

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If you’re interested in entrepreneurship USNews ranks Penn at #5, being Babson and Indiana University-Bloomington, a school with a 79% acceptance rate. Penn doesn’t even crack the top 25 on Princeton Review’s list.

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However, it cannot be known for sure whether, in that year, there were better professional baseball players in the US who were excluded from MLB for reasons other than baseball skills.

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I was reading (maybe in Bruni’s book) that graduating from an ivy is considered a negative when running in local elections, the voters will think you don’t have touch with the common man or woman. You’re much better off going to the state flagship or public schools, as data10 and bclintonk have posted.

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It’s simply much better to go to a college within the state that you are running for election in.

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Temple University in Philly is under investigation for falsifying data for their (previously ranked #1) online MBA. Our local paper continues to cover this in depth. Also, looks as if Temple has submitted incorrect data for the rest of their business school for years - “ranking-focused strategy”

My husband is floored that I don’t think this will impact student interest in Temple …

Anyone else feel that the ranking game has won? That people already “know” who is the best - no matter how many colleges are found to be unfairly gaming?

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http://www.philly.com/philly/education/temple-business-school-dean-data-fox-moshe-porat-explainer-20180717.html

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No it will hurt them, as they will fall or be booted out of the rankings entirely and people will notice. Having said that anything that begins with “online” will fill a square but isn’t going to be held in high regard.

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The folks who graduate with an online mba don’t post that on their resume. It’s the same degree.

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Like I said it will fill a square, but its not Booth/Wharton/Harvard………being #1 online means……….not much.

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However, in Temple’s case, it appears investigation began with online, but has spilled over to “regular” business school gaming.

Did it hurt Emory or George Washington long term when they were omitted by either US News or Forbes a few years ago?

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Probably not since there ranking didn’t change much even when they stopped cheating, so I doubt it was worth it. Short term its a pretty bad blemish on there record. Academic integrity and all…….

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My guess is that the majority of colleges fudge or massage their data at some level. There is just too much incentive to do so, and no systems in place to cross-check or verify much of the information. In my view, it’s naive to think otherwise.

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No doubt that they will try to massage it one way or another. However I don’t think USNWR takes it far enough when they do find out. Should be closer to a 10 year ban to have real effects. If the punishment is severe enough for out and out fraudulent data then you it might deter it.

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@calmom Completely agree. When I starting attending info sessions with my S14, I remember thinking that “average SAT/ACT and GPA” could mean a lot of things.

@Cu123 I don’t think USNWR has any incentive to punish. So many people quote their rankings as gospel, why rock the boat?

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Most top private universities provide phony student-faculty ratios. They do so by using only the number of undergraduates in calculating the ratio. The IPEDS instructions are clear that the ratio should be based on the total number of students, graduate as well as undergraduate, excluding only those graduate students who are in “stand-alone programs” like law schools and medical schools. The rationale is clear and sensible: faculty in the arts and sciences, engineering, and other programs teach both undergrads and grad students, and their time will be split between them, so if you count only undergrads in calculating the S/F ratio it will give a misleading impression as to how much time faculty will have for undergrads.

Penn, for example, in Part B of its most recent CDS reports that it actually has more graduate students (11,874) than undergrads (10,033). But in Part I it claims a S/F ratio of 6 to 1, based on 9,866 students and 1,689 faculty. Clearly, they’re excluding ALL graduate students. (The number of undergrads in Part I is reduced because the total number of undergrads includes 251 part time undergrads, which the instructions for that part say to count as 1/3 of a person for purposes of calculating the S/F ratio).

Contrast that with Michigan, which in Part B reports 28,702 full-time and 1,119 part-time undergraduates, and 14,815 full-time and 1,366 part-time graduate students. And in Part I they calculate a S/F ratio of 15 to 1, based on 40,110 students and 2,761 faculty. Clearly they’re following instructions—they’re including roughly 11,000 graduate students in calculating their S/F ratio, excluding only those in stand-alone programs like law, medicine, etc.

We can’t calculate what Penn’s actual S/F ratio would be if they calculated it properly in accordance with the instructions, because we don’t know how many of its nearly 12,000 graduate students are in stand-alone programs. But we can say that if Michigan calculated its S/F ratio the way Penn does, using only the number of undergraduates, it would be about 10 to 1. That would put it much closer to the figures claimed by the Ivies and other top private universities. But unsuspecting readers of US News and even the CDS don’t know that. They take the published S/F ratio at face value, and it goes straight into US News’ ranking formula unchallenged.

To my mind this is just blatant cheating. But US News doesn’t seem to care.

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Wait, what, ‘there is cheating going on this establishment?’

I’m shocked, shocked!

tbf: bc, as you know, the Common Data Set is a collaborative effort by several orgs, and USNews is just one of the key users, like the feds (Ipeds?).

Sure, USNews could call Penn on their (ahem) mistake, but so could the other folks involved with CDS, including its Advisory Board.

Or better yet, the colleges right below Penn in the rankings could make an anonymous report to USNews… :slight_smile:

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@calmom and others. Much of the data submitted to USNews and other rankers is also submitted to Moody’s and it factors into the universities’ bond rating. Number of applications, acceptance rate, yield, retention and graduation rates, average GPA and SAT/ACT are used. Lenders want to be sure that the university will be around for the next 20 or 30 years to pay back the loans.

So is a college fudges these stats the repercussions go far beyond a rankings drop!!

Here is Northeastern’s submission to Moody’s:
http://www.dacbond.com/GetContent?id=0900bbc78020d399

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“My guess is that the majority of colleges fudge or massage their data at some level.”

Let me fix the above statement:

My guess is that the majority of private colleges fudge or massage their data at some level.

I agree!