Forbes Top College List Forces Us To Examine Why We Care About Rankings
Beginning in 2008, Forbes has released its own annual rankings of America’s top colleges, in an effort to make the process more objective. “Unlike other lists, we pointedly ignore ephemeral measures such as school “reputation” and ill-conceived metrics that reward wasteful spending.” Penn debuted at #61 its first year and #83 last year. This year, we climbed back up to #52.
Of course, these rankings are unsettling when we’re used to being at the toppity top, and we could spend the post pretending like we don’t care about this particular set of rankings, but let’s be honest, we all do. None of us applied to Penn just for kicks and our parents certainly don’t empty out their pockets just because they feel like it. So when a credited and established publication like Forbes puts us as #52, we do and should care. The other direction this post could take would be to complain about the rankings and attribute the results to poor criteria and unfounded statistics, but we already kinda did that last year.
This year, we’ve got a new mission on our hands. We are turning off our usual light snark (not forever, don’t worry), and instead of feigning indifference or whining, we