Yes it is AI and it’s about as accurate, I would argue more, than USNWR rankings have been. You sound like you are in love with USNWR and don’t want the old guard to change things when it’s clear it is desperately in need of change to keep up with today and how people view best colleges in a whole different light now in terms of making decisions. They, I believe, know this hence the change. Will you be surprised in a few weeks? Let’s find out.
There are a number of LACs with engineering programs, including Smith, Trinity, and Swarthmore. In some sense, Bucknell’s was sort of grandfathered in since it’s had one for as long as anyone can remember.
Academics are forever debating these things. You’re really just questioning the size of the category, not whether the category exists.
LOL. If you look at my posting history, I expect you’ll come to a very different conclusion.
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Maybe you just don’t believe things change then. 
We shall see.
I’m surprised the service academies aren’t the top three. They are STEM-heavy LACs where every student is a federal loan recipient graduating with no debt, a guaranteed job, and excellent employment prospects upon leaving the service. Sure, the military isn’t for everyone, and they use a unique rubric for admissions, but they are quite selective, and you can’t beat the value package on the metrics most people here seem concerned about.
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I wasn’t thinking about Bama then. More the likes of LSU, UMiss, Tenn. Business and engineering. Engineering pay tends to be relativey flat with little increase for ranking. But business is more recruiting driven and thats where the money varies too. LIberal arts–crap shoot.
A quote from a post that summarizes my feelings is below. It’s more the concept of trying to rank colleges according to an arbitrary formula with arbitrary weightings is fundamentally flawed rather than a question of whether USNWR, Niche, or Time has the best/worst rankings.
The USNWR weightings are completely arbitrary. I believe the categories and selections primarily relate to increasing earnings for the USNWR company/magazine/website, rather than genuinely trying to create formula to calculate what is the best college. This is particularly evident when you look at how some categories are calculated for areas that one would not expect HYPSM… to do well, such as social mobility, as well as if you look at their history of changes in weightings.
From an individual student’s perspective the rankings are near useless since the weightings used in the USNWR rankings are almost certain to be completely different from what any particular student values in a their college selection. Maybe it can help some students learn about colleges they hadn’t heard about before, but there are many better options than using USNWR rankings for this purpose.
I won’t get off topic and go in to a lot of detail about WSJ/Forbes methodology, but the point is the other rankings I’ve seen are also quite flawed. It’s not just an issue with USNWR. It’s more the whole concept of ranking colleges according to a formula using a bunch of arbitrarily weighted stats is flawed. The link I listed earlier in which professor Thaddeus discusses Columbia gaming/falsifying USNWR numbers expresses it eloquently. A quote is below.
No one should try to reform or rehabilitate the ranking. It is irredeemable. In Colin Diver’s memorable formulation, “Trying to rank institutions of higher education is a little like trying to rank religions or philosophies. The entire enterprise is flawed, not only in detail but also in conception.”
Students are poorly served by rankings. To be sure, they need information when applying to colleges, but rankings provide the wrong information. As many critics have observed, every student has distinctive needs, and what universities offer is far too complex to be projected to a single parameter. These observations may partly reflect the view that the goal of education should be self-discovery and self-fashioning as much as vocational training. Even those who dismiss this view as airy and impractical, however, must acknowledge that any ranking is a composite of factors, not all of which pertain to everyone. A prospective engineering student who chooses the 46th-ranked school over the 47th, for example, would be making a mistake if the advantage of the 46th school is its smaller average class sizes. For small average class sizes are typically the result of offering more upper-level courses in the arts and humanities, which our engineering student likely will not take at all.
College applicants are much better advised to rely on government websites like College Navigator and College Scorecard, which compare specific aspects of specific schools. A broad categorization of institutions, like the Carnegie Classification, may also be helpful — for it is perfectly true that some colleges are simply in a different league from others — but this is a far cry from a linear ranking. Still, it is hard to deny, and sometimes hard to resist, the visceral appeal of the ranking. Its allure is due partly to a semblance of authority, and partly to its spurious simplicity.
Perhaps even worse than the influence of the ranking on students is its influence on universities themselves. Almost any numerical standard, no matter how closely related to academic merit, becomes a malignant force as soon as universities know that it is the standard. A proxy for merit, rather than merit itself, becomes the goal.
