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<p>I’m less interested in laying blame than in pointing out the “junk” quality of the so-called “objective” metrics in the US News rankings, and encouraging people not to rely on this garbage. I don’t think US News gives much care to trying to design metrics that are more difficult to game, or affirmatively trying to ensure quality control in the data coming in, or trying to correct the metrics when obvious ways of gaming them are pointed out. But that’s really beside the point. US News is just pop journalism, for gosh sakes; this is a world in which shoddiness abounds, and they’re under no special obligation to the public to put out a quality product. No, what I object to is the degree to which their rankings have become so influential in students’ decisions about where to apply and where to attend that colleges feel they have no choice but to pander to the US News rankings, because if they don’t their competitors will, they’ll lose ground, and the US News ranking will become a self-fulfilling prophecy as thousands or tens of thousands of applicants, reading US News, will deem them a notch below the competitors who did tailor their operations to make themselves look just a shade better here and there in the things US News measures. And as long as US News uses such crude brightline statistical categories (“classes under 20 students good; award points,” “classes of 50 or more bad, deduct points”), colleges are going to continue to game them to make themselves look better than their closest competitors. Frankly at this point it might be almost irresponsible for a college administrator not to play the game. A few have tried, and their schools have been badly punished in the US News rankings and in some cases probably paid a price for it later in the kinds of students they’re actually able to attract—and eventually possibly even in the faculty they’re able to recruit and retain. So I think it’s up to those of us who know better to call a stop to this madness, and point out just how deeply flawed the entire US News ranking is—not to lend it credence by continually citing it, and treating its “objective” metrics as if they really meant something. They mean about as much as a fresh pile of horse manure.</p>
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[quote=hawkette]
Maybe I’m na</p>