Friday, 4/11/97
Study examines impact of college rankings
Researchers focus on affect of special issues in selection
process
By J. Sharon Yee
Daily Bruin Contributor
Every September, at a time when seniors in high school begin
seriously deciding which universities to send applications for
admission, it happens.
Newsmagazines such as U.S. News and World Report and Newsweek
publish their highly anticipated guides to "the best universities
and colleges in America," igniting the rush to find out how each
school ranks against the others and which one ranks at the top of
the list.
But who seriously considers these rankings in determining their
choices for colleges?
A recent study conducted by Associate Professor of Education
Patricia M. McDonough has found that people who use these rankings
are typically high-achieving, Asian American students who come from
college-educated, high-income families and plan on pursuing
doctoral, legal or medical degrees.
The study, which was presented last month at the American
Educational Research Association’s annual meeting in Chicago,
concluded that "65 percent of the students who find national
rankings very important anticipate being satisfied with college …
and of these students, 55 percent file four or more applications,"
suggesting that such students are "typically engaged in more
competitive admissions."
"No one has ever studied college rankings from the point of view
of students," said McDonough, explaining why she chose to conduct
this study. "We not only looked at the impact of the rankings on
people’s college choices, but identified for the first time the
factors that most influenced these choices."
McDonough, with the help of Anthony Lising Antonio, Mary Beth
Walpole and Leonor Perez, students in the Graduate School of
Education and Information Services, focused on the special college
ranking issues of five magazines: U.S. News and World Report,
Money, Newsweek, Time and Rolling Stone.
Much of the data they used came from responses to the
Cooperative Institutional Research Program’s (CIRP) 1995 freshman
survey, a survey conducted by UCLA’s Higher Education Research
Institute.
They found that in today’s age of mass information, rankings are
not the only thing that students use in their search for their
ideal college.
"The realm of college choices has now spread out to the media.
… We now have Barron’s guides, TV news specials, CD-ROMS, private
counselors, all of which are relatively recent phenomenon,"
explained Antonio.
"However, there is a particular interest in rankings because
they get out to more people than other sources and are widely
recognized," he added.
Though the initial purpose of conducting this study was to
determine the kind of students who use rankings, McDonough and the
graduate students also intended to study the college admissions
industry and its motivations behind the services it provides.
They said they were shocked to find that, excluding
advertisements, the profit made from the sales of one college issue
equaled the profit made from six months worth of subscriptions.
"A better view of what this phenomenon is about is how it’s no
longer about the students who use the rankings but the industry and
how much profit the corporate sector sees in college admissions,"
McDonough said.
Included in the report were statistics such as parents spending
$450 million a year on college help products and the newsmagazines
generating $60 million in sales of their rankings editions.
Reflecting on these statistics, Walpole wondered, "If
corporations are relying on these sales, can the rankings therefore
be considered impartial?"
Essentially, "the corporate sector has decided there is money to
be made in helping people make the transition from high school to
college and for the most part, colleges and high schools have been
complicit in allowing them to do this," McDonough said.
The researchers said that one of their main concerns with the
rankings is that they seem to serve only a small group of
college-bound students and not the broadest population
possible.
"What we’re trying to say in the study is that from a society’s
point of view, it is very important to make sure that access to a
valuable resource of society, in this case, college education, is
handled equitably," McDonough said.
Because the rankings tend to be based simply on easily
quantified information, such as SAT scores and GPAs, and do not
address other important issues such as what the student population
is like and other basic information, many students may be misled
into choosing a school that is not right for them, the study
concluded.
"In many ways, what the magazines are doing is putting into
print the common high-status sensibilities and reinforcing people’s
ideas about colleges and universities," Antonio said.
"If you have limited info, and what we think is the wrong info,
then the equity goal is not being well-served," McDonough said.
According to the study, many college counselors’
responsibilities today extend beyond counseling and many of today’s
college-bound students are first-generation university students who
do not necessarily receive advice from their parents or other
adults. Because of this, many may rely more on printed material
rather than personal guidance in their college search.
"What we say in the paper is that information alone is not
enough because there needs to be some adults who are helping young
adults figure out what the individual issues are for each student,"
McDonough said.
The emphasis on academic reputation alone is often spurred on
the institutions themselves, where "the thinking behind trying to
improve the reputation of the school and the taking advantage of
people’s obsession with rankings doesn’t really take into
consideration the students’ best interests," which ultimately hurts
the students, Antonio added.
Some students, too, agreed with the beliefs of the
researchers.
"I don’t believe that U.S. News and World Report presents an
accurate ranking of schools. This is very upsetting because many
prospective college students judge colleges and base their
decisions on which college to attend on these kind of false reports
and don’t consider certain aspects of individual colleges," said
Si-WaiYan, a first-year international economics student who did not
use the rankings in deciding to enroll at UCLA.
"I admit that I looked at the rankings when I selected an
undergraduate college, and will look at them again when I select a
graduate school. But rankings are not the only thing I consider.
… I think that they can be very deceiving and therefore should
not be blindly accepted," said Ken Szeto, a third-year history
student.
The researchers also argued that the rankings do not reflect how
well a university educates its students.
"Colleges like UCLA and Harvard are taking in students that no
matter where they went to college, they would do well," explained
Antonio. "So there are two ways to look at the situation: Do
students choose colleges so that they can develop them or do
colleges choose students so they can add prestige to the college?
Who’s looking out for who?"
"We certainly doubt that any of these newsmagazine rankings or
other special college issues are reliable or impartial to any high
degree … yet it is clear that academic reputation is a powerful
influence on students, more powerful than the advice of
professional advisors or the influence of families," the report
concluded.
Steve Wong, a third-year economics student, summed up the
sentiments of the other students quite simply.
"Certainly I want UCLA to be in the better part of the first
tier, but when it comes down to deciding between schools with
similar academic standards, how can a ranking distinguish between
the two?" he said. "Ultimately, you have to decide on which school
will have the resources that benefit your personal needs the most,
and no ranking can tell you that."
US News and World report on the top 25 business schools
US News and World Report on graduate schools