Tuesday's Most Active Threads

The biggest day of the year for participants in DCUM's college forum may be the day that U.S. News and World Report releases its college rankings list. That day was yesterday. Technically, it was the day before but so late in the day that most of the discussion didn't take place until yesterday. The result is that two threads on the topic are among the most active threads that I will discuss today. The most active thread overall yesterday was again the thread about Israel and Lebanon, which I've already discussed. Skipping that one, the next most active thread was titled, "US News best colleges 2025" and, of course, posted in the "College and University Discussion" forum. The original poster wrote nothing more than, "The rankings are out now." which was enough to provoke what is currently a 21 page thread. The normal rule of threads such as this is that posters claim to hate rankings in general and this one in particular. However, if the ranking happens to place a poster's favorite university highly, or at least above a rival university, then the list is, of course, praised for its accuracy. The U.S. News rankings were subject to considerable criticism last year when the methodology was changed in ways that many posters considered to be "woke". This year U.S. News dropped the graduation rate of 1st generation students from its formula and continued its focus on outcomes such as student retention and post-graduate earnings. Many of the posts in this thread were complaints about the ranking or methodology. But those issues were the focus of a second thread that I will discuss today so I will save those points for later. A number of posters suggested that this ranking were reasonably accurate, though almost everyone had at least one nit to pick. For instance, the positioning of UCLA at 15th was the subject of considerable discussion. The University of Virginia was another college whose ranking — tied at 24 — inspired considerable criticism along with a significant amount of smugness. Much of the discussion in this thread is about the value of such rankings. Some posters want to be able to rank colleges based on their own criteria rather than a magazine's methodology. Others suggest that these lists are good screening tools and are reasonable starting points for further research. This thread, like so many threads before it, got bogged down in an unnecessary discussion about yield protection. The forum has one or more posters who are completely obsessed with yield protection to the exclusion of almost any other topic. The single-mindedness is remarkable and I have to think that it must be motivated by a very painful rejection that was rationalized as being due to yield protection. Then the thread turned to a big debate about Notre Dame with participants accusing each other of being insufferable. That actually is a good summary of this thread. Everyone claims the U.S. News rankings are meaningless and nobody cares about them, but they will also fight to the death about whether a school deserves to be in the top 20.

Yesterday's next most active thread was posted in the "Kids With Special Needs and Disabilities" forum and titled, "Is this field trip an ADA violation?" The original poster describes an elementary school field trip to a peanut butter factory for a class that includes a peanut-allergic child. If the child does not attend the field trip, which the child cannot due to safety reasons, the child will have to sit in the school's office all day. The original poster wants to know if others have faced such a situation and, if so, what they did about it. It is not clear from either the original post or the few follow-up posts that I was able to identify whether this is an actual trip that is planned for the original poster's child's school or if the original poster has invented a scenario similar to what her child is actually facing. A number of posters are doubtful that a school would plan such a trip. At any rate, responses reflect the broad spectrum of attitudes held by posters in the forum. Many parents of kids with disabilities have grown used to picking their battles and would not find this one worth fighting. The ADA requires reasonable accommodations for those with disabilities, but there is no reasonable accommodation in this case. Most of these parents know that their children wouldn't want to be the cause of the field trip being cancelled, nor would the parents want such a thing. There are many suggestions to keep the child out of school that day and maybe do something fun with them. The original poster pans this idea because the school has strict policies regarding absences and the poster does not want to burn one of the few allowed in this case. A few posters take a much harder line. One suggests that she would inform the school that her kid is planning to attend and that it is the school's job to figure out an accommodation. Other posters question whether the poster would really risk her child's safety, and perhaps even death, in such circumstances. The original poster, as well as some other posters, want the field trip to be cancelled because they see it as discriminatory. Most posters don't agree with that suggestion which one poster describes as "mind boggling". The issue some posters have is the alternative activity for the child which is sitting in the office. Several posters see that as akin to a punishment and argue that the child deserves a proper day of instruction. A big issue of discussion is what the law actually requires in this case. Posters agree that excluding a child is discriminatory and would not be permitted. However, this child is not technically being excluded, but rather opting to miss the field trip. However, given that there are no accommodations short of fitting the child with a hazmat suit, some posters suggest this is de facto exclusion. The original poster is personally subject to considerable criticism due to her demand that the field trip be cancelled. One poster argues that "many of us have kids with much more serious issues and have dealt with missing field trips, class time, for years on end" and that the original poster is wrong to make a big deal out of this situation.

Next was a thread titled, "why the usnwr best college list is ridiculous" and posted in the "College and University Discussion" forum. This is, of course, the second thread I am discussing today about the U.S. News and World Report best colleges list. Most of the points being made in this thread were also made in the previous thread and, as such, this thread is really not necessary. Therefore, I locked it and referred posters to the earlier thread. Had I known about this thread before now, I would have locked it then. The original poster's complaint about the U.S. News list is that, in the original poster's view, there is "absolutely nothing merit-based (academics) in the rankings". The poster is upset that standardized test scores have minimal, if any, weight. Student-faculty ratio, which the original poster considers one of the most important factors for undergraduates, is given just 3% weight. Grade point averages and admissions selectivity are not considered at all. After having read so many threads in the college forum I may not be an expert on this topic, but I am certainly not a complete idiot about it either. My thinking is that the metrics that the original poster considers important are ones that DCUM college forum posters value in terms of college applications. Test scores, GPAs, and admissions selectivity are factors of importance when applying to schools. U.S. News, on the other hand, is prioritizing how well universities prepare students for the real world. The metrics that are valued are those that result in a solid return on investment demonstrated by students graduating with manageable debt and receiving competitive starting salaries. If one college is more selective and admits students with higher GPAs and test scores than another college, yet graduates of the second university get higher paying jobs and accumulate less student debt, which school is best? The original poster would argue that it is the first while, as a parent, I would much prefer my child to attend the second. Of particular concern to some posters was the U.S. News methodology that weighed the percentage of students receiving Pell grants at 11%. U.S. News claims that this demonstrates how well a university provides for social mobility, but many posters consider it an unnecessary or even a negative metric. Some posters argue that regardless of complaints about specific metrics, overall the top schools remain the top schools, with perhaps a little shuffling among them. As one poster questions, "Do you honestly think schools like Princeton, Harvard, CalTech, MIT will fall to the bottom if you were to assign higher weights to your ranking criteria?" The complaints of some posters were not about specific metrics or even the U.S. News list itself. Rather they believe that trying to give numeric rank to something as personal and with so many variables as education is absurd. As one poster says, these lists are mostly for "ego stroking and internet spats." In other words, they are made for DCUM.

The final thread that I will discuss today was posted in the "Jobs and Careers" forum. Titled, "2024 job market is so cooked for recent grads", the original poster says that her daughter recently graduated from an Ivy League school with a degree in computer science but has been unable to find a job. The same is true of the original poster's nephew. Both kids are currently living at home and are depressed. I immediately felt a sense of déjà vu because this was very similar to a thread I discussed last month that was almost identical. However, in that case, the original poster's daughter had graduated with a biomedical degree. I confirmed that the same poster created both threads. Moreover, today the same poster started a thread in which the original poster claimed to be 28 years old and about to marry a "trust fund woman". This poster has created at least 12 threads that I can identify. However, the personas of the original posters of those threads are all over the place, changing gender, age, and other life circumstances. The primary interests of the poster appear to be college, dating, and pickleball. Most posters seemed to take the original poster seriously and tried to provide helpful, or at least responsive answers. But I am not going to waste time on a troll thread.