The list that makes you feel bad about where you went to college is out.
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US News & World Report released its yearly ranking of the best colleges in the country yesterday. But this year’s list comes amid a growing number of complaints about how the scores that mean a lot to wide-eyed future loan borrowers (and the administrators who will eventually ask them for money) are calculated.
Besides controversial criteria like incoming students’ SAT scores and the level of alumni donations, one of the main problems critics have with the list is that it attributes 20% of its ranking formula to what amounts to basically a popularity contest. US News sends a yearly survey to college admins asking them to rate other schools’ “academic quality.”
Even Education Secretary Miguel Cardona, although not referring to the US News list directly, said last month that college rankings that value reputation above things like economic mobility are “a joke.”
There’s even more drama this year…Columbia University dropped from No. 2 to No. 18 because it didn’t submit any data while it investigated a math professor’s claims that the school might be fudging some numbers. On Friday, the university admitted to the fudging.
Final fun fact: 19 of the top 20 schools on this year’s list cost $55,000+ per year to attend.—MM
