The demand for information is evident as higher education — once affordable and accessible — has continued to become more competitive and more expensive. In the nearly four decades since the US News rankings were released in 1983, the cost of college has increased more than fivefold for those attending four-year private institutions. The average college student graduates with about $30,000 in debt over the past decade, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, which is more than half of their average starting salary. Bob Morse, the chief data strategist who developed most of the ranking methodology, said US News strives to be “the preeminent, objective source to help high school students and their families make the most well-informed decisions about where they’re going to college.” “We know that students and their families find value in our rankings. We strive to provide them with data and information to help make important decisions, using the rankings as a factor in their college search,” he said. However, some leaders in the education world believe that such rankings only make matters worse. At an event last month, US Education Secretary Miguel Cardona called for “a culture change in higher education now.” “Too often, our best-resourced schools chase rankings that mean very little on measures that really count,” he said. “This ranking system is a joke.” He criticized “the whole science behind climbing the rankings,” which he said emphasizes wealth and prosperity rather than broad opportunities. “We have to stop conflating selectivity with excellence. We have to stop associating prestige with privilege,” he said. The US News rankings are based on a core methodology that scores schools against each other on hundreds of data points within categories such as graduation rate, resources and reputation. The methodology has “evolved over time,” Morse said, based on user feedback, discussions with schools and higher education experts, and more. The methodology for the latest rankings “now emphasizes outcome indicators, which together account for 40% of the overall ranking,” he said. On Friday, Columbia University acknowledged that it submitted inaccurate data for consideration in its college rankings. The school fell from second place in 2021 to 18th in the latest national university rankings — raising questions about how easily the rankings can be gamed. And yet, experts say the rankings offer a narrow picture of what success should look like for students seeking higher education, especially as costs rise. “In 2022, higher education should measure what matters, not just what it has traditionally measured,” said Mamie Voight, president and CEO of the Institute for Higher Education Policy, a nonprofit research and advocacy group. “ dozens of students when they get to college, or the number of people an institution turns away.” These institutions are not likely to be the ones to claim the limelight in the rankings, experts say. “For most of us in this country, [college rankings] they don’t really help make the right decisions,” said Tomas Monarrez, a labor economist and senior research fellow at the Urban Institute’s Center for Education Data and Policy. Students should think about their individual goals for pursuing a higher education degree and what the return on investment will be for the various ways to get there. “You don’t want to pay too much for how much you’re going to get in the labor market,” he said. Instead, some experts point to the U.S. Department of Education’s College Scorecard, an online tool created during the Obama administration that hosts a wealth of data on institutions of higher education. And it comes without the “profit motive in the middle,” Monarrez said. However, according to US News, nearly 90% of people who visit the ranking site look at schools outside of the top 10 national and liberal arts colleges/universities. If ranking is the weed, however, some experts say the root is the broader investment in higher education. “The importance of the decision has increased over time because of its accuracy,” Monarrez said, leading people to rank first. And “the reason college has become so expensive is mostly because the government has stopped investing in it.” But education is a public good that benefits the individual receiving it and their wider community in turn. “So the way to turn this ship around is to start increasing our investment in public colleges again,” he said.
