San Francisco Chronicle, September 3, 2001

College Rankings are Mostly About Money

By STUART ROJSTACZER

IT'S THE BEGINNING of the academic school year, a time when annual rankings of colleges and universities from the media, most notably those of U. S. News and World Report, hit the newsstands and the Internet. Like major studio executives nervous about Oscar nominations, university administrators worry about how they will fare in this year's ranking derby. It isn't just pride that's at stake. A high ranking translates into tangible benefits, most notably a better and bigger student applicant pool.

It's a given that the SHYMP schools -- Stanford, Harvard, Yale, MIT and Princeton -- will make the Top 10 in these rankings. The order in which they are found, however, mysteriously shifts around from year to year. Other less well-known schools move up and down more dramatically. There is no rational basis for any of this. Yet every year, 94 percent of institutions bow down to U.S. News by dutifully filling out its detailed questionnaires in a quest, however remote, for a high ranking.

U.S. News and the other media rankers shrug off all complaints on the part of the gatekeepers of the academy. They deny accusations that they arbitrarily jiggle their numbers every year to make it seem as if university quality is in a state of dynamic flux worthy of annual, if not daily, measure. Of course, they have to deny this. The year-to-year variability in the rankings makes them newsworthy.

But what do these rankings actually quantify? They do measure something at least obtusely related to academic life. Just what are they measuring? When it comes to research universities, the answer is a lot simpler than people might realize.

There are really three broad components that make or break an institution in media-based rankings: 1) its wealth; 2) how well it uses that wealth to establish its scholarly reputation; 3) and its ability to keep students pleased about their college experience. In essence the media is saying that the quality of a university depends more upon its endowment than anything else.

For those of you who think I'm being too glib, I plot this year's U.S. News ranking of the Top 25 universities in order of the wealth of that institution (total endowment divided by the number of undergraduate students). This is admittedly a quick and dirty measure of wealth, but it does a very good job of explaining U.S. News' rankings.

This correlation shouldn't be surprising. Wealthy institutions can buy star faculty, provide faculty with state-of-the-art resources, have top-notch libraries, equip classrooms with high-tech audio-visual equipment and keep class sizes small. Because they have all of these great resources, students flock to them, and they are able to get the pick of the litter. Rankings are mostly about money.

In fact, using wealth as a sole barometer explains the 2001 U.S. News rankings of about 20 of the 25 "best" universities. Given that U.S. News arbitrarily jiggles its rankings every year, something that essentially adds noise to the order, this correspondence is remarkable.

Still not convinced? For skeptics and Internet lovers, I've created a Web page which creates rankings for universities under the assumption that they can be evaluated strictly by their wealth and a little random noise. The process by which these rankings are generated is akin to how the National Basketball Association determines the order by which teams draft prospects. It provides the computational equivalent of loading up a rotating bin with Ping- Pong balls labeled with the names of universities. There are proportionally more balls for the wealthiest institutions.

Go to www.rankyourcollege.com/ddmethod.html and hit the refresh button on your Web browser a few times. I'm sure that you'll agree that the rankings created by the simple "wealth plus noise" formula look virtually identical to those generated media rankings of universities over the last dozen years. If they look the same, shouldn't they have the same degree of validity?

What other than wealth can explain media rankings? Not much. As noted above, media-based rankings tend to include some estimation of student satisfaction. While money can buy many material goods like fancy dorms and recreational facilities that can make students like their institution, it can't account for the whole story. But being able to pick from the nation's best high school students means that it's likely that you will draw from a pool of bright, relatively well-adjusted kids who are goal-oriented. Are these kinds of kids easier to satisfy? You bet.

While wealth is a very good indicator of media rankings, it's worth examining whether wealth is a valid measure of the quality of an undergraduate education. I'll admit that it is a useful partial measure. Money, like a high ranking, counts for a lot.

But it isn't any measure of the extent to which faculty are dedicated teachers. It fails to identify those universities that maintain demanding academic standards for students. It doesn't tell anyone whether the high tuition most of these institutions advertise scares away students of the middle class and poor. It completely misses the value of having a racially and ethnically diverse student body, and offers no indication of how well an institution accommodates diversity.

Given that they don't yield any new and useful information, parents and students don't have to bother with the rankings and buy the magazines. If you're simply concerned about prestige, go to the wealthy institutions. But if you're mainly concerned about the quality of education, then you're going to have to be your own judge.

There are many institutions that don't have large endowments, but offer a superior and sometimes affordable education.