Different twist on school rankings

Different twist on school rankings

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/harvard-is-no--438-in-these-college-rankings-191356253.html

 

This is an interesting way to think about it. I think that many of our members would benefit more from this type of ranking system than the more traditional approach.

 

Nice try, but there is one major problem with the methodology. Hardly anyone pays the sticker price at Ivy Leagues.
Ivy League College Students Avoid Student Debt Burden

 

What these rankings show is that the schools that do the most to promote "social mobility" are public institutions with solid academic reputations and low rates of in-state tuition, particularly those that focus on engineering and other technical fields. For example, three of the top four schools are Montana Tech, Cal Poly Pomona, and Florida A&M, which fit that description perfectly. So in general, an economically disadvantaged student can get great value from a public university with low tuition and a strong reputation for technical education. Does this come as a big surprise to anyone?

The low rankings given to schools like Harvard or Princeton don't mean that these schools are poor academically -- what they show is that these schools don't do very much to promote "social mobility". That's because they largely serve students from families that have already "made it". An economically disadvantaged student that does attend an elite school will likely get terrific value, because (1) an elite college degree is a big plus for upward mobility, and (2) elite colleges are wealthy and will subsidize the tuition for disadvantaged students, as noted in the previous post. Given the choice, nobody would choose Cal Poly Pomona over Stanford, even though CPP is #4 in this ranking and Stanford is #335.

The problem is that most disadvantaged students will never get that choice -- the elite schools have few slots and the competition is extremely fierce. So in practice, the disadvantaged student is much more likely to succeed with Cal Poly Pomona than with Stanford, because the odds of admission are much better with Cal Poly Pomona. Again, this doesn't seem like it should come as a big surprise to anyone.

 

An economically disadvantaged student will often have a difficult time getting into an elite school, but this is also true of some of the schools that are ranked highly on this list. UC Berkeley's acceptance rate is 17.7%. If you look at the methodology page, tuition rate is the biggest factor in the rankings. If you were to remove tuition from the equation, on average, a school's ranking will change 126 places.
Social Mobility Index - CollegeNET & PayScale

They admit that there are limitations to this study, but they shouldn't have done it at all if they couldn't account for financial aid. All they are doing is spreading misinformation. A lot of people already think that the top schools are too expensive and are unaware of the large amounts of financial aid available, so they don't even bother to apply. A problem that we have in Texas is that a lot of economically disadvantaged students don't apply to our flagship schools even though they qualify for automatic acceptance. They assume they can't get in because they aren't informed about the top 7% rule (formerly top 10% of graduating class).

 

It's important to note that this particular ranking -- unlike other college rankings -- is not actually intended for use by students.

Here's an example. Suppose you live in Massachusetts, are "economically disadvantaged", and are looking for a school that will promote your "social mobility". So you check the "Social Mobility Index" ranking. Turns out that Massachusetts schools don't score very highly in this ranking -- there are none in the top 50. In contrast, California has 18 schools in the top 50 (including 11 of the top 20).

So do the rankings imply that you should go to school in California? No. First of all, people in this position probably lack the financial resources to move thousands of miles for school. Second, even if they did move, they would have to pay high out-of-state tuition in California, which would destroy the whole value proposition.

So what is the point of ranking California vs Massachusetts schools? The very first sentence of the rankings spells it out:

So the rankings are meant for policy makers, like Massachusetts state legislators -- not students. As a state, MA has a reputation for great universities -- yet as a state, MA also has a low "Social Mobility Index". The implication here is that the universities in MA don't do a very good job of promoting social mobility.

And that could be true. Obviously there are many top private universities in MA -- but they aren't particularly oriented towards serving the disadvantaged students of the state. The public universities in MA presumably do a better job in this regard -- but they don't have particularly low tuition or particularly successful graduates, relative to public universities nationwide.

So the implied point is that Massachusetts does not rank very highly in terms of low-cost, high-quality, public universities (which are the types of schools that do most to promote "social mobility". The preferred model would presumably be California, which has the highest "Social Mobility Index" among the large states.

 

OK, so here's another new way to rank US universities:

Top 20 list of most beautiful universities in America - Washington DC College admissions | Examiner.com

 

I'm suspicious of the criteria used in constructing that ranking for 2 reasons. The first is that beauty is subjective and difficult to quantify in any sort of universal manner. The second is that Wentworth is not anywhere on the list.:flirt: