Should Colleges Be Ranked?
A better question might be “How useful are college rankings anyways?”
A new ranking list from Money magazine has been greeted by some with approval, others with dislike. The list ranks 665 colleges total based on 3 measures: educational quality, affordability, and career outcomes.
The New York Times praised Money for additional factors that were included in its rankings. For instance, when judging affordability, instead of sorting colleges by tuition figures, Money considered variables like the college’s net price, the average number of years it took for a student to graduate, and student borrowing.
Some took the opposite stance on the usefulness of Money’s rankings. The Chronicle of Higher Education noted that the career outcomes measure was based solely on self-reported earnings of college alumni. Since the earnings were self-reported, it would be impossible for Money to get a wholly accurate picture of an alumni’s average salary.
As long as students remember that rankings lists cannot provide an easy answer for picking a college suited to their strengths, looking at a rankings lists can give them some idea about different factors they will need to think about when choosing their colleges.