What’s New
U.S. News & World Report’s “Best Colleges” lists for 2024 are out today. Although the publisher often makes tweaks to its ranking formula from year to year, the company’s leaders are calling this year’s revisions “the most significant methodological change in the rankings’ history.”
The vast majority of national colleges appeared to participate in this year’s undergraduate rankings by turning in U.S. News’ extensive data survey. U.S. News marked about 90 percent of institutions in its “National Universities” and “National Liberal Arts Colleges” lists as data submitters. That’s a much higher participation rate than for the magazine’s most recent law-school rankings, which many deans boycotted. Almost a third of law schools didn’t respond to that survey.
The Details
Measures new to the “National Universities” methodology this year included how many of a college’s graduates earn more than the average young adult who has only a high-school diploma, the graduation rates of first-generation students at the college, and measures of faculty members’ citations and the prestige of their publications. To make room for these new factors, U.S. News dropped metrics such as class sizes, the proportion of faculty who have terminal degrees in their fields, and alumni donation rates.
The most important factor in the rankings, a college’s reputation as measured by a survey that college leaders fill out, is still worth 20 percent of the college’s overall score.
“Significant changes were made to the methodology for the 2024 Best Colleges edition to place greater emphasis on outcome measures,” Eric Brooks, principal data analyst for U.S. News’ education rankings, wrote in an email. More than half of a college’s ranking now depends on its students’ outcomes, such as the graduation rates of different populations, he pointed out. The data team made these methodological changes because surveys suggest that prospective students tend to care most about a college’s academic reputation, cost, and return on investment, he wrote.
Several mid- and low-ranking colleges made significant jumps, like the University of Texas at San Antonio (from the unranked bottom quintile to No. 280) and the University of Nevada at Reno (from No. 263 to No. 195). The new graduation, earnings, and debt measures tended to help public colleges that graduate students with in-demand degrees, Brooks wrote.
Nevertheless, despite the formula overhaul, the tops of the national lists look familiar. Princeton University maintains its longstanding No. 1 spot among national colleges, followed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Harvard and Stanford Universities tie for third place. The best liberal-arts colleges are said to be Williams, Amherst, and the U.S. Naval Academy, which did well last year, too, at sixth place.
Few well-ranked, brand-name colleges are noted as not having submitted a data survey this year. After months of agitation from law and medical schools, and public discussion about the value and harm of college rankings, there’s no one new to add to the boycotters’ list.
The Backdrop
After law- and medical-school deans protested the rankings last fall and winter, rankings watchers have wondered if colleges would follow suit by ending cooperation with the undergraduate-programs lists. After all, the criticisms lobbed against the professional programs’ formulas often applied to the college rankings too: that they reward wealth and prestige, not benefits to society; that they incentivize the wrong investments.
More than half of a college’s ranking now depends on its students’ outcomes, such as the graduation rates of different populations.
But the rebellion seems to have died with the undergraduate lists. A spokesperson for Yale University, which led the law-school insurrection, confirmed that the university submitted data for the “Best Colleges” lists this year. Nonsubmitters tended to be institutions with low rankings who may have found that the benefits of cooperating aren’t worth the many hours it takes to fill out U.S. News’ data survey, or simply didn’t have the resources to do so.
U.S. News’ analysts say the changes to their methodology help them serve prospective students better. The revisions may help the data-crunchers, too. This spring, Columbia University was found to have submitted inaccurate numbers for its class sizes, faculty members with terminal degrees, and other measures, resulting in an inflated ranking. Alumni donation rate is known among college fund raisers as a gameable metric. Now, U.S. News analysts have eliminated those measures so they don’t have to deal with them. In addition, the nixed metrics are all ones that colleges don’t submit to the federal government and so can be harder for independent rankers, like U.S. News, to get without colleges’ cooperation. Now, it’s easier for U.S. News to rank colleges even when they don’t cooperate.
The Stakes
U.S. News remains the gorilla in the room, with institutions writing the ranking into their strategic plans, and paying thousands of dollars a year for data to help them climb. There are signs its influence on prospective students may be fading, however.
In a recent survey by Art & Science Group, a higher-ed consultancy, a nationally representative sample of high-school seniors reported on which rankings, if any, they used to help them decide where to go to college. Forty-two percent of the survey-takers said they didn’t consider any at all. Among the 58 percent who did consider them, U.S. News was the most popular ranker, with 22 percent of seniors saying they looked at the publisher’s lists. But U.S. News’ market share seems to have fallen in recent years. In a similar poll in 2016, Art & Science Group found 27 percent of seniors said they looked at U.S. News.
Compared with their counterparts in a pre-social-media and -smartphone era, prospective students today can easily get information about colleges from many more sources, including posts by current students, said Nanci Tessier, a principal at Art & Science Group. Prospective students can also search the internet and compare several publishers’ rankings, as they reported doing to The Chronicle this past spring.
