What's Missing from Rankings

A lot has been written about the way undergraduate institutions are ranked. Although there is a prevailing view that "rankings" don't matter, that's not really realistic. Students, parents (especially) and employers all reference rankings, especially for schools outside their immediate knowledge.

Here is how the current ranking system breaks down by UsNews (the big player here):

Undergraduate academic reputation (weighting: 22.5% for National Universities and National Liberal Arts Colleges; 25% for Regional Universities and Regional Colleges)

Graduation and Freshman retention (20% for the National Universities and National Liberal Arts Colleges and 25% for Regional Universities and Regional Colleges)

Faculty resources (20%)

Student selectivity (15%)

Financial resources (10%)

Graduation rate performance (7.5%)

Alumni giving rate (5%)

Here's a summary of what students care about from the NACE (national association of college employers):

Top reasons noted as very important in selecting college attended

Graduates get good jobs (56.5%)

The cost of attending (41.6%)

A visit to the campus (41.4%)

Wanted to go to a school about the size of this college (39.8%)

Graduates gain admission to top graduate/professional schools (34.6%)

Of course, one cannot generalize objective measures such as "school size" in a ranking, so let's just focus on the points that can be ranked:

Graduates get good jobs: This statistic is not present in the UsNews rankings. I suspect because most of the info is self reported, it is tougher to track this piece. Recently, law schools were called out for gaming their stats with this piece of info.

The cost of attending: I addressed this in an earlier post - but there should be some ROI measure related to salaries earned over time

What both lists ignore: Learning

Why is it assumed everyone who goes to every college has attained the same knowledge? I know the coursework is relatively consistent across schools - and teaching is better at some than others. But the rankings above focus on research (faculty resources) over teaching (embedded in "Undergraduate academic reputation"). With high schools, there are AP exams, SAT II's and other measures to see how well a certain teacher has taught over time and how much is absorbed. It's time we implement some national standards here and truly try and measure how much a graduate learns. The real question is - would colleges be willing to embrace this concept?