http://college.usatoday.com/2015/09/08/best-us-college-2016-yale-penn/
every list like this is has as much value to me as an argument over who would win in a fight superman or spiderman. it is just silly!
@zobroward I think that the lists do matter to a degree. Not in the exact order, but in their general order over time. The best schools do provide resources, funding, and opportunities at a level that average schools can’t begin to match. They also matter because right or wrong, they influence people’s decisions, and in the case of USA Today, it will be seen by a lot of people.
Certainly these rankings are not as precise as who would win a fight between superman and spiderman, because everyone knows that superman would win that fight! lol
yeah but I think superman would choose carnegie mellon which was not on the top of their list.
People pick and choose which rankings they like based on how it orders the schools they prefer.
And yes it is silly.
Want to work at Google, you have a better shot from San Jose St than Princeton.
Want to work at Disney, then University of Central Florida is a good pick.
Average Faculty Compensation (Medium) – Competitive salaries and benefits can attract the best of the best to a college or university. (Compensation is adjusted for cost of living.)
This seems like a pretty indirect method of measuring faculty quality to me, particularly because faculty salaries can fluctuate wildly from one field to the next, so this can be heavily impacted by the spread of disciplines a college offers. For example, on average a full professor in engineering gets paid about $40,000 more a year than a full professor in history or English.
I couldn’t disagree more with “Life after college should reward students for seeking a higher education. These metrics are all related to the earnings students’ realized after attending school.”
Aside from the problems of Payscale data (post-grad education not accounted for, self-reported data, etc.), this implies that college is all about making the most money, and it’s really measuring pre-professionalism more than the quality of a school. (Note that Stevens Institute of Technology, WPI, NYU Poly, RPI, Clarkson, etc. all perform extremely well on the Payscale ranking, on par with the Ivies and similar universities.)
Clark Kent was a journalist, however…surely he would be intrigued by the journalism program at Northwestern? He was raised in the Midwest, so that would hold some sway as well. 
Bingo. You can usually predict which school made the top of the list by the poster who posted it.
“Clark Kent was a journalist, however…surely he would be intrigued by the journalism program at Northwestern? He was raised in the Midwest, so that would hold some sway as well.” fine perhaps spiderman prefers CMU my bad! I get the two guys confused sometimes.
They say this is “data-driven” but some people don’t want just numbers? I’m in the college selection process rn, and everyone is telling me that actually liking the environment > purely academia
Oh, Superman of course…spidey doesn’t really have any powers!
These rankings, and the article that is really an advertisement, come from College Factual.
Spiderman goes to Empire State University, in New York. Y’all clearly don’t read comics.