College ranking system revisited

Clarification appended

The U.S. Department of Education recently proposed the creation of a new sort of college ranking, an interactive list that students could customize by choosing among characteristics they value in postsecondary institutions.

The database would present similar information to the popular U.S. News & World Report rankings — availability of aid dollars and average SAT scores, for example. Instead of tabulating rankings based on a generic formula, however, the proposed government database would give users the chance to select their own variables and rankings.

Charles Miller, head of the education secretary's Commission on the Future of Higher Education, which proposed the new rankings system, explained that creating such a database would not be difficult to accomplish.

"The data is already collected, but it's not well-organized or accessible. We just want to make it more user-friendly," Miller said in an interview.

The proposed ranking database would be based on the Department of Education's surveys of colleges and universities, which includes data on enrollment, institutional revenue and expenditures, tuition and other key indicators, as well as information on institutional performance, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education.

"There is nothing wrong with the other rankings, but there just aren't enough good rankings," Miller said. "We want to provide fully transparent information at little cost for the consumer."

Miller added that the current systems of ranking colleges "drive institutionalized behavior" by encouraging universities to devote more resources to improve the specific variables used by ranking firms.

Under a customized ranking database, colleges would not focus on improving specific variables since every user would look at different variables.

University spokeswoman Cass Cliatt '96 said in an email that while the proposed idea, in principle, may be better than commercial rankings, "the University does not think it is the government's role to produce such rankings, and that the commission may not have the expertise or resources necessary to produce the amount of data necessary to make the rankings effective."

Furthermore, not everyone agrees that giving users the option to choose their own variables is the best way to form rankings.

Robert Morse, director of data research for U.S. News & World Report, explained that the formula used by the magazine is based on relevant considerations.

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"We did research with academics and higher education researchers and we discussed with them the relative importance of these indicators," he said.

Morse admitted that assigning particular weights to each variable "is not a strictly scientific process," but said "high school juniors and seniors won't have nearly the expert judgment on the inputs to these models."

"Sometimes it takes an expert's judgment if you don't have in-depth knowledge of inputs," he added.

Students offered mixed assessments of the proposed rankings database.

Tiffany Johnson '09 said she favors the customizable rankings because they "would allow you to pick a school that best represents what you find important to higher education."

Wyatt Yankus '09 disagreed, saying that a standardized list like the one provided by U.S. News & World Report "gives a clear and understandable ranking" and that choosing your own variables "seems too complicated."

Miller explained that his proposed database would not hurt students in any way; it would give them a wider array of options.

"You might select a particular service which does the rankings for you, but maybe you want to do them yourself. You will have a choice. But today, you don't have one," he said.

If the proposed database comes into use, the University would have no reason to fear a slide in its position atop college rankings, Cliatt said.

"Princeton is very strong at undergraduate education in every area, whether it's firsthand research with leading minds in the world or its groundbreaking financial award program," Cliatt said. "There is no concern that if students could pick their own categories, Princeton will drop in ranking."

Clarification

The original version of this article neglected to clarify that while the University may see benefits to the proposed rankings system, the administration does not support the idea of its creation by the U.S. Department of Education.