When I was first beginning my college search, one of the first places I looked was the various college rankings that exist, especially the US News and World Report rankings.
Harvard, Yale and other Ivy League schools dominate the rankings, as they have for decades.
This year, IU was ranked 75th, approximately where it has been ranked for the past few years.
I have always wondered about how these rankings work — merely based off of reputation, the top few schools would seem obvious picks for the top schools in the nation.
But how do the other thousand schools on the list get placed there?
The US News and World Report values low acceptance rates, spending on academic programs and prestige.
It’s obvious that this sort of ranking is deeply flawed in some of its core metrics, then — since a majority of the student population can’t get into or afford these schools, after the top twenty schools or so, the metrics used fall apart and become useless.
These flaws have been apparent to the president since 2013, who just recently announced a new tool for measuring the quality of a college: the college “scorecard.”
This new way to measure the success of a school, instead of focusing on the prestige of a university, would instead evaluate a college based on average cost, graduation rate and salary after attending.
As this new tool comes from the federal government, it is able to make use of IRS and other data to provide details on a colleges’ financial aid, based on average debt and monthly payments, as well as how many of the school’s students are actually able to pay their debt.
While many might consider a list of the top universities in the nation by the federal government to be an overreach of power, the college scorecard is merely a tool for other organizations to use.
The federal government is not ranking universities itself.
Even though many in the higher-education sector may be bristling at the prospects of a ranking system that shifts where their school is in the “Top Schools in America,” I welcome the change, and believe that this will only serve to help the student body here at IU.
In recent years, IU has started the MoneySmarts program to help students understand student debt and their options in personal finance.
I know that many people try to skim through it as fast as possible, and don’t learn much from it.
I find that it is important, however, for our student body to understand more about how we can afford college, and how our degrees will serve us in the future.
Hopefully, this will alleviate some of the stress that college hunting can cause, and maybe even alleviate pressure from parents to attend a school costing $65,000 dollars per year.
mccinkos@indiana.edu
