College Rankings Are in Trouble. Do Their Users Care?

[PrettyFlyforaChiGuy]

I work as a college counselor and I'd begrudgingly say that rankings do have a place. Just like the article says, we use them in practice as a statistical starting point/shortcut to initially gauge where a student is likely to be admitted, but we still focus on best-fits around that range after establishing other factors that are important to them. 

Times Higher Education and U.S. News always publish their methodology. To me, a portion of it is garbage-in-garbage-out. For example, I'd agree with the student in the article that asking respondents to rate their peers and including this as an outsized portion of the criteria is pretty silly, and that it's basically an indirect method to keep the top of the list pretty static over time. But the reality of my meager existence is that there is huge external pressure from other stakeholders to produce results. My current international school is still building up a college readiness atmosphere, which according to parents and higher administrators, should naturally imply offers at higher-quality institutions. Our enrollment would decrease if families feel the school doesn't prepare students for higher education, just as uni students would disenroll or fail to graduate if their program wasn't preparing them for a career.

Like the article suggests, some factors that ranking lists include are very useful for students, like freshman retention, graduation rates, and career outcomes. Most students aren't like the people in this forum. Getting the support they need is a great way to avoid throwing their money into a bottomless pit and grow into a more productive member of society. It's probably in the public's best interest to have resources that can somehow quantify and qualify these and other data points beyond random blurbs on Niche or Ratemyprofessors, so I give rankers credit for that.

With all that said, I also agree that ranking lists can be the bane of many people working in my field. I'm a member of IACAC and ChinaICAC, who just released some illuminating (and highly conflicting) data. A full 95% of counselor respondents feel that rankings should not be the biggest factor when applying...while 94% of parents surveyed argued it reigns supreme above all else! Meanwhile, counselors report feeling stressed by the overemphasis students and parents place on Almighty Rankings...yet they also report that one of the key things they encourage admission officers to present on when they visit schools or attend college fairs is rankings! There is just such a clear discontinuity between stakeholder groups, and I think it goes beyond the lists themselves, hinting at a focus on popularity instead of fit.