6 ms·

The U.S. government tried to rank colleges in 1911

62 points by magda_wang 12y ago

HarryHirsch 12y ago
The current Obama proposal has problems, the suggested metrics (six-year graduation rate, tuition cost and employment after graduation) are problematic and too easily gamed. Salaries are the biggest expense at a university, you can easily cut those by shifting to more adjuncts. With the shape the academic labour market is in, that is easily done. Quality of instruction drops, but the students don't mind, they are there for credentials, not for an education. What does suffer is the idea of a university. Graduation rate is really problematic. You can fix that by watering down standards, again the students don't mind, it's more A's for everyone, they are there for credentials, but what you would really like to do is to admit more students and weed those out that can't hack it in their first year, before they are welded to the wrong career track. As for employment after graduation, look no further than third-tier law schools with their legal clinics that employ their graduates. Such places need to be shut down today.
- Retric 12y ago
  Instructors are not really that large of a budget item at collages. Administrative overhead has continued to grow due to a wide range of factors including such things as the new demand for IT at all schools.
  - HarryHirsch 12y ago
    Administrative overhead is growing, but you can't cut there - you need functional infrastructure. So you cut where you can, and that is at the teaching end. By the way, part of the growing infrastructure is because universities are trying to attract non-traditional students, such as first-generation students, minorities and non-Western students. You can drop a middle-class US guy into a US university, and he will do just fine. But a minority student may need tutoring (because his high school plainly sucked), someone from China will need help with cultural adjustment, and a first-generation student may not even know how to study (his family is of no help). All this is motivated by the need for more bodies paying tuition.
    - ericd 12y ago
      Are you sure that admin overhead couldn't be cut? Does the president really need to make 7 figures?
      - HarryHirsch 12y ago
        University presidents are fundraisers and marketeers. I suspect the talent pool is small, there are not that many people with good connections to donors and proven ability to attract outside money. And the need for external funds is rising. Here is a particularly lurid example, but the idea is the same everywhere: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/11/nyregion/a-quick-descent-for-cecilia-chang-dean-at-st-johns.html http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/11/nyregion/a-quick-descent-f...
        Bahamut 12y ago
        Wow...reading that story and seeing that picture, I think I might have gambled on the same table as her on blackjack once about 6-7 years ago, either in Mohegan Sun or Foxwoods (I forget). That is chilling.
    - wtbob 12y ago
      > Administrative overhead is growing, but you can't cut there - you need functional infrastructure. A college needs gardeners, programmers, network admins and secretaries; does it need Vice Presidents of Student Diversity and football coaches?
      - rayiner 12y ago
        Football coaches pay for themselves. As for vice presidents of student diversity, I think they get a bad rap. As college expands to include more than just the children of the rich, you need additional support infrastructure for students: http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/05/18/magazine/who-gets-to-graduate.html http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/05/18/magazine/who-gets-to-gr...
        12y ago
- yummyfajitas 12y ago
  The obvious solution here is to separate education from credentialing. Have the government create uniform credentialing standards and allow anyone to attempt to achieve them for a small fee - e.g., $250 to take the exam for "US Govt. English B.A.". Quality of instruction drops... How do you know this? What does suffer is the idea of a university. Why should anyone (besides people looking to become non-adjunct professors) care?
  - caseysoftware 12y ago
    There are already accreditation groups such as ABET that review and score programs - http://www.abet.org/about-abet/ http://www.abet.org/about-abet/ There's absolutely no reason to get the government into a system that already works.
    - yummyfajitas 12y ago
      The government is already involved in determining which groups are allowed to accredit colleges. Those accreditation groups tend to require things that prevent a college from simply selling the credential without the education. The fact that the system already "works" does not mean it cannot be improved. Also, if you want to argue that credentials and education should NOT be separated, should we merge them in cases where they are currently separated? E.g., should stock brokers be required to go to Series 7 school before taking the Series 7 exam? If not, why not?
    - madengr 12y ago
      I agree. Although ABET does not score, you are either accredited or not.
- loser777 12y ago
