One of the parallels I like to draw is with that same news magazine's ranking of vacations (they rank a lot of stuff these days-- it's their sole purpose and source of revenue.)  They state unequivocally that the best family vacation is to be had in Orlando at the Magic Kingdom. Really? The next five highest-ranked locales on the list are: Yellowstone, Yosemite, Grand Canyon, Washington DC, and Lake Tahoe. Each of these locations represents a totally different set of family values, personalities, and enthusiasm for the outdoors, museums and monuments, or large crowds waiting to hear robots sing to them as they ride in a boat.

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In my opinion, at least, it's pretty easy to see that as human beings, we all prefer different kinds of experiences in our leisure time, and there are numerous factors in a personality (or group of personalities in a family) and individual locations and experiences that may or may not mesh. The family that loves spending time in Yosemite really might not want to ride Space Mountain. Would they change their entire focus because a magazine ranked Orlando higher?

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The great strength of the American higher education landscape is its diversity. There are nearly 4,000 degree-granting institutions, and about 2,800 four year colleges. Among all those, there is certainly an option for just about anyone in any stage of their education and with just about any level of resources.

 

To paraphrase the former President of a college in Connecticut I cited above, there are hundreds colleges and universities in America that offer much more than any engaged student can take advantage of in four years. He adds, "It will be up to the student to make something out of those opportunities, and it will not be the school that makes something out of the student." One of the many problematic implications of a rankings focus is that implied notion that a student is a passive participant, somehow enhanced by the external validation of a sweatshirt or bumper sticker, rather than an active agent in their education and life.

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As I am fond of saying, there are about 300 colleges that make the list of most frequently applied to by students from beyond their immediate neighborhood. We can allow ourselves to be just a little bit snobby (top 10% of 4-year colleges, if you want to look at it that way) and still have a working list of those schools that has something for every traditional college-aged student who wants to go to college and will graduate from high school. We can expand that list further for specific, specialized academic programs and other student needs.

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All those places in the list I propose have everything an engaged student needs to get to their next step, including engaged teaching faculty (the surplus of PhD's in this country creates a wildly competitive market for any reasonably compensated job with tenure possibility.) There is room to choose options based on self-knowledge and preference, so that the student will have the best chance to thrive and grow in the directions they envision (and ideally, in exciting ways that they can't yet imagine.) 

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The idea of a college ranking undermines the reality of the complexity of individuals looking for education, as well as the diversity of those institutions, in favor of superficial, manipulable metrics (read more on this below.) Unfortunately, the rankings have come to have a huge influence on public opinion and college administration priorities. Beyond our borders, the rankings are often presented as authoritative, and access to more nuanced information might be limited (and in other education systems, the idea of a hierarchy of universities might make more sense than it does here.) I have a lot of empathy for folks outside the US attempting to make sense of choices here, and the rankings understandably drive attention and focus for many in that scenario. However, it's a basic truth that the factors that shape the most popular US rankings often have little or nothing to do with the factors that shape a quality undergraduate experience. 

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Just as the folks who planned a Santa Fe or Alaska trip wouldn't be better off in DC because a ranking said they would, the student who is happy as a clam at Hamilton or Rhodes isn't missing out by not attending a perennially top ranked place like Stanford. I am pretty sure that a student who loves and is intellectually engaged at Bennington, Bard, Skidmore or Sarah Lawrence would not be happy at the very highly ranked CalTech. Though the pull of rankings is strong, there are students, who know themselves and have confidence in their choices, that turn down highly-ranked places like Dartmouth for places like Macalester or Colorado College that feel like better fits. So many students, though, internalize the goal of getting into a place that is highly ranked, which often corresponds with an admission rate that makes getting in unpredictable at best. A lot of damage is done to our honest perception of institutions, and to student self-confidence, by focus on rankings. Just look at the /ApplyingToCollege subreddit to see what obsession with rankings looks like when one's identity is tied to it. It's not healthy or productive.

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Putting it another way, as the former President of Reed College once said, "Trying to rank institutions of higher education is a little like trying to rank religions or philosophies." It's a much better approach to celebrate the diversity and quality of institutions we have, and to support students' empowered choosing of the places that will best serve them.    --MM

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Further insight

There is much more to say, but beyond this introduction, I think the best way to investigate further, if you're so inclined, is to consult other sources tackling the rankings and their impact.

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Here, I've curated a selection of articles that offer insight into various aspects of the rankings: how they work, the ways they are manipulated, the ways they have manipulated the priorities of institutions away from their mission, whether attending a higher-ranked school impacts opportunity after graduation, and ultimately, the way rankings distract from good decision-making in a college search. I hope you find a look through these pieces enlightening and thought-provoking!

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The latest: Colin Diver, former President of Reed College, comments on the law schools at Yale, Harvard, Berkeley, Georgetown, Columbia, Stanford and Michigan announcing a boycott of the Law School Rankings in November 2022, as a potential sign of the rankings' demise.

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Malcolm Gladwell's first attempt to address the rankings from a Canadian's perspective tackles the origins of the rankings and some of their absurdity.
 

This very recent piece addresses criticisms of the rankings and asks how else we might assess educational value.

This important article chronicles the mechanics of Northeastern U's rise in popularity via targeted actions to change their ranking. Eight years later, Northeastern is a highly popular college around the country and world, with a rapidly shrinking sub-20% admit rate.
 

Malcolm Gladwell's deeper exploration of the rankings in a recent podcast series offers a great deal of insight-- highly recommended listening.
 

Gladwell talks to the Reed College students who "reverse engineered" the rankings and uncovered the penalty for opting out of them. Here's their story.

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This piece from the Columbia U student paper reflects the concern among students when a professor's analysis caused Columbia to drop in the ratings this year, by exposing factual errors in the data.
 

More examples of questionable self-reported data shaping the rankings
 

From Vox on the impact of manipulated data:  "The US News rankings are terrible for students. Why don't colleges stop them?"

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From Politico: “If some foreign power wanted to diminish higher education in America, they would have created the U.S. News and World Report rankings.” A look at the lack of economic diversity in the highly ranked colleges as part of a good overview of the elements that shape the rankings.

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The always thoughtful Jon Boeckenstedt of Oregon State has become well-known in our business for his data visualizations. Here, he imagines sorting colleges by "an economic mobility index," as an alternative to the traditional rankings, with a tool that you can interact with to sort colleges in different ways.

College counselor Brennan Barnard sums up many of the issues with the rankings in an "Open letter to the owners and editors of US News."