Will California's public universities withdraw from flawed college rankings?

Here is an updated version of an article I wrote for the San Francisco Chronicle, which may be behind a paywall for many of you.

Now that many of the best-known – and top-ranked -- law?and?medical?schools in California and beyond, have decided to boycott?U.S. News & World Report rankings, this would be a good time for the state’s public colleges and universities to follow suit.

The profit-making company, by far the most influential of a?several college ranking systems, started the year by saying it would make some?methodological changes?to assuage concerns of law school deans.?

But in some ways its response gives some credence to criticism that the factors that go into the rankings, based on a 100-point scale made up of?17 different indicators?of “academic quality,” are fairly arbitrary – as are the weights assigned to each one.??

Obviously students and their parents can benefit from useful, objective information about colleges. And U.S. News does pack a considerable amount of information into their publications – although to access a good deal of it requires that students sign up for its?“College Compass” at a cost of $39.95.??It’s likely that most students or their families rely on the free information U.S. News makes available online – enticed by the single number indicating a college’s rank.

But lower-ranked colleges may be a better option for many students for any number of reasons -- like their proximity to where students or their families live, their costs, the flexibility they offer in terms of class schedules, what majors they offer, and the the overall quality of the undergraduate experience.???

Another problem is the excessive weight the rankings give to “peer assessment” surveys?– yielding as many as 20 points on the 100-point scale –?of presidents, provosts and deans of admissions who are asked to rank colleges other than their own.???

There?is no way these administrators, as well meaning as they might be, could possibly have an in-depth knowledge of more than a handful of the hundreds of colleges in the rankings.??

The peer surveys were a major concern of law school deans.??U.S. News now says it will give?less weight to these surveys, but, disappointingly, the changewill not extend to?undergraduate institutions.?

One reason it will be difficult for California’s public universities to wean themselves away from the rankings is that some of them do exceptionally well on them.??To students and alumni at least, it is satisfying that UC Berkeley and UCLA are tied for the top rating of any public university in the nation.??????

But when private universities are included, UCLA and Berkeley’s rankings drop to 20th.?Are Princeton and MIT – ranked as #1 and #2 – really that much better than their West Coast public university peers?????Maybe yes – or maybe no.???Much depends on what students are looking for in a college experience.?

More problematical is the impact on other colleges not in the top tier among “national universities.” Take??UC Santa Cruz, ranked 83d, and UC Riverside coming in at 89th??-- or the 234th?rated?San Francisco State.??

SF State is one of the California State University system’s finest institutions.??Yet it is hard to imagine parents boasting that their child attends the 234th?best university in the country.??

Another major weakness of the rankings is that U.S. News doesn’t rank community colleges, even though they serve by far the biggest share of college-going students in California.??

Large numbers of students transfer to both UC and CSU campuses from community colleges in their junior year.??Yet the rankings aren’t able to distinguish between how well a community college prepares these students for success, and how much is attributable to the four-year college to which they transfer.?

Despite problems like these, what’s unfortunate is that college administrators can’t resist using the rankings?in their marketing materials.??Neither can politicians like Florida’s?Gov. Ron DeSantis?who this week proudly proclaimed his state’s public university system as superior to those in Democratically-run states like California and Illinois by cherry picking?U.S. News’ rankings.

More worrisome is that there’s considerable evidence that many students and parents pay a good deal of attention to the rankings – one that??U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona has?bluntly labelled “a joke”-- in deciding which colleges to apply to.?

Especially problematical for California is that the rankings tend to favor campuses that have larger endowments and enroll students from more affluent families.??That immediately puts California’s public universities and colleges at a disadvantage in the rankings race in light of its extraordinary record of?enrolling low-income?and first-generation college students.

On that measure, all California’s public universities should receive top ratings.???

In recent years, U.S. News has incorporated how well colleges serve low-come students receiving federal Pell Grants into the rankings. But colleges can only earn?a maximum of 5 points?on this indicator on the 100-point scale.??That doesn’t offset the other indicators tilting the rankings in favor of more well-endowed colleges serving a more affluent student body.

Over the past couple of years, California’s public universities made a bold decision?to eliminate the SAT and ACT?as a requirement for admission.???

Now they can now lead the nation by breaking their addiction to the U.S. News and other similar ranking systems that assign a single number of dubious value to measure a college’s worth