  I'm not sure hiring more adjuncts would hurt the quality of (undergraduate) teaching. In my own experience adjuncts were far more dedicated to teaching than tenured professors who focus on their research without caring how low their teaching ratings sink.
  - trop 12y ago
    This may be superficially true, but the long-term health of the institution and the educational system are not served. Hiring underpaid adjuncts as teaching labor may allow for some good classes--either through the adjuncts' idealism or their hunger to keep their job--but it's only a sort of local maximum. Those good adjuncts came up through a system which valued teaching & knowledge. It's not clear the succeeding adjunct-taught generations will maintain this faith in their fields. See the case study of Schlitz in the 70s (e.g. http://www.beerbusinessunplugged.com/?p=130 http://www.beerbusinessunplugged.com/?p=130 for a short version): desperate businesspeople go for short term gains by cannibalizing their traditional ways of making things.
- barry-cotter 12y ago
  >Salaries are the biggest expense at a university, you can easily cut those by shifting to more adjuncts. With the shape the academic labour market is in, that is easily done. Quality of instruction drops, but the students don't mind, they are there for credentials, not for an education. (Emphasis not in original) Citation needed. I can see why academics would like me to believe that but whether it's true or not is an empirical question, not one that's immediately obvious on its face.
pmorici 12y ago
Doesn't this already exist, albeit in a private capacity, with things like the US News rankings?
- rayiner 12y ago
  The USNWR rankings blow. They incentivize a lot of bad behavior. E.g. for law schools, they reward inefficiency (by counting expenditures per student positively towards the score.) Also, major aspects of the USNWR rankings is what academics think of each others' institutions, which is utterly irrelevant.
- jkimmel 12y ago
  The US News rankings have a lot of factors which can easily be gamed and/or probably aren't relevant to ranking an institution based on quality. One that comes to mind is including the "Easiness" factor from RateMyProfessor as a positive metric (easier schools are ranked more highly). On a more philosophical level, having a private 3rd party control the decisions of our college-bound youth could become problematic. How likely is it that the US News rankings may have some sort of bias, anything from an analyst's alma mater being ranked higher to quid pro quo bribery? Hopefully, a public institution would be more robust in the face of these biases.
  - caseysoftware 12y ago
    Whenever there are humans involved, there will be biases. Making it a government entity instead of a private entity doesn't change that. People are people.
    - adventured 12y ago
      There always seems to be a deep prevalence to think that the government is a purely objective, magic entity with no agenda or bias, rather than consisting of people, each with their own agenda and bias, like everyone else (and worse, consisting of parties that create strong group biases and agendas). Even if you assumed the government perfectly represented the people, it would possess a very blatant agenda and bias, in the form of representing said people and what they vote in favor of. I'd argue governments as political entities - keeping in mind what it takes to win in politics - are far more likely to hold extreme biases and agendas. Any government system of reviewing universities will possess tremendous bias toward whatever people are in power that oversee such reviews. They will obviously rate universities that meet their favored criteria higher, matching up with their world-views about education / societal issues / etc.
tokenadult 12y ago
The statement in the article is that "colleges in the top tier, perhaps unsurprisingly, didn't complain." Meanwhile, colleges with lower rankings complained about them so much that the President issued an executive order prohibiting further publication of the ratings. I'm not worried about this today. There should be data-gathering along various dimensions showing what the trade-offs are of attending one or another college. A good current effort in that direction is the foundation-funded nonprofit website College Results,[1] which aggregates data that colleges are already required to report to the federal government (which is one of the biggest funders of all aspects of higher education in the United States) and presents the data in a user-friendly format. I frequently recommend the College Results website to parents whose children are trying to decide what college to attend. Figure out what trade-off dimensions are meaningful to you, and get the best information you can about how colleges differ along each dimension. College is supposedly very consequential for your future. It is certainly very expensive for some people. Find out more before committing to one or another college. [1] http://www.collegeresults.org/ http://www.collegeresults.org/
madengr 12y ago
The method in the article, i.e. how well one is prepared for graduate school, IS probably the best method. It really boils down to how much you know given your GPA. Of course maybe I'm biased since my school, KU, was 1st tier.

