What's In a Ranking?

The latest U.S. News and World Report college rankings just came out, and as usual, it comes with the usual hand-wringing around the validity of the rankings and how their effect upon recruiting and matriculation incentivize wrong-headed behavior by college administrators.

While I think it's fair to debate the legitimacy and the inherent "good" in rankings, I'm not going to provide the "holier than thou" response that rankings don't matter, because it's clear that they do. They matter insomuch as demand for schools is largely influenced by the rankings, colleges adapt to make their rankings higher, and it's naive to believe that companies and graduate schools don't take into consideration the college of a given applicant, which tends to tilt more favorably towards those who graduate from higher ranking schools.

I'll give an example of a friend who went to Rutgers University, who in the context of discussing friends who went to Ivy League schools scoffed, "My point of view is that where you go to college doesn't matter." I let it go, but I couldn't help but think, "Baloney. If you really believed that, you would have gone to Middlesex County College and saved yourself thousands of dollars."

The typical argument debunking the relevance of rankings or prestige is that there are people who went to Podunk Regional College that are CEO's or are presently serving as the chief surgeon at Whatever Medical Center. Absolutely. The premise is not that getting a degree from a non-prestigious or non-highly ranked college will doom you to a life of poverty. Similarly, the premise is not that getting a degree from Harvard or Yale guarantees you "success" or that you'll never be bypassed on the corporate ladder by aforementioned Podunk Regional College graduate. The premise, or at least my theory, is that holding a degree from a highly ranked school can more likely give you a better chance of getting opportunity (whether it be an interview or a new job position) compared to those without such a degree. But once the horses are on the proverbial racetrack, the degrees don't matter and then it becomes a matter of how one performs in any given position.

A related theory is that having a degree from a college will set the "floor" of your success, but the sky's the limit for anyone. Personal work ethic, skill, talent and serendipity ends up being the great equalizer regardless of where one went to college. The theory goes that while a person from a less prestigious college will generally do no worse than X (defined as success in a given field), people with a higher ranked degree will generally do no worse than more than X. Again, the theory allows for exceptions, especially on the upside end.

Look, I'm not an apologist for rankings - I'm just making a point that they actually matter. It can be argued that the rankings of the schools is arbitrary and self-perpetuating, and one can make a pretty convincing argument that most of these rankings do a terrible, terrible job of valuing the quality of teaching. Hmm... don't you think that should overwhelmingly be the most important factor in assessing a college?

So when Dartmouth College (congrats to all my Big Green friends) tops the category for "commitment to undergraduate teaching" but somehow scores out of the Top 7, does anyone else think there's something wrong here?