More "Best" Value Rankings

Kiplinger recently published a list of their Top 100 Best Values in Private Colleges and Universities. While I always caution clients to take the value of rankings lightly, it is always interesting information.  Also, last year we published blog posts on both the Princeton Review’s and Kiplinger’s “best value” rankings and it appears that the same criticisms would apply to this year’s list.
Katherine Price
Educational Consultant

Truth Revealed: US News Rankings Mean Nothing–and Everything

Doug Lederer and the folks at Inside Higher Ed bring us a story today of Clemson University and how it manipulates data to help move itself up in the US News & World Report annual rankings.

These ranking bug me.  As an educational consultant, I am constantly having to explain that these rankings are at best imperfect measures of institutional quality and at worst amount to a completely misleading popularity contest.  Just today I am having to respond to a client’s whining that the universities I am suggesting are “too far down the league tables” (to which I might respond:  “so how come you didn’t think of that when you were preparing for your algebra final”).  My client doesn’t want to listen to any reasoned argument that the quality of education that an individual student received in the classroom has little or no bearing on the the league tables presented in US News.  Needless to say, it’s going to be an interesting day.

What has me looking up, however, is the fact that a former institutional researcher at Clemson gave a presentation at the Association of Institutional Research that revealed in great detail the strategies that Clemson administrators were using to lift Clemson in the US News rankings.  And the participants–other institutional researchers from other universities who also report data to US News–where shocked.  Shocked, I say.

You can read the article yourself:  Doug Lederer is a great writer and the article is balanced.

The funny thing (okay, well, it’s really not so hilarious–it’s more funny-peculiar) is that colleges and universities bash the ratings when they’re  down, and then post them on their websites anytime their name is mentioned favorably in those same rankings.

Everyone wants “proof” that the quality of their educational product is somehow good–better than their peers–more worthy of your consumer dollar.  Yet colleges and universities know that the measures developed by US News are flawed.  They know that they measure institutional inputs and not educational outcomes.  They know that statistics like student-to-faculty ratios are misleading.

Still, the college administrators slavishly report their data to the magazine editors–with or without manipulation or “influencing” the data.  They know it’s a stupid game, but they play it anyway.  And clearly Clemson has the rules down pat.

As Marcellus uttered in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, something is rotten–not in Denmark–but in American higher education.

I do understand this quest for some sort of evaluation system that will help us compare one college against the next so that we can make better decisions about which college is best for which kids.  But we don’t need US News & World Reports.  We need Consumer Reports.


Mark Montgomery
Educational Consultant




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Top 200 Universities in Asia: Three of the Top 4 in Hong Kong

QS has published its QS Top 200 Asian University Rankings. Turns out I used to teach at #4: The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

Hong Kong universities are also in the number 1 (Hong Kong University) and number 2 (Chinese University of Hong Kong) slots, with the University of Tokyo pulling in at number 3.

The Hong Kong government is trying hard to attract students from abroad to study (in English) at their universities. For students willing to really go against the grain and travel across the Pacific for a degree, great deals are available. Interested? Let me know!

Mark Montgomery
College Adviser



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More College Rankings: Best Global Universities

The Times Higher Education in the UK recently released its rankings of the top 200 universities in the world.  Seven out of the top 10 are American universities.  Can you guess which ones are near the top of the list?


I did my  undergraduate work at number 54, earned my doctorate at number 157, was a graduate teaching fellow at number 1, and was a professor for four  years at number 39.


Not too shabby.


Mark Montgomery

College Consultant

Colleges Like Boys Better Than Girls

Sixty percent of college students in America are women; men go to college in fewer numbers.  Some campuses are content to reflect this gender gap, but many are not.  Most strive for a balance of men and women on their campuses.


The result:  boys are favored in the admissions process, sometimes with a 10-20% better admit rate than women.


While we wait for the lawsuit that will reverse this advantage (remember that affirmative action programs based on race are under fire by the courts), we do well to keep this in mind.


US News & World Report did a quick video on the gender gap that focuses on the College of William & Mary and the University of Richmond.


Mark Montgomery

College Counselor of the Male Persuasion