Posted on 10/29/2013 6:36:15 AM PDT by William Tell 2
Until U.S. News & World Report came out with its first rankings of colleges and universities in 1983, few Americans obsessed over the perceived prestige of the school they attended. Some universities were rather vaguely regarded as superior because they were more selective among applicants and had some famous professors on the faculty, but there was nothing...
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
Academically, everyone would like their child to go to the best so that the child would be more apt to be successful! As far as prestigious named colleges, they usually are the best academically unless we’re talking sports.
But if we did that how would we know who played in the Championship game? Oh sorry. I lost my head for a moment.
Education is no exception.
As you stated, we all want the best for our kids and future, as a nation. It is perfectly natural (in a merit oriented society) to try to get into the “best” schools even with prestige.
This phenomenon in universal so I do not get Forbes in this article.
The colleges are learning how to game the rankings. One of the tricks they pull is prove how exclusive they are by documenting how many students they reject.
This is actually not the case, my father went to Harvard and says he has no doubt he could have gotten a better education somewhere else.
Many “famous” professors are actually horrible teachers and actually are at said famous university doing questionable research while minimally qualified teaching assistants (who sometimes can’t even speak English) teach students.
Don’t buy the hype. There are state universities that don’t saddle kids with a lifetime of student loans that educate students to be valuable citizens in their communities ( and one with jobs at that!)
The favorite trick at the University of Pittsburgh is to reject freshman apps at the main campus but offer them a spot in Johnstown or some branch campus. I know this goes on at other large schools as well. They count that as a “reject” making the main campus more “exclusive”.
Really outrageous considering they are funded with tax dollars.
Since colleges are in a competitive market with each other. The consumer, be they parent or student; will want to know what quality of education they are paying for. The bigger question: Are the current rankings based on the actually quality of the education, or preconceived prestige. While the prestige of the school does help people in getting a job it can become self-fulfilling if it's not related to the actually education.
“As far as prestigious named colleges, they usually are the best academically unless we’re talking sports.”
I would challenge this strongly. Some ‘prestige’ universities look down their noses at standardized test scores taken post-graduation (e.g. admission exams for professional schools; MCAT, LSAT, etc.). The problem is that students from less prestigious schools often outscore them, and if they acknowledge that the testing is valid and important they would also have to acknowledge to others and to themselves that maybe they aren’t so ‘elite’. I’ve been at many universities over the years, including Ivy institutions, and can honestly say that there are smart people everywhere, and that there are often people with higher aptitude at good state schools, because they are much more affordable.
Good and accurate (IMHO) post.
I don’t care if some some private businesses “rank” the colleges. For them, the realism of their reviews will be reflected in their success. Or failure.
The problem comes if our incompetent government tries to “ranks” our colleges, by self-serving “government” standards, like:
How diverse is that college?
How many courses praise Lenin and Castro?
Have churches been driven off-campus?
How many research “grants” are received?
How many courses are NOT taught in English?
Well if you buy into the mentality of entirely too many people and entirely too many university executives, the only ranking that matters is that of either the football or basketball team. Everything in the university takes a back seat to the marquee athletic programs, and anything that threatens those programs will be dealt with harshly and quickly.
But enough about Penn State and Notre Dame...
Well, not all things CAN be ranked. What’s a better car, the Rolls Royce or the Ferrari? It depends on your taste and your needs. And either one would be crap if what you needed it for was to get across the Sahara.
There’s no point in saying that Amherst College - fine school - is simply BETTER than Harvey Mudd College -fine school. It depends what you are going there for, what it’s going to cost you, who your roommate happens to be, what the weather is like, whether the professors in the field you want to study are simpatico with you. And none of those things will be captured in a numerical ranking.
Clearly, there are some BAD schools out there, and there are some highly competitive ones. But the experience of an individual student cannot be prejudged based on such a poorly designed set of criteria.
But the rankings are not just saying, School A is excellent, while School B is very good and School C is pretty poor. They are taking a list of schools in say their top 25, ALL OF WHICH are excellent, and proceeding to rank them in order. As if the number 9 ranked school is better than the #10 ranked school on some meaningful scalar measure. And no thinking person could possibly believe that, but high school students applying to college are not thinking, they are panicked about a really hard choice and the rankings make it harder.
What do you do if school number 17 gives you a big 50% scholarship, but you were also accepted to school #8 with no scholarship. Some kids today, because of the rankings, will go to school #8, a quantifiably stupid decision.
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