University Ranking & Inequality

The business of ranking universities is a multi billion dollar industry; there are many competing organization and sites that provides ranking on various measures; in addition, there are plenty of articles online that highlights how broken is the methodology that makes up the ranking algorithms; as a father of a high schooler and consumer of the ranking data, the more I dig deep and learn about the university rankings, the weaker my conviction becomes about the broader effectivenes of such ranking;

The fundamental mission of universities, as I see it, is to impart education to as many students as possible without diluting the quality; any goal beside this, in my humble opinion, strays from the fundamental mission of education; however, the ranking system distorts this goal by adding a stray objective to maintain certain ranking and there by requring universities to devote financial, human and other resources to stay on the top of the ranking game; worldwide, there are over 20,000 officially accredited or recognized higher education institutions (HEIs). While a significant majority of these institutions do not feature in any of the major ranking organizations the few that does show up is primarily due to their ability to devote significant resources to stay on top that game; this exercise has gone past measuring "true worth" and has become a game; here is a study on how Northeastern managed, over the years, to move up the ranking ladder. Any university with limited resources that is staying true to the mission of imparting education / skills to the community and is unable to prioritize enough time / resources to play the ranking rink will not feature in any list and will remain hidden, unconsidered;

It is no secret that ranking significantly influences students and parents desire to pursue universities at the top of the totem pole irrespective of whether if it makes sense or not; the reason for this passion is due to opportunity to not only acquire high quality education but also the "elite" status that comes with the education; the employment market, for certain, has desirability bias and confirmation bias that prioritizes students from ranked university versus unranked ones; the logic is trivial - the fundamental belief is that any student who is admitted to these elite institution must be great; after all they represent a tiny fraction of the thousands of well qualified, amazing students who had thrown in their name in the hat; since the input into the system is awesome the output must be even better; it is certain that these folks will become a productive employee; in addition, there is also the added benefit for the organization - an enhancements of the aura because of all the awesome folks from the world's most prestigious and elite institution who are ready and fully primed to "change the world".

As the information age powered by open and accessible internet further extends to all corners of the world; information on "how to get in" becomes more accessible to everyone; it now available as a "template" just a few keywords away from google search; in fact, there are so many choice for the "how to get in" advisory cottage industry it is actually hard to pick the "right" one (perhaps another ranking opportunity to rank these); what ultimately this means is - any one who can afford to shell out thousands will go for it; as a result, the number of applications to the top universities continues to increase unabated. Students (and parents) motivated by the elitist brand association will go any extant to get in. For Universities dealing with large pile of applications of students, every applicant will pretty much look like clones; every single student is just perfect at every thing they do!; in a system where selection is based on qualitative criteria cocooned by opacity, the entire selection process will appear random at the best.

To follow the template and to prepare the student to stand a chance of admission into the elite institutions requires insane amount of preparation; here is a thread from quora and just look at the accomplishment of these students; some have published papers in academic journals by 11th grade; some kids are so talented that they could even possibly be the concertmaster at any of the prestegious orchestra; and of course majority of the students who do make it have not only have consistently high (or even perfect) grades but also amazing SAT scores; it would be hard to believe all of these happen "naturally" without significant levels of parental engagement and most importantly investment; of course, it is hard equally to imagine for one to achieve this level of expertise just by leveraging the resources available at the high school; it is plain obvious that to achieve this level of proficiency requires significant allocation of financial capital; for instance take violin: to play at a highly regarded local symphony orchestra concert at young age will for certain require the student to be a master violinist; this is possible only with significant support from private tutoring which can run in the hundreds of dollars per hour for training; this level of preparation and differentiation is possible only in household that can commit high degree of energy and financial resources; any parent who is unable to commit this level of financial resources stand limited to no chance of distinguishing their students among the clones of just perfect.

The ranking system thus encourages segregation of the wealthy from the rest; the wealthy who can throw resources will have higher probability of attending the higher ranked universities and those cannot afford pricey coaching for academics and extracurricular end up in a lower rung universities; the ranking system thus amplifies segregation of students based on income and status; this system, hence, does not foster achieving the perceived mission of universities to make education accessible and more equitable;

Ranking attracts the best and the brightest from all corners of the country and even the world; students are ready to trek across the country, ready to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in tuition to get the branding and education; the ranking totem pole ensures that the top universities becomes a black hole sucking up the best and brightest students leaving the rest to those that are not ranked high enough (or even ranked); this process results in overall lowering of quality of the students going into lower ranked / unranked universities; in similar vein, newly minted PhDs looking for academia careers are directed by ranking system and likely not motivated enough to join lower ranked institutions; this results in a widening chasm between the ones that are ranked highly and those that are not; this chasm will only to continue to widen just like the wealth distribution; the top 1% attracts 100% of the best & brightest students, professors, administrators and so on;

The highly ranked university attracting the best go on and achieve more amazing things post tertiary education; a "thank you" for furthering their lives results in fattening endowments at these schools; for instance Harvard's endowment is more than the GDP of 100 countries and while those at the bottom do not enjoy any such richness; lack of financial resources limits the investment that these universities need to provide high quality education to its student; in effect, these universities end up depending on state or federal funding to make ends meet; in an era of tightening fiscal environment, it sure gets hard (or even impossible) to depend on government to fill the gap; in effect, ranking system not only skews inequality of achieving education goal but also long term effect on graduating students who go on to achieve and contribute generously back to the alma mater that made a difference in their lives. The ranking system thus contributes to inequality that is becoming more lop sided every passing year.

One solution to consider is to let ranking go! The ranking could be replaced by just information on schools; the information could cover aspects like graduation rate, research, papers published, cited papers etc.; just killing ranking alone wont cut it; in order to make local universities attractive to high achieving students, investments needs to be made to these universities that lack financial resources to bring them at par with the "good" schools; investment needs to be directed not only towards education infrastructure but also quality human resources (professors, researchers etc.); the fundamental mission and goals of the entire education system should be to ensure that every student gets opportunity to learn and ultimately contribute to society through meaningful economic activity and as a productive, law abiding citizen; lastly tighter regulation needs to enacted to ensure that private universities do not stray from the mission;

Additional Food for thought

The following is an artifact from OECD Education at a glance 2020 study;

The key observation to be made here is Germany, Finland, Greece, Norway, Slovak, Slovenia and Sweden has zero tuition fees and the US is among the highest; in nordic nations, the education system continues to maintain the equality thus serving as a great equalizer and robust stepping stone for anyone; majority of post secondary education system is publicly funded and is open and accessible to every one including those on lower rungs of socio-economic laddar; education in nordic nations is matter of right versus an opportunity to achieve elitist tag;

Education is the best flatterner of socio economic issues; education opens up doors to opportunities and enables one to pursue life pursuites; good high quality education thus must not be confined to the elite and the wealthy; education needs to be viewed as a civil right; no one should be denied of good quality education because of class or color or creed; education is still one of the best way for anyone to realize their fullest potential; the first logical step to realize that goal is to eliminiate the ranking system and replace it with something more meaningful; second by increasing investment in public universities to align with the goal of educating more citizens; third elimnating tution for education and making education a fundamental right. If Germany is able to do, other can as well; this is the way...

More food for thoughts

Here is an excellent Ted talk by Dr. Ono

Thanks for reading this "Arm chair quaterback" article; any feedback / thoughts please feel free to send it my way.