With the fall semester in session, high school seniors are weighing their options for higher education. The release of news magazines’ annual rankings always prompts a lively discussion about what criteria, exactly, constitutes a “Top 100” school. The list can sway student decisions and, of course, cause controversy among our fine institutions and academic leaders. The question future freshmen and their families must ask regarding the list is: “What does it all mean?”
Images, Inconsistencies, and Inaccuracies
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The critiques of the ranking systems are plentiful. The most prominent complaints argue that the rankings weigh inputs rather than outcomes, privilege exclusivity over access, and reward excessive expenditures over cost containment. The effect of inaccurately weighing these factors is the perpetuation of a status hierarchy that’s divorced from student learning. The ranking systems reward the image of a school, rather than the reality of an educational environment.
Despite recent attempts to move away from reputational rankings to include educational process ratings and outcomes, the metrics for these criteria are crude approximations made with open source data. For example, one attempt to accurately evaluate educational quality from open source data can be found in RateMyProfessor.com. The problem with this method is that little regard is paid to creating a valid sample population, or to the consistency and reliability of the ratings themselves.
In a similar vein, the measure of success for college graduates is often based solely on lists of corporate officers and their salaries, taken from Payscale.com. Are these really the only marks of educational success our society values? In either case, it’s important to recognize the lack of reliable data and stable criteria
Read more at Huffington Post
