Previously, I pointed out the obvious: university rankings reflect the perceptions of what determines collegiate excellence, as decided by the rankers. One ranking organization might stress the positive perceived advantage to students of social mobility, the degree of economic diversity that there is between students. Others might emphasize job placement or the financial return on the college investment. Still others might heavily weigh student academic success, including the percentage graduating within four years, the proportion earning graduate degrees, and winning Rhodes Scholarships, among other factors. Some schools excel in one of these factors but struggle in others.
Today, I will comment on just three new sets of rankings that I examined: those of U.S. News & World Report (USNWR), Forbes, and the Wall Street Journal (WSJ).
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All three rankers place Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, and the University of Pennsylvania in the top 10 schools. Princeton ranks in the top four on all three rankings, including first at US News & World Report, so it is probably the closest approximation of a “consensus best school.” While several Ivy League schools and Stanford are universally acclaimed, the differences in rankings are substantial otherwise.
Let’s start with the Wall Street Journal. “Unlike other school rankings, this list emphasizes one point: How well did the college prepare students for financial success?” Thus, Babson College ranks second, because it is a smallish Massachusetts school—under 4,000 students—dedicated exclusively to training relatively high-paying business majors, as opposed to those majoring in low-paying subjects like English literature or art. The journal ranks California State University, Stanislaus 21st in the nation, above the prestigious California Institute of Technology (23rd). I suspect the other rankers would not even rank Stanislaus, a school of about 10,000 students, in the top 25 within California, much less the nation. The dozens of California State universities were historically designed to take moderately accomplished students unable to get into one of the now 10 University of California schools.
There are also differences in the way the three rankers classify schools.
For example, USNWR separates liberal arts colleges in a separate list and has a category of self-described “regional universities.” Claremont McKenna College ranks sixth on WSJ’s ranking of all schools, but seventh on USNWR’s list of only liberal arts colleges. One major difference relates to geographic dimensions of excellence. WSJ views California as America’s higher education paradise, with 32 of the top 100 U.S. schools, compared with about 11 expected based on population size. By contrast, the five industrial Midwest states of Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin, with a considerably larger combined population than California, have only eight schools in the top 100, with Ohio having none. As a generalization, based on all three rankings, the top schools appear to be heavily concentrated in the Northeast and California, with lower representation in the South and the flyover Country, which spans the states between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Texas and Florida, with over 54 million people, have no schools in the top 25 universities in any of the lists.
If you believe the WSJ rankings, 32 of the nation’s 100 top schools are located in the Golden State, which has only 12 percent of the population. Reasons: Tuition fees are relatively low in California, and the earnings of college graduates there likely exceed the national average substantially. Looking at the much more selective top 40, WSJ has 13 of them in California, compared with nine each for the other two rankers. Yet, Americans generally are fleeing California. (Read my “Americans Are Fleeing Blue States in Droves” on the Independent Institute.) This suggests that national perceptions of college quality and overall quality of life may differ markedly. I would opine that the woke progressive orientation of most colleges and universities, on balance, turns off Americans and is an important contributing factor to the modern decline in college enrollments and increased public hostility towards higher education.
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It is also sobering to note that American schools have historically dominated planetary rankings of universities, but this is becoming much less true. International rankings strongly emphasize research accomplishments over such things as student satisfaction. In particular, Chinese universities are surging in international reputation. Perhaps one price Americans pay for not aggressively increasing research spending and restricting foreign admissions is a decline in America’s perceived educational leadership. Maintaining America’s greatness in higher education may require adjustments in national priorities and policies. Is that a goal Americans find worth pursuing? Only time will tell, but I’m not optimistic.
The fundamental question is: are rankings useful despite the differences observed between them? I think the answer is yes. The public craves information on university quality, and rankings are one imperfect but useful way to partially overcome collegiate efforts to suppress it.
Image: “Babson” by Aziz bm on Wikimedia Commons
