The Learning Curve: What’s Up with College Rankings?

For those of you who don’t know, I’m currently in school trying to finish a bachelor’s degree at San Diego State University. So, when the U.S. News and World Reports’ much vaunted yearly college rankings dropped earlier this month and showed that SDSU shot up the list it piqued my interest. 

In fact, both UC San Diego and SDSU’s national rankings increased. That change seems to be tied to the publication’s revamped methodology that puts a premium on colleges’ ability to provide social mobility, or the ability of individuals to move from one income bracket to another. 

While UCSD rose six places to 28, SDSU rocketed up 46 places to 105. When it came to the rankings of just public colleges, UCSD and SDSU rose to 6 and 51 respectively. Given the ubiquity of U.S. News’ rankings, it was certainly a coup for the colleges, both of which lauded their increased standing. While the newfound emphasis on social mobility is good, the whole thing got me thinking about if we should care about college rankings in the first place. 

Some background: U.S. News’ rankings have long been a staple when it came time for high schoolers to apply to colleges, especially for students from higher income brackets. They’ve become so important to recruitment efforts that some colleges have even submitted fake data to increase their rank, leading to the arrest of at least one dean. 

But the rankings have also spurred widespread criticism. Some have said they encourage colleges to treat education as a luxury good, which is a decidedly bad thing, both for students and for higher education more broadly. 

That decades long criticism has even spawned a dedicated Wikipedia entry. And Education Secretary Miguel Cardona last year got in on the pillorying of ranking systems, calling them a joke. 

The shakeup: Well, it seems like U.S. News listened. “This year’s rankings placed a greater emphasis on social mobility and outcomes for graduating college students, demonstrating the most significant methodological change in the rankings’ history,” U.S. News wrote in a statement. It also eliminated factors like class size, alumni giving and high school class standing from how it judges colleges. 

The new methodology elicited fierce pushback from some leaders of the elite universities that once, and still do, sit atop its leaderboard. One university president called the rankings “misleading” and said they demonstrate a “lack of rigor and competence.”  

Meanwhile, SDSU President Adela de la Torre, whose university benefited from the change, wrote “It is encouraging to see a shift toward criteria that place greater emphasis on values important to us, and to our students, parents and families.” 

The product being sold: So, what is college for, and should we give a hoot about rankings? One higher education scholar told Inside Higher Ed that while the rankings’ new emphasis on social mobility is an improvement over the prestige factor they used to prioritize, college shouldn’t be sold as a product regardless of the selling point. Instead, he seemed to suggest the intellectual benefits of college should be what are on display. 

Now, I’m all about education. Heck, you could even say it’s sort of my job. But trying to sell students on picking a college because of the intellectual vibes it can offer seems tone deaf, especially at a time when our national student loan debt situation has reached a crisis level. I’m not currently finishing my bachelor’s degree to satiate my boundless intellectual curiosity – I’m doing it because I know, or maybe because I hope, it will help me financially in the long term.  

Social mobility to the front: That long-term benefit is exactly what colleges have promised students for decades. Social mobility has long been the key selling point of a college degree. And for many years, degrees delivered on that promise. But more recently, youngsters have begun to lose faith in whether college is really a good investment, often because it seems the financial benefits are less pronounced than they used to be. 

Given the constantly inflating price tag (CSU tuitions alone will rise a whopping 34 percent over the next five years) and new, innovative educational opportunities popping up in places like community colleges that don’t have the same sticker shock, some students may be wise to avoid a traditional four-year path altogether. You don’t necessarily need one to become an electrician or plumber, for example, and those are good-paying and dignified jobs.  

But while ranking systems injected a toxic, surface-level competition into college shopping, they also provided more data, which was good. Ultimately, that’s what we need: a data system, not a ranking system, as the LA Times editorial board recently argued. College is a product. A product that many students will be paying down for years. So, the more data they have to determine if that product is a worthwhile investment, the better.  

Students should be empowered to know whether a college is a Camry or a drastically more expensive Lamborghini. Because at the end of the day, both will likely get you from Point A to Point B, but one will come with some extra zeros at the end. 

What We’re Writing 

• Last month, students at Correia Middle School reported seeing a classmate brandish a gun. In the following week, more allegations surfaced, and in the aftermath, parents are demanding answers about San Diego Unified’s discipline policies.  
• From community colleges to K-12 districts, schools across the county have set their sights on getting into the housing game. But while some of San Diego Unified’s projects seem to be moving forward smoothly, community colleges’ plans to build hit a snag in recent months. Here’s where a couple of those efforts stand. 
• After years of remote work, San Diego Unified is requiring its central office staff to return to in-person work. Despite a pilot program having ended more than a year ago, the move blindsided some, who were under the impression the district was working on a permanent policy.