Despite Current Issues, College Rankings Are Likely to Stay

There are issues with a widely used college rating system in the US, according to both advisers and students. The rankings are created by the journal U.S. News and World Report. However, the critics don’t think the rankings will change very soon. There is a broad list of current issues with college rankings. Moshe Porat, the former dean of Temple University’s business school in Philadelphia, was given a 14-month prison sentence at the beginning of 2022. He was found guilty by a court of providing U.S. News & World Report with fraudulent information in order to elevate his school’s ranking. In addition, he was mandated to pay a substantial fine.

Michael Thaddeus, a professor at Columbia University, stated throughout the summer that he thought some of the information the university provided to the magazine was inaccurate. The university withheld its results as a result, and U.S. News and World Report did not list it in its rankings for 2023. Columbia was also taken off of earlier listings by the publisher. Ultimately, some prestigious law schools objected to the rankings in the fall. They supplied the magazine certain information that was limited. Yale, Stanford, Harvard, and the University of California, Berkeley were among the protesting schools. Law school administrators claimed that the publication ignores many crucial facts. For instance, they claimed the magazine did not demonstrate how educational institutions educate students for careers in public service.

The dean of Yale Law School is Heather Gerken. The magazine’s ranking of schools was deemed by her to be “nearly impossible.” Since every law school is unique, she pointed out that a “one-size-fits-all” approach “cannot provide an accurate picture.” U.S. News and World Report addressed the criticism at the beginning of 2023. The journal declared that it would alter its framework. Schools whose alumni went on to get advanced degrees or significant but low-paying positions in public service would not be penalized by the rankings. In addition, the journal announced it will no longer center so much of its final issue on the opinions of law professors, attorneys and judges.