Let’s Institute an Exit Exam in Writing
…correct prose. Even at the college level, and at good schools, most students cannot write even a page of text without committing some error of grammar, usage, or spelling. This…
Search Results for: College Rankings
Wasteful and Inept Administrators
Are Ruining Our Colleges
Since the early years of the 20th century, America has boasted the world’s finest universities, but that rosy picture is fading. The lower quality of American college graduates, the shift…
The University of Chicago Chooses Decline
…trustees who prize vacuous but still prestigious measures of schooling excellence like the US News rankings, the University has goaded itself into playing the rankings game. US News‘s calculations consider…
Ten Reasons to Ignore the U.S. News Rankings
…rankings provide useful information, the actual differences between College #7 and College #19 are trivial. 7. Year-to-year changes are meaningless. It would be nice if colleges…
Rankings and Grades–Two Inflated Currencies
Although high school students applying to colleges invariably rely on college ranking guides as a primary source of information, these guides are often misleading and, in most cases, counterproductive. Frederick…
Stereotype Threat Coming to the Supreme Court
…who took the SAT under the burden of stereotype threat could be more qualified for college and likely to perform better in college than a White student”–is quite familiar. Why…
Donors Who Launch New Colleges
…era. They can see a role for colleges pursuing ambitious cultural goals that a for-profit college would not. They see a role for religious colleges that public universities cannot adopt….
The Cheating and Fraud at Claremont McKenna
…mean, median, and range of SAT scores to boost the college’s position on the influential list of college rankings. The scheme worked. Claremont McKenna cracked U.S. News & World Report’s…
Has the Higher-Ed Revolution Begun?
It’s happening, almost overnight: what could be the collapse of the near-monopoly that traditional brick-and-mortar colleges and universities currently enjoy as respected credentialing institutions whose degrees and grades mean something…
How Universities Promote the “Coming Apart” of America
…affluent and less affluent with respect to preparation for college, in short, has almost certainly widened. At the college level, as Murray demonstrates, the gap between the academic record of…
The Perils of Law Schools and Their Rankings
…U.S. News & World Report rankings. While the ABA operates as law schools’ official accreditor, U.S. News, with its rankings of the schools and its division of them into four…
It’s Not the Test’s Fault
…and quite possibly not capable of benefiting from a college level education. Accepting students to college when they are not ready for college level course work is irresponsible and inexcusable….
What’s Wrong with the Law Schools
…the proliferation of law-school rankings has only discouraged innovation and rewarded non-economic behaviors at the individual school level. Like Segal, many have diagnosed a problem, but fewer have offered a…
The Days of Legacy Admissions May Be Numbered
…editor of Rewarding Strivers: Helping Low-Income Students Succeed in College (2010), and Affirmative Action for the Rich: Legacy Preferences in College Admission (2010). Legacy Admissions, Round Two …
College Inertia, Gradual Change, and Radical Disruption
…which had ended a year before. According to Clayton Christensen and Michael Horn, however, that consistency is about to collapse. Their article in Harvard Magazine, “Colleges in Crisis”, announces the death knell…
Steve Jobs and Our Non-Innovating Universities
…is part of the reason for capitalism’s success. But what about the bottom line for higher education? Probably the closest thing is reputation, as measured by college rankings. If college…
How the Feds Plan to Violate Student Privacy
…colleges.” Vedder suggested that the IRS further break down its findings by academic unit of the colleges in question: the business school, the college of engineering, and so forth. …
Odd Tuition System: Big Sticker Price, Big Discounts
…College Board, “Tuition Discounting: Institutional Aid Patterns at Public and Private Colleges and Universities, 2000-01 to 2008-09.” In spite of the recession, the College Board study says, the rate that…
Why Harvard and Yale Had to Merge
…and there were reports that Stephen Blackwood, the founder of Ralston College back in late 2011, would start his sixth “Great Books” college, this one in Florida. That same day,…
All Is Not Well at Syracuse
…students of lower-tier socioeconomic status, many of whom are ill-prepared for college-level work, and, according to a 2009 report from the National Center on Education Statistics, drop out of college…
How the Law Schools Went Astray
…accreditation, requiring the appointment of a full-time dean in 1949, a minimum student-faculty ratio and faculty size in 1952, and gradually restricting admission to students with college degrees.” Some of…
The Rankings Will Always be Gamed
Trying to rank hundreds, if not thousands of colleges is obviously foolish, but this foolishness has consequences beyond supplying iffy advice to clueless shoppers. To the extent that potential enrollees…
Malcolm Gladwell and Those Shaky Rankings
…relations. Second, colleges manipulate the numbers to their own advantage. And finally, the rankings are premised on asking the wrong question. The issue is not what’s the “best” college in…
Rituals Performed for the Elite
The U.S. News & World Report rankings of America’s “best” colleges and universities amount to nothing more than an annual ritual, a predictable coronation of entrenched wealth and power. Even…
The New Yorker Takes on the US News College Rankings
…prerogatives than those of the clients and public it serves. College guides can be useful. When my children were looking into college in the 1990s, one book covering the “Best…
A Reluctant Vote for Legacies
…special consideration to children of graduates. Indeed, many early colleges, including the precursors to Trinity College and Duke University, were originally financed by donors who intended the colleges to educate…
Can We Measure the Value of College Teaching?
…of Economics at Centre College and author of The College Cost Disease: Higher Cost and Lower Quality, forthcoming from Edward Elgar, Ltd. Andrew Gillen is the Research Director at the…
Why Caltech Is in a Class by Itself
…elite colleges and universities in the U.S. (median admit) has a substantially lower achievement record in terms of high school grades and SAT scores, not only than his white and…
What Is Texas A&M up to?
…the same vein, the political forces for greater accountability have recently been targeting college and university faculty members as the main culprits of educational waste and excessive college costs. While…
Don’t Pay Sticker Price, Part 2—the National Universities
…average net prices among the top 10 liberal arts colleges in 2008. Students at Carleton College, on average, paid the highest net price among these 10 colleges, more than $25,000…