In Games Colleges Play Greg Spears reveals how some colleges and universities have manipulated the national college ratings systems to appear much better than they are in reality, providing doctored or fraudulent data to the raters. Michael Thaddeus, a Columbia University math professor "demolishes his employer’s U.S. News ranking as the second-best college in the nation. He also suggests there are better sites to use when evaluating colleges."
"In his paper, Thaddeus compared Columbia’s reported U.S. News numbers against publicly available information. He found Columbia stretched the truth quite often to raise its ranking."
"For example, Columbia told U.S. News that 100% of its faculty have PhDs or terminal degrees in their field, a higher percentage than Princeton, MIT, Harvard or Yale. Looking through faculty bios, Thaddeus found 66 cases where this was not the case—although these faculty may still be great teachers and one, in fact, has a Nobel Prize. Still, just 96% of the Columbia faculty have earned the highest degree in their field, according to Thaddeus."
"Columbia reported that more than 96% of its faculty are fulltime. Thaddeus’s research yielded a figure of 74%. Columbia claimed that 82% of its classes contain fewer than 20 students. From the data he found, Thaddeus concludes the true number is at most 67%. Columbia reported its student-faculty ratio is 6:1. Thaddeus comes up somewhere between 8:1 and 11:1 based on the information he could find."
Columbia charges $86,000 per year in tuition, fees, room and board.
Columbia is not the only institution to fudge its numbers to get a higher ranking. Spears offers numerous other examples in his article on the Humble Dollar website.
So who can you trust?
Thaddeus recommends three websites to evaluate colleges. “College applicants are much better advised to rely on government websites like College Navigator and College Scorecard, which compare specific aspects of specific schools. A broad categorization of institutions, like the Carnegie Classification, may also be helpful.”
"What you won’t find on these sites are any hierarchical rankings or bragging rights. You become the judge of the best schools, given the raw data and what you know about your child."
Thanks Greg for this valuable information!
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