4 ms·

With Website to Research Colleges, Obama Abandons Ranking System

12 points by dctoedt 11y ago

hugh4 11y ago
Sounds like typical government modus operandi. Provide a service which is already provided by about eighteen private organisations (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/College_and_university_rankings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/College_and_university_ranking...) and do it worse.
- toomuchtodo 11y ago
  Any chance you could withhold comments that provide no value to the discussion?
  - hugh4 11y ago
    Okay, let me rephrase. Does this new service provide any value which isn't already being provided by a large number of private organisations?
    - toomuchtodo 11y ago
      I don't believe that's the right question. The question is: Can the government provide this service more effectively (better, cheaper, faster, without bias) than private organizations. I'd argue the answer to that is "yes", very similarly to how the Obama administration cut private banks out of student loan funding [+]. Where you see the possibility of failure, I see opportunity for both success in the mission and more transparency. I can FOIA a federal government entity; I cannot do the same for a corporation. [+] http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/11/education/11educ.html http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/11/education/11educ.html
      - deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
      - hugh4 11y ago
        But the other rankings are modest side projects for entities whose main business is elsewhere -- eg the Times Higher Education Supplement which probably has the best ranking. It also has the nice point of covering the world instead of just one country. And how good can rankings get, anyway? There's always a huge error bar, so being the 20th best vs the 40th best institution is meaningless. All the rankings tell us that Harvard and MIT and Stanford are very good and some place you've never heard of us rubbish.
revelation 11y ago
Interesting how something that was intended to weed out bad colleges ended up as a tool to sell college on yet more people, with useless individual bar graphs for "comparing" schools. It's like putting warning labels on cigarettes, you would be hard pressed to find any individual that is not either in favor or indifferent to doing that, yet this kind of initiative consistently fails to become law or ends up being neutered like this program.
- droithomme 11y ago
  Yes, that is interesting. I found it also quite interesting that when you look at their link to yearly cost to attend numbers, such as on the list "23 four-year schools with low costs that lead to high incomes" (http://www.ed.gov/blog/2015/09/schools-with-low-costs-and-high-incomes/ http://www.ed.gov/blog/2015/09/schools-with-low-costs-and-hi...) they are given as net costs, for the lowest income students only, and after deducting both federal grants and loans. The loans have to be repaid so not including those in the "cost" of college is strange.
yeukhon 11y ago
The Salary After Attending seems really really surprising. Take https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/search/?degree=b&major=engineering&sort=salary:desc https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/search/?degree=b&major=engin... this. After 10 years, median for 10 years is only $91,600 for MIT. Cornell & Columbia are already on the second page aabout 72,000. I can't even find where UCBerkely is. In fact, this is the median for all programs. The filter is merely to filter out schools that may not offer Engineering program, and that's a poor user experience and is giving false impression. Also, does government make Computer Science in the Engineering category, or the Computer & Information Science? The rating cards could be useful for really really poor institutions.
skybrian 11y ago
Making the underlying data available for others to use might be the best thing to come out of this. It's not like there's only one way to build a ranking system.
- ericclemmons 11y ago
  You're absolutely right. Being in the Higher Education space, dealing with IPEDS and most of the gov't supplied data is abysmal. 18F seems to have cleaned it up significantly. What's most problematic, IMO, is seeing users choose expensive career paths that's marginally better than their current situation. This tool and data don't directly answer that, but it's a huge step forward compared to what I've dealt with. Now if more college-seekers actually looked up this info...

12 points by dctoedt 11y ago

hugh4 11y ago

Sounds like typical government modus operandi. Provide a service which is already provided by about eighteen private organisations (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/College_and_university_rankings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/College_and_university_ranking...) and do it worse.

toomuchtodo 11y ago
Any chance you could withhold comments that provide no value to the discussion?
- hugh4 11y ago
  Okay, let me rephrase. Does this new service provide any value which isn't already being provided by a large number of private organisations?
  - toomuchtodo 11y ago
    I don't believe that's the right question. The question is: Can the government provide this service more effectively (better, cheaper, faster, without bias) than private organizations. I'd argue the answer to that is "yes", very similarly to how the Obama administration cut private banks out of student loan funding [+]. Where you see the possibility of failure, I see opportunity for both success in the mission and more transparency. I can FOIA a federal government entity; I cannot do the same for a corporation. [+] http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/11/education/11educ.html http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/11/education/11educ.html
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    - hugh4 11y ago
      But the other rankings are modest side projects for entities whose main business is elsewhere -- eg the Times Higher Education Supplement which probably has the best ranking. It also has the nice point of covering the world instead of just one country. And how good can rankings get, anyway? There's always a huge error bar, so being the 20th best vs the 40th best institution is meaningless. All the rankings tell us that Harvard and MIT and Stanford are very good and some place you've never heard of us rubbish.

revelation 11y ago

Interesting how something that was intended to weed out bad colleges ended up as a tool to sell college on yet more people, with useless individual bar graphs for "comparing" schools. It's like putting warning labels on cigarettes, you would be hard pressed to find any individual that is not either in favor or indifferent to doing that, yet this kind of initiative consistently fails to become law or ends up being neutered like this program.

droithomme 11y ago
Yes, that is interesting. I found it also quite interesting that when you look at their link to yearly cost to attend numbers, such as on the list "23 four-year schools with low costs that lead to high incomes" (http://www.ed.gov/blog/2015/09/schools-with-low-costs-and-high-incomes/ http://www.ed.gov/blog/2015/09/schools-with-low-costs-and-hi...) they are given as net costs, for the lowest income students only, and after deducting both federal grants and loans. The loans have to be repaid so not including those in the "cost" of college is strange.

yeukhon 11y ago

The Salary After Attending seems really really surprising. Take https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/search/?degree=b&major=engineering&sort=salary:desc https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/search/?degree=b&major=engin... this. After 10 years, median for 10 years is only $91,600 for MIT. Cornell & Columbia are already on the second page aabout 72,000. I can't even find where UCBerkely is. In fact, this is the median for all programs. The filter is merely to filter out schools that may not offer Engineering program, and that's a poor user experience and is giving false impression. Also, does government make Computer Science in the Engineering category, or the Computer & Information Science? The rating cards could be useful for really really poor institutions.

skybrian 11y ago

Making the underlying data available for others to use might be the best thing to come out of this. It's not like there's only one way to build a ranking system.

ericclemmons 11y ago
You're absolutely right. Being in the Higher Education space, dealing with IPEDS and most of the gov't supplied data is abysmal. 18F seems to have cleaned it up significantly. What's most problematic, IMO, is seeing users choose expensive career paths that's marginally better than their current situation. This tool and data don't directly answer that, but it's a huge step forward compared to what I've dealt with. Now if more college-seekers actually looked up this info...