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I have no objection to the service academies receiving their due credit. However, the reality is whether they are included or not, most people will automatically bracket them out of any ranking or listing.
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You mentioned Bama, LSU, and Ole Miss - like people were not excelling at these. People seem to think SEC party schools, maybe cheap and fun but no one will take them seriously - that’s the implication - i.e. Wisconsin is a top school. Just as US News. I’m sure UTK does fine - and you have growth areas in Knox and Nash - to take the customers. I have a CS kid I mentored who had an internship at a local retailer, then a global navigation company in the MW, then a Seattle software company, got his masters and is starting $150K and bonus.. Big name
Back to the schools noted - IU finance but they may include IB as may a Bama or Wisconsin but the assumption, right or wrong, would be IU has more IB. They show $83K and marketing $62.5K.
Now, is finance in Chicago or NY or just have some with higher salaries (IB, etc.) skewing - who knows? Is finance in low COL Indy? Who knows?
Bama shows a $73.6K for finance with a knowledge rate of 84% (I didn’t see one from IU) - the where and what jobs I don’t know. But $10K less than IU. For marketing, they show a $64,411 - so out earn Kelley - but again, what jobs and where - I don’t know. They could place in HCOL areas - just don’t know. Marketing at Bama has a knowledge rate of 85.8% so 6 of 7.
What it tells me and others may be different - everyone wants top 10 Kelley, etc. but at least statistically, for marketing - it likely doesn’t matter much - at least jobs obtained. The experience of two universities - including dorms, food, weather, walkability, aesthetics will be different.
Put in Wisconsin - $80K for finance $68K for marketing - so it wins on marketing (not factoring in the unknowns). But is Bama placing in lower cost Atlanta and Wisconsin in higher cost Chicago - that’s the great unknown.
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I’d just note again I think the US News does play a special role for families who implicitly think of college admissions as being about maximizing the T## of their college offers. But I don’t think that mindset describes more than a fraction of families.
However, even a fraction of a very large market is still a lot of families. Enough to populate a lot of social media, and apparently enough to keep the US News rankings in business.
And in turn I am confident US News is well aware of the need to market itself carefully to this type of family, and will not let anything happen to its rankings that would jeopardize its role among such families.
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There are some things U.S. News can do statistically, and others it can’t. It can, for example, place some expected schools at the top of a category, should it choose to do so. However, it can’t — at least without statistical contortions — keep those same schools together perpetually if any depart from the standards of the group.
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If they are honest about this new factor “earnings by major metric” really being a player for this upcoming poll, even if it was only a 10% factor (which I believe it will be weighted more), the shift in the Top 25 (maybe not Top10) will be obvious and substantial. We shall see.
The article linked in first post says earnings by major is replacing graduate indebtedness (median Federal loan debt as reported by College Scorecard), which is weighted at 5%.
Replacing it does not mean they are going to be giving it the same weight. They admittedly also state the graduate indebtedness factor had not been updated for several years which I’m sure contributed to why they gave that factor a low percentage. Like I said, it will be a minimum 10% I’m speculating more.
That’s nothing. And I’d think indebtedness is key. Should be higher.
It’s time to go to an expensive school if you can do so debt free.
But many go and take substantive loans. That’s not fime - imho
The graduate indebtedness factor has always been weighted at 5% (sometimes split as 3% + 2%) since inception. They did not reduce weighting. USNWR almost always introduces new metric types at <=5% weighting and reserves relatively higher weightings for their core metrics, such as admin “marginal” / “distinguished” survey and metrics related to graduation rate.
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It’s all speculation. We will know in a few weeks how significant this is or not.
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Of course, graduation rate is largely a proxy of two things:
- Admission selectivity with respect to earned factors (not things like LDC hooks, state or location of residency, etc).
- Student affordability, which relates both to family money and the college’s financial aid for those without enough family money.
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Note that U.S. News also uses a Graduation Rate Performance metric, in which a school’s actual graduation rate is compared to that which would have been predicted based on underlying factors.
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Who would know the educational quality of a school better than the profs?
I sure hope this Time ranking makes some room for quality of academics… because ROI is not a proxy for that. Early-career ROI is largely driven by kids’ choice of major and COL where their employers are located.
USNews isn’t perfect, but at least they try to include an “academic quality” factor in their ranking.
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