U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT changes ranking System

EDITORS AT "U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT" announced on Wednesday that, beginning this year, the magazine will no longer consider a college's "yield" rate -- the percentage of
students admitted who actually attend -- in compiling its
annual rankings. Critics have long complained that colleges
try to increase their yield numbers through controversial
practices like early-admission programs.

http://chronicle.com/daily/2003/07/2003071103n.htm

 

The US News ranking system is useful as one of many tools for evaluating colleges/universities, but too many people use it as the primary (or only) tool. This is unfortunate, since the rankings have not always been very reliable from year to year.

A case in point is Albertson College, which when from a "Tier 1" to a "Tier 4" school when US NEws adopted a different category systems from the Carnegie Foundation.

Tony Piña
Faculty, Cal State U. San Bernardino
(often ranked as a "Tier 4" masters institution by US News because university officials consistently failed to complete and return the survey froms)

 

Another example is Notre Dame de Namur University in Belmont, California. Until recently they were known as College of Notre Dame, and were a "top tier" masters-level university with an academic reputation score of 2.9. Then they changed their name and immediately plummeted to an academic reputation score of 2.4. But nothing had changed except the name: same faculty, same facilities, same classes and same students. I guess that a lot of deans and admissions officers simply didn't recognize it and figured that if they had never heard of the place, it couldn't be any good.