In February, Columbia math professor Michael Thaddeus questioned the Ivy League school’s rise in the rankings from 18th place, when it debuted in 1988, to 2nd place in 2021. In a statement posted on the website of Columbia University’s Department of Mathematics , Thaddeus noted that “a few other top universities have also improved their rankings, but none have matched Columbia’s astonishing rise.” Thaddeus pointed to data submitted by the university to US News & World Report questioning Columbia’s seemingly meteoric rise in the rankings. “Can we be sure that the data accurately reflects the reality of university life?” Thaddeus asked rhetorically. “Unfortunately, the answer is no.” The math professor then compiled data on “undergraduate class size, percentage of faculty with terminal degrees, percentage of full-time faculty, and student-faculty ratio” submitted by Columbia University to US News & World Report and compares the data “with figures calculated by other means, based on information published by Columbia elsewhere.” In his findings, Thaddeus said there were “sometimes very large discrepancies” that always seemed to work in Columbia’s favor. In response to Thaddeus’ findings, Columbia University professor Mary Boyce said in a June statement that the university “will refrain from submitting data to US News and World Report” for consideration in the publication’s 2022 undergraduate college rankings. “On two of the counts challenged by our faculty member [Thaddeus], class size, and faculty with a terminal degree, we found that we previously relied on outdated and/or flawed methodologies. We have changed these methodologies for current and future data submissions, as reflected in the recently published Common Datasets,” Boyce noted in June. Boyce said beginning in the fall of 2022, the university will begin participating in the Common Data Set (CDS) Initiative, “a collaborative effort between data providers in the higher education community and publishers” to provide accurate information to students seeking information on institutions of higher education. according to the initiative’s website. The CDS Initiative, represented by US News & World Report, the College Board and education services firm Peterson’s, was launched in 1997 to provide institutions of higher education with “a set of data element standards and definitions rather than a research tool or set of data that represented in a database.” US Chief Data Strategist Robert Morse told CNN on Monday that schools report most of their information on the Best Colleges rankings directly to US News. “Each year, US News sends out an extensive questionnaire to all accredited four-year colleges and universities,” he explained. “US News, a founding member of the Common Data Set initiative, incorporates questions from the CDS and proprietary questions into this survey. US News relies on schools to accurately report their data.” In conjunction with the commitment to participate in the CDS Initiative, Boyce also announced the launch of a new website that provides detailed context and analysis of the Columbia University undergraduate experience. In July, US News & World Report did not rank Columbia University “out of a series of rankings in the 2022 edition of Best Colleges (first published September 2021),” saying the university “failed to respond to multiple requests by US News that the university substantiates some data it previously submitted,” according to a blog post from US News. It is unclear whether Thaddeus’ publication of his research on the data Columbia presented to US News & World Report may have contributed in the ranking of the university. In Friday’s statement, Boyce said the university released two joint data sets, one for Columbia College and Columbia Engineering and one for Columbia General Studies. “The information included in the two shared data sets reflects the University’s work in recent months to review its data collection processes, following questions raised by a faculty member about the accuracy of some data the University submitted to US News and World Report in 2021 for undergraduate university rankings,” Boyce said. “US News publishes annual rankings for more than 11,500 schools and hundreds of individual programs as part of its Best Colleges, Best Graduate Schools, Best Online Programs, Best Global Universities and Best High Schools rankings,” Morse said in a statement Monday. “To produce the rankings, US News collects tens of thousands of data points from the schools themselves and other sources, including the US Department of Education, state and local governments and higher education associations. A very small percentage of the total number of schools that are ranked — typically less than 0.1% each year — tell US News that they have misreported data used to calculate their school’s ranking.” US News & World Report released an analysis of how their publication calculated the 2022-2023 Best Colleges rankings in an article Monday.
