On April 25, 2023, U.S. News & World Report released their 2023–2024 “Best Graduate Schools” ranking list, which compares notable universities based on the merits of their specific graduate programs. While the methodology for the graduate school ranking list that was released in April was somewhat improved (namely by giving less weight to reputation and more to “outcome measures”), the topic of university rankings still echoes shrill in many ears, from University of Michigan students to New York Times columnists. Despite this slight shift in methodology, critics of U.S. News are unlikely to be placated. The undergraduate rankings remain unchanged and metrics of their various other lists also remain untouched, such as the questionable rankings of business schools by faculty surveys.
While the ranking list has been heavily debated and criticized in a variety of spaces such as Forbes and multiple student publications, its use and notoriety seem inevitable. Every year, despite heavy criticism, millions of prospective students use the U.S. News & World Report rankings to better understand how different higher education institutions compare to each other. While the fabrication of semantical lists may be inevitable, a dive into the consequences of these lists and how we as students consume them is a necessary step in mitigating the negative effects of college rankings as a whole.
The psychology behind college rankings is primarily driven by two facts: Students want the best education available to them, and navigating higher education is an intricate and convoluted process. In the words of The Michigan Daily’s own Darrin Zhou, “college rankings sell simplicity.” And the more complexity prevails, the more people seek simplicity.
One of the unfortunate side effects of this simplicity is that it builds a level of elitism for certain institutions. Before the years of U.S. News’ monopoly on college rankings, the elite status of certain institutions was based on word-of-mouth, which then informed the rankings. However, the problem now is that this elitism is grounded in relatively trivial metrics that create an environment wherein prospective students don’t often know the more personalized truth about certain universities.
In response to these developments, several institutions often understood to be elite, institutions have pulled out of the list in protest of the unfair and meaningless rankings. These institutions include Harvard Law School, Harvard Medical School, Columbia Medical School and Stanford Law School. However, it’s important to note that these institutions were afforded the opportunity to pull out of the list because of their name-recognition and reputation — other, lesser-known colleges are without this privilege.
Additionally, just because colleges pull out of rankings doesn’t stop people from using other metrics to determine their prestige. Students often choose which schools might be the best fit for them based on how elite they understand the institution to be, which is informed, but not entirely decided, by the U.S News rankings. Other factors that play a role in establishing the reputation of an institution are the barriers to entry, or how hard it is to get in. The role that acceptance rates and ranking lists play in perpetuating the idea of elitism in universities is a harmful one.
Students are sold the idea that it is these factors, verified and consolidated by a reputable source like the U.S. News & World Report, that determine what makes one institution better than the other. This false sense of elitism fails to capture the individual experience that any given student can have at an institution of higher education.
Such a ranking system, in which universities sit on a one-dimensional axis of best to worst, is not a viable way to select among the countless options — at least not as a primary measure. The inherent problems are clear: So many factors cannot possibly be boiled down fairly into a single statistic; the dominance of old and wealthy schools is essentially unshakeable and smaller (and likely cheaper) universities are left to languish in the stigma of the double- or triple-digits.
Students literally pay the price for these structural deficiencies. The omnipresence of expensive private schools on lists of top colleges drives up tuition costs and privileges the wealthiest students to boost university standings. Hopeful graduates definitely feel the stigma of attending community college or low-ranking universities, and may feel pressured to take out enormous loans for a bigger name on a diploma.
Moreover, the mental health of the student body is constantly attacked by the stress of living up to a university’s rank or the shame of settling for a lower-status college. It is difficult for many students to recognize that social expectations and the requirements of the job market should not outweigh their self-esteem as individuals.
Simultaneously, ranking related items is an integral process of human nature, and allows us to make choices between competing items with confidence. Therefore, it is not the existence of these lists that is the principal concern; it is confidence in lists such as the U.S. News & World Report rankings that obfuscates the difficult process of choosing which four-year institutions are right for any individual person. All prospective college students have their own unique interests and preferences. To ignore the fact of this personal choice and place all trust in an outside observer’s judgment of prestige has created a situation where such rankings have become far more relevant than they otherwise would be.
This combined inevitability and heavy reliance on college rankings leads to an inflation of a certain institution’s position based on ingredients such as prestige and endowment. We have already seen how such priorities affect the application decisions of prospective students, and the negative consequences of deciding to attend a college where a student is bound to be unhappy. Ideally, these ingredients are no more significant than any other in shaping our perception of a university, but the consequences of these rankings should compel us to change how we consume collegiate rankings.
Rather than hyperfixating on the intricacies of ranking decisions, incoming students should take a more personal approach in the application process and consider what they value most for their four-year college experience. By taking a more balanced approach, students can generate a far more nuanced assessment of which colleges are best for their individual interests. While college rankings can be a convenient starting point when drafting colleges of interest, they should never be the deciding factor between one institution or another. When making such a fundamental error, students relinquish priority of what they individually value in their prospective experience. In the figurative roulette wheel that often is college admissions, such a decision is especially harrowing. These rankings make it easy to determine which universities are better than others, but choosing what universities are best for oneself should never be that simple.