5 Tricks Universities Play To Boost Rankings
Thursday, June 11th, 2009So you thought you were scheming? Conniving? Clever? You didn’t quite lie on your college application, but you when you said you “played the trumpet for three years”, by “three years” you really meant one and by “played” you meant you played an altered version of mini golf with it. Chances are, the same institutions you sent your work of fiction to are engaged in their own fact-altering behavior for better college reviews.Last week’s blog post by Inside Higher Ed exposed Clemson University for manipulating information in order to get a higher ranking in popular college reviews. Just how you’re not the only one to fib in your college application, neither is Clemson the only guilty university. There’s no way of knowing exactly to what extent and how many schools have scammed their way up the college reviews.
We know, you’re savvy, and you can’t kid a kidder. But we thought we’d give you a heads up anyways. So check out these devious little moves schools have pulled in order to up their chances of making the top twenty-list.
1. Inflating the number of members of national professional associations. University of South California’s Viterbi School of Engineering (the 7th national engineering graduate school) presented to U.S News & World Report a list of 34 faculty members it claims are in the National Academy of Engineering Surprise surprise, the number of NAE members on the faculty is a rank- boosting criterion. The truth, USC has only 22 members on its faculty. While USC was only supposed to list NAE members who were full-time faculty members, the school stretched the truth to include part-timers and administrators who are NAE members but don’t teach.
2. Having school officials rank other programs as inferior to their own. Inside Higher Ed cited Clemson University, whose officials rate all programs other than Clemson’s as below average to make the university look better. Wow, that’s weak, even peer marking doesn’t usually sink to that level.
3. Making big classes bigger. Small class size is another ranking benchmark. The measures are for classes below twenty, and over fifty. Classes below twenty get extra points. Once a class size surpasses fifty students, it’s stuck in a certain category. You know those intro classes you sit in and feel like you’re at a sporting event? With nothing to lose, the instant that class size passes the fifty person mark, Universities swing the doors wide open until every nook in every isle has a freshman crouching in it.
4. Higher faculty salaries. The money comes from increased spending, made available by the higher tuition students pay. Washington University in St. Louis was exposed for using this kind of tactic to ameliorate their college review. Something is really whack about paying more to go to a school that is highly ranked, but is highly ranked because you pay more.
5. The Velvet Rope waiting list. Does it feel like getting into some universities is like waiting to get into an exclusive club? That’s cuz it is. Universities deliberately encourage additional applications. They were going to let in the same number of students all along, but additional applicants makes the accepted percentage lower, thus making them look more exclusive. Accepted rate goes down college ranking goes up. Plus they pocket a nifty little application fee along the way…
We’re not saying rankings are bad… but they ain’t the holy bible either. Take them with a grain of salt and remember that Universities, and selling Magazines, are running businesses too.
