In 2022, Columbia University math professor Michael Thaddeus published a 21-page analysis accusing his own university of submitting flawed data to U.S. News & World Report. His findings would cause the entire academic world to question the legitimacy of college rankings. For a transcript of this episode: https://bit.ly/campusfiles-transcripts To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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In 2022, Columbia University celebrated its most competitive admission cycle to date. Over 40,000 students applied for undergraduate spots and fewer than 6% made the cut. The reason for this unprecedented surge might've had something to do with the school's most recent accolade.
US News and World Report had just named Columbia the second best university in the country, right behind Princeton and tied with Harvard. But just as Columbia's new freshman class settled into campus, a shocking revelation surfaced. Their university admitted that it had cheated its way to the top. I'm Margo Gray.
This week on Campus Files, we explore the extraordinary measures that universities will take to climb the college rankings. Think about the last time you bought something. A vacuum cleaner, a mattress, maybe a water bottle. Chances are you did a little research, sifted through brands, and tried to find the best option out there.
Well, I suppose we are a competitive society, and we are very much a consumerist society, and many of us are status seekers. So all of those things contribute to this preoccupation with rankings that you see almost everywhere in our society.
This is Colin Diver, author of Breaking Ranks, How the Rankings Industry Rules Higher Education and What to Do About It. He also served as the dean of the University of Pennsylvania Law School and as president of Reed College.
We want to know whether we're buying good products, whether we're going to vacation in good places, and of course, whether we are sending our kids to good schools.
Few investments feel as significant as choosing a college. It's a decision with long-term consequences, one that shapes careers, friendships, and future opportunities. With so much at stake, it's only natural to want to make the best possible choice. But with thousands of universities to consider, the decision is anything but easy.
going back to the beginning of the 20th century, from time to time, people thought, gee, there ought to be a ranking of schools. So they would come up with something and they would do it for a year or two, and then they would abandon it. But none of them were anywhere near like the systematic ongoing annual rankings that started with the US News rankings.
In 1983, US News and World Report stepped in to fill the void, releasing its first ever ranking of the best colleges. The methodology was rudimentary, to say the least. The magazine sent a survey to university presidents, asking them to name up to 10 schools they believed offered the best undergraduate education. U.S.
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