Report: US News rankings penalize efficiency and promote economic inequality in higher education

[DunBoyer]

With the US News rankings set to be released on Tuesday, some food for thought.

America’s universities are getting two report cards this year. The first, from the Equality of Opportunity Project, brought the shocking revelation that many top universities, including Princeton and Yale, admit more students from the top 1 percent of earners than the bottom 60 percent combined. The second, from U.S. News and World Report, is due on Tuesday — with Princeton and Yale among the contenders for the top spot in the annual rankings.

The two are related: A POLITICO review shows that the criteria used in the U.S. News rankings — a measure so closely followed in the academic world that some colleges have built them into strategic plans — create incentives for schools to favor wealthier students over less wealthy applicants.

[…]

POLITICO interviewed more than 20 current and former college presidents, administrators and federal education officials, and all agreed, often in fiery terms, that the lack of economic diversity is a critical problem.

They didn’t all agree on solutions, but many cited a common culprit — the U.S. News rankings, which began in 1983 and quickly grew to become, in the magazine’s own words from a 2008 article, “the 800-pound gorilla of American higher education.”

“I think U.S. News has done more damage to the higher education marketplace than any single enterprise that’s out there,” said F. King Alexander, president of Louisiana State University.

Alexander noted that a key to success in the rankings is paying higher faculty salaries and spending more per student overall, which drives up tuition in an era when sticker price has kept many low-income students from even applying to college.

Much of the score “is about spending the most amount of money on the fewest amount of students — and generally, students you already know are going to succeed,” Alexander said. “We’re spending more money on students who need it the least — and U.S. News gives you high marks for that.

[…]

A 2014 report found that a major university ranked by U.S. News in the mid-30s would have to increase its spending by $112 million per year to jump into the top 20. That correlates to about $86,000 per student and an average faculty compensation package of about $150,000 per year.

Some colleges have given faculty raises with the sole purpose of boosting their U.S. News ranking, Stevens, the sociologist who is now at Stanford University, said. When he was on the faculty at a small liberal arts college in the 1990s, the entire faculty was given a 15-percent raise overnight. They were told it was to improve the school’s ranking.

“It was a relatively straightforward mechanism for boosting rankings,” Stevens said.

Kirwan, the former University of Maryland chancellor, put it this way: “If you could deliver the same quality at lower cost, you’d go down in the rankings.”

Read the rest here: http://www.politico.com/interactives/2017/top-college-rankings-list-2017-us-news-investigation/

I doubt the report’s conclusions will be news to most regulars on this site, but with a wealth of primary sources, a detailed breakdown of ranking criteria, and links to a great deal of recent research, it’s one of the best summaries of the topic I’ve seen.

[Much2learn]

Saying US News is responsible for most low income students not being prepared for an elite college is like pissing in the ocean and thinking you contributed to the rising tide. Technically you did a little, but it is really not even close to the primary driver.

[DunBoyer]

Saying US News is responsible for most low income students not being prepared for an elite college is like pissing in the ocean and thinking you contributed to the rising tide. Technically you did a little, but it is really not even close to the primary driver.

That’s not the chief problem the article notes. Several factors this report points to - particularly the rankings’ incentives to spend more (driving tuition up) and raise alumni donation rates - give colleges an incentive to admit fewer low-income students, or make the cost of those colleges prohibitive for said students.

US News is the most widely known ranking system by far, and that gives schools a powerful financial incentive to raise their ranking. My own college introduced multiple ED options with the goal of climbing in the rankings, driven by data showing that fundraising rises exponentially as a school climbs in the rankings and evidence for a strong causal link. I’m all but certain we’re among the colleges that include US News rankings in our strategic plans.

If a ranking is influential enough that rising or falling in that ranking has a significant effect on a college’s fundraising efforts, that ranking’s criteria will have more than a little influence on universities’ behavior. This particular ranking - which happens to be the best-known in the U.S. by far - favors choices that soak the poor and feed the rich. I think it’s reasonable to say that’s a problem.