by Monika Sziron, Ph.D.
In this episode Colin Diver author of “Breaking Ranks” shares the truth, lies, and tricks behind popular college ranking systems and the repercussions it has on American higher education.
“…it’s hard to imagine a world without college rankings because rankings are omnipresent in our society, and it’s no surprise that colleges are ranked along with refrigerators and SUVs and so forth” says Diver. Diver believes that the prominence of college rankings is prioritizing the commercialization of American higher education.
The Truth
Diver shares that much of the data used in popular college rankings are unaudited, “…most of the data that goes into the best college rankings comes from the colleges themselves, and most of it is unaudited. There’s no independent verification system. It’s true that financial data are audited…But the great majority of the data, particularly used by U.S. News are self-reported unaudited bits of data. And as I’ve said on a number of occasions, it’s like asking restaurants to be rated solely on the basis of what the chefs say about the quality of their food.”
The Lies
Diver delves into how the unaudited nature of the rankings encourages fibbing and manipulating statistics, some institutions are “making up the numbers, lying. There are a few cases every year that are publicly reported where institutions have been caught red-handed, if you will, inflating their data.”
The Tricks
There are a number of ways that institutions trick the system and therefore report numbers that are not actually representative of the institution. Diver explains, “Now I happen to like the small class size metric as a kind of proxy for the quality of the educational program. But the problem with that is the U.S. News formula uses only the percentage of small classes at a school in the fall semester. So, guess what? A lot of rankings obsessed schools told their faculty they have to move their introductory lecture courses with large enrollments to the spring semester. And they had to move more of their advanced seminars to the fall semester. Why? Because that way they would show that a higher percentage of classes in the fall had enrollments of less than 20.”
Tune in to the entire episode to hear more from Colin and questions from Kelly and Andy.
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