Every year,
reports are released that rank colleges according to a multitude of factors and
qualities. US News & World Report,
which publishes one of the most important and widely read of these rankings,
charges almost 35 dollars for their yearly college ranking report, and
prospective college students (and parents of prospective college students, of
course) snap them up in huge volumes.
After all, the choice of which college to attend is one of—if not the—biggest
decisions high school students have had to face in their lives up to that
point. It certainly, then, would help to
have a scientific study and assessment of all the colleges out there, wouldn’t
it? Most would say yes.
More and more
people, however, are starting to voice a dissenting opinion. What are their arguments? Why would someone think that these reports
are either unhelpful or possibly even detrimental? Here are a few of the reasons that those who
think this way are giving.
1. It’s a
Publishing Racket
Many who find
college rankings to be less useful that publicized believe that newspapers and
magazines like the US News & World Report have simply engineered a need in
order to sell their publication. By
hiding a lack of real-world utility behind a veneer of “scientific” processes
and seemingly rigorous, methodological research, these critics believe,
publications have found a way to make their product seem and feel necessary to
the college search process—when in reality it provides very little actual
benefit. On this opinion, publishers of college
rankings reports are simply preying upon the stress and anxiety of parents and
students in order to sell copies of their publications.
2. It Isn’t
Trustworthy
One of the
more surprising facts about the college rankings process, for most people, is
that many colleges—knowing how seriously parents and students take these
reports—have been shown to falsify the data given to publishers in order to
make their college’s rank rise. Most
recently, Claremont McKenna—an elite, upper echelon school in California—admitted to supply falsified data for the reports
for just this very reason. What is most
disconcerting about this fact is that this scandal reaches the highest ranks,
that even the very best schools are engaging in this deceit. If even these
schools can’t be trusted, the argument goes, how can the rankings be relied
upon as an accurate source of information for students and parents to base
their decisions on?
3. The
Subjectivity Problem
Another issue
raised is simple, but represents a real problem: these publications do their
best to present their rankings as “objective” and “scientific,” but in reality
there is much that is subjective in the comparison between schools—especially
schools in similar quality strata. Is
Princeton really better than Yale?
Can data decide this? Proponents
of this argument make the case that these types of decisions can’t be shown
objectively; in reality, these schools—as close as they are in quality—are
better for some types of people and not others.
Lastly—and
this is more of a philosophical difference than an argument—those who find
college rankings less useful than purported often say that the whole idea of
ranking colleges in the first place has the harmful effect of creating the
illusion that college choice should be decided by which college is best
overall, instead of which college is best for you. Their logic works as follows: Columbia
College may be ranked as one of the best art schools in the nation, but if
you’re from Arkansas and there’s a solid art school that fits you better and is
closer to home, it means it’s probably a better choice for you—college rankings
be…well, you know.
Otter Boone
writes for concorde.edu; be sure to visit them to learn about their medical assistant school degree programs.
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