College Rankings (Part III): What Should We Do Instead?

As I explained in my last post, I don't like the effects of the U.S. News rankings on students and colleges, and I would just as soon see those rankings disappear.  But the reams of data about the inner workings of colleges that the rankings have strong-armed into the public eye are certainly a good thing for students who wish to compare schools.  Those 10,000,000 hits that the U.S. News website received when the 2011 rankings came out go to show that there is an insatiable hunger for the information.  Are there alternatives that might help students and parents sift through colleges without the onerous effects of the Best Colleges rankings?  There are three types, two of which exist now and a third that exists in prototype but not in definitive form.

1. Competing aggregate rankings.  U.S. News isn't the only rankings game in town.  Washington Monthly offers its own rankings with a stubbornly alternative vision.  They reward colleges that foster social mobility, public service, and groundbreaking research.  The result is that Berea College (KY) and Morehouse College (GA) beat out big-name schools such as Amherst and Swarthmore.  I wonder, though, whether the social agenda promoted by these rankings really is of interest to students who are struggling to get a sense of what their four years at these various schools will be like.

The website "What Will They Learn?", which a reader of this blog brought to my attention, gives schools a letter grade (A-F) based on the extent to which they require classes in seven core subjects that are central to a liberal arts education.  While I'm not surprised to see the St. John's Colleges at the top of the list, it is certainly eye-opening to see that Baylor, Kennesaw State, and the Coast Guard Academy have more rigorous core curricula than Harvard, Princeton, or Yale.  I looked in vain on this list, though, for any assurance of educational quality beyond the bare requirement of classes.  What good is a core course in math, for instance, taught by a grad student who can barely speak English (an experience I have had more than once)?

I do think that both the Washington Monthly and "What Will They Learn" lists are useful correctives to U.S. News.  My common concern with all three -- and really with any unilateral ranking system -- is that they are chiefly useful insofar as a student shares the viewpoint of the editor of each list.

2. Rankings in individual categories.  College Prowler offers rankings that make it easy for students to compare schools in individual categories, from academics to co-ed attractiveness.  The data come mainly from student surveys, which means that they should be taken with a grain of salt.  For those of an old-school bent, there's also Rugg's Recommendations, which ranks the various undergraduate programs at each college separately.  These methods cede control to the student, who gets to choose which criteria are most important to him or her.  The drawback is that it's difficult to get a sense of how the schools that excel in individual categories stack up overall.

What I would like to see is:

3.  Personalized aggregate ranking.  A ranking system that allows students to choose their own priorities.  I have in mind something akin to those balance-the-budget simulators that have been making the rounds lately.  A student would be able to browse among the various categories in which data are available -- hard data like the student/teacher ratio or graduation rate, but also student survey data -- and assign a level of importance to each category.  Additionally, the student would answer a series of simple questions about their preferences (Rural, urban, or college town?  Deep south or west coast?) that would help narrow the field of choices.  So if a student wants really small classes, doesn't care much about athletics, is looking for a good political science department, and craves gourmet food in the dining halls, she can design her own personalized set of rankings that takes those things into account.  Students unsure about what they want could experiment with the list to see which schools excel in various categories, and then narrow it down once they know more.

Googling turns up a few nascent options along these lines.  The website URanker lets students select the importance of various qualities along a sliding scale.  The options are somewhat limited, and it would be nice if the website displayed the data that go into the rankings more openly, but the clean design makes it extremely easy to use.  StudentsReview offers many more options -- "friendliness" side-by-side with "not being treated as a number" -- but the data seems to be based on a fairly limited number of student surveys, and is thus of questionable reliability.  These websites are excellent starting points, but there is still room for the definitive personalized college ranker.  In fact, given how much colleges like to dump on the Best Colleges list, I'd bet there would be a lot of educators willing to support such a service.  Internet, get on it!

Until this smorgasboard of college data becomes a reality, the closest approximation is to mine the various available ranking systems (this list at College Confidential has most of them) for general ideas, then head to a good college guide or a college counselor you trust.  Also, Washington Post columnist Jay Mathews's book from a few years ago, Harvard Schmarvard, contains a list of schools that are overlooked by the national rankings, but strongly recommended by college counselors.


Please feel free to let me know what you think about the U.S. News rankings (or about this post) in the comments!

(Edit: It would be remiss of me not to link to Malcolm Gladwell's article on the U.S. News rankings from earlier this year.  He takes a closer look at the statistics than I do.  You need a subscription to read the article on the New Yorker website... but you can also (shh!) read it at this link for free.