US News & World Report Changes College Rankings
US News and World Report will no longer consider admissions yield in their process to rank colleges. (Yield is the number of accepted students who actually enroll in the college.) Yield accounted for 2% of their ranking formula, so it was a relatively small piece. What I find particularly interesting about this article is that it focuses quite a bit on how colleges were trying to increase their yield to change their rating. Since yield is only a small piece, wouldn’t it be more effective to work on changing something else? The article seems to ignore the fact that colleges work on changing lots of other things to improve their ranking.
I imagine quite a few people in higher education who wish US News would drop the survey all together. Many college officials feel that it is an inadequate measure of what makes institutions of higher learning good. Many also feel that it clouds the process students go through when deciding on a college. Instead of picking one that the editors of a national news magazine like, students should focus on one that is right for them and analyze the criteria they think is important. And how many employers look up the college a job candidate attended to find out what US News thinks about it?
(PS–I find it mildly amusing that the ad I got when I read the article happened to be about marijuana. The whole time I’m reading the article, I’m staring at a marijuana leaf out of the corner of my eye. I’m not sure what that says about what the New York Times thinks about college or the people who might read the article. I hadn’t noticed that ad on other higher education pieces before, but I will definitely look for it now.)