62 points by magda_wang 12y ago

The current Obama proposal has problems, the suggested metrics (six-year graduation rate, tuition cost and employment after graduation) are problematic and too easily gamed. Salaries are the biggest expense at a university, you can easily cut those by shifting to more adjuncts. With the shape the academic labour market is in, that is easily done. Quality of instruction drops, but the students don't mind, they are there for credentials, not for an education. What does suffer is the idea of a university. Graduation rate is really problematic. You can fix that by watering down standards, again the students don't mind, it's more A's for everyone, they are there for credentials, but what you would really like to do is to admit more students and weed those out that can't hack it in their first year, before they are welded to the wrong career track. As for employment after graduation, look no further than third-tier law schools with their legal clinics that employ their graduates. Such places need to be shut down today.

Retric 12y ago
Instructors are not really that large of a budget item at collages. Administrative overhead has continued to grow due to a wide range of factors including such things as the new demand for IT at all schools.
- HarryHirsch 12y ago
  Administrative overhead is growing, but you can't cut there - you need functional infrastructure. So you cut where you can, and that is at the teaching end. By the way, part of the growing infrastructure is because universities are trying to attract non-traditional students, such as first-generation students, minorities and non-Western students. You can drop a middle-class US guy into a US university, and he will do just fine. But a minority student may need tutoring (because his high school plainly sucked), someone from China will need help with cultural adjustment, and a first-generation student may not even know how to study (his family is of no help). All this is motivated by the need for more bodies paying tuition.
  - ericd 12y ago
    Are you sure that admin overhead couldn't be cut? Does the president really need to make 7 figures?
    - HarryHirsch 12y ago
      University presidents are fundraisers and marketeers. I suspect the talent pool is small, there are not that many people with good connections to donors and proven ability to attract outside money. And the need for external funds is rising. Here is a particularly lurid example, but the idea is the same everywhere: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/11/nyregion/a-quick-descent-for-cecilia-chang-dean-at-st-johns.html http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/11/nyregion/a-quick-descent-f...
      - Bahamut 12y ago
        Wow...reading that story and seeing that picture, I think I might have gambled on the same table as her on blackjack once about 6-7 years ago, either in Mohegan Sun or Foxwoods (I forget). That is chilling.
  - wtbob 12y ago
    > Administrative overhead is growing, but you can't cut there - you need functional infrastructure. A college needs gardeners, programmers, network admins and secretaries; does it need Vice Presidents of Student Diversity and football coaches?
    - rayiner 12y ago
      Football coaches pay for themselves. As for vice presidents of student diversity, I think they get a bad rap. As college expands to include more than just the children of the rich, you need additional support infrastructure for students: http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/05/18/magazine/who-gets-to-graduate.html http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/05/18/magazine/who-gets-to-gr...
      - 12y ago
yummyfajitas 12y ago
The obvious solution here is to separate education from credentialing. Have the government create uniform credentialing standards and allow anyone to attempt to achieve them for a small fee - e.g., $250 to take the exam for "US Govt. English B.A.". Quality of instruction drops... How do you know this? What does suffer is the idea of a university. Why should anyone (besides people looking to become non-adjunct professors) care?
- caseysoftware 12y ago
  There are already accreditation groups such as ABET that review and score programs - http://www.abet.org/about-abet/ http://www.abet.org/about-abet/ There's absolutely no reason to get the government into a system that already works.
  - yummyfajitas 12y ago
    The government is already involved in determining which groups are allowed to accredit colleges. Those accreditation groups tend to require things that prevent a college from simply selling the credential without the education. The fact that the system already "works" does not mean it cannot be improved. Also, if you want to argue that credentials and education should NOT be separated, should we merge them in cases where they are currently separated? E.g., should stock brokers be required to go to Series 7 school before taking the Series 7 exam? If not, why not?
  - madengr 12y ago
    I agree. Although ABET does not score, you are either accredited or not.
loser777 12y ago
I'm not sure hiring more adjuncts would hurt the quality of (undergraduate) teaching. In my own experience adjuncts were far more dedicated to teaching than tenured professors who focus on their research without caring how low their teaching ratings sink.
- trop 12y ago
  This may be superficially true, but the long-term health of the institution and the educational system are not served. Hiring underpaid adjuncts as teaching labor may allow for some good classes--either through the adjuncts' idealism or their hunger to keep their job--but it's only a sort of local maximum. Those good adjuncts came up through a system which valued teaching & knowledge. It's not clear the succeeding adjunct-taught generations will maintain this faith in their fields. See the case study of Schlitz in the 70s (e.g. http://www.beerbusinessunplugged.com/?p=130 http://www.beerbusinessunplugged.com/?p=130 for a short version): desperate businesspeople go for short term gains by cannibalizing their traditional ways of making things.
barry-cotter 12y ago
>Salaries are the biggest expense at a university, you can easily cut those by shifting to more adjuncts. With the shape the academic labour market is in, that is easily done. Quality of instruction drops, but the students don't mind, they are there for credentials, not for an education. (Emphasis not in original) Citation needed. I can see why academics would like me to believe that but whether it's true or not is an empirical question, not one that's immediately obvious on its face.

