Reply to The Absurdity of U.S. News College Rankings

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I heard Malcolm Gladwell explain this on Farid Zakariah’s program today this way:
There are five different variables in U.S. News algorithm, of which the one with the most weight is a given institution’s reputation.  To get this, all the college/university Presidents are asked to give their opinion of the reputation of all other institutions on a scale of 1 to 5.  What does a college President in one part of the country know about colleges in other parts of the country?  But this reputation value contributes the most to a college’s ranking in the results.  He said, some smart hackers got into the algorithm and they could correlate a college’s reputation value depends on three factors with a 91.3% correlation.  The three factors are the size of a college’s endowment, the annual tutu on fee it charges, and the percent of white students in its student body.  In other words, the richer a colleges, the more it serves the rich people (who can afford to pay high tuition fee), and the more it attracts white students, it’s ranking in the U.S. News list will be higher.  He said he could talk about the other four variables similarly.  No wonder we don’t see much of State Schools and none of HBCUs in the top 40 or 60 national colleges/universities.  Same thing goes for many liberal arts colleges where undergraduate education is the focus.[/quote]

US News' ranking have ruined higher education in the US.

I think all private colleges should be abolished. Everyone should have an equal chance to go to any college in the US.

They should all cost the same, and FA should be equal everywhere.

Sure, there will be inequities, but the insane frenzy to get kids into the schools ranked highest by US News is a crazed race to nowhere.

All those huge endowments at private colleges, like HYPS, should be absorbed by the Federal government, and money should be paid from the Federal purse equally to colleges all over the US.

Enough is enough with this crazy "elite" system of education in the US. Make it more like the European system, less the insistence that a kid decide what he wants to do when he's 12.

College should be very low cost to everyone who wants to go to college in the US, and they shouldn't have to go to a "top" school to get a great education.

US News rankings, along with the SAT and ACT tests, are garbage. They all belong in the trash. [/quote]

it is an interesting dream.  People do not give up power easily.  However, if it happened in the US elites would simply send their kids out of the country rather than go to state.[/quote]

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