pmorici 12y ago

Doesn't this already exist, albeit in a private capacity, with things like the US News rankings?

rayiner 12y ago
The USNWR rankings blow. They incentivize a lot of bad behavior. E.g. for law schools, they reward inefficiency (by counting expenditures per student positively towards the score.) Also, major aspects of the USNWR rankings is what academics think of each others' institutions, which is utterly irrelevant.
jkimmel 12y ago
The US News rankings have a lot of factors which can easily be gamed and/or probably aren't relevant to ranking an institution based on quality. One that comes to mind is including the "Easiness" factor from RateMyProfessor as a positive metric (easier schools are ranked more highly). On a more philosophical level, having a private 3rd party control the decisions of our college-bound youth could become problematic. How likely is it that the US News rankings may have some sort of bias, anything from an analyst's alma mater being ranked higher to quid pro quo bribery? Hopefully, a public institution would be more robust in the face of these biases.
- caseysoftware 12y ago
  Whenever there are humans involved, there will be biases. Making it a government entity instead of a private entity doesn't change that. People are people.
  - adventured 12y ago
    There always seems to be a deep prevalence to think that the government is a purely objective, magic entity with no agenda or bias, rather than consisting of people, each with their own agenda and bias, like everyone else (and worse, consisting of parties that create strong group biases and agendas). Even if you assumed the government perfectly represented the people, it would possess a very blatant agenda and bias, in the form of representing said people and what they vote in favor of. I'd argue governments as political entities - keeping in mind what it takes to win in politics - are far more likely to hold extreme biases and agendas. Any government system of reviewing universities will possess tremendous bias toward whatever people are in power that oversee such reviews. They will obviously rate universities that meet their favored criteria higher, matching up with their world-views about education / societal issues / etc.

tokenadult 12y ago

The statement in the article is that "colleges in the top tier, perhaps unsurprisingly, didn't complain." Meanwhile, colleges with lower rankings complained about them so much that the President issued an executive order prohibiting further publication of the ratings. I'm not worried about this today. There should be data-gathering along various dimensions showing what the trade-offs are of attending one or another college. A good current effort in that direction is the foundation-funded nonprofit website College Results,[1] which aggregates data that colleges are already required to report to the federal government (which is one of the biggest funders of all aspects of higher education in the United States) and presents the data in a user-friendly format. I frequently recommend the College Results website to parents whose children are trying to decide what college to attend. Figure out what trade-off dimensions are meaningful to you, and get the best information you can about how colleges differ along each dimension. College is supposedly very consequential for your future. It is certainly very expensive for some people. Find out more before committing to one or another college. [1] http://www.collegeresults.org/ http://www.collegeresults.org/

madengr 12y ago

The method in the article, i.e. how well one is prepared for graduate school, IS probably the best method. It really boils down to how much you know given your GPA. Of course maybe I'm biased since my school, KU, was 1st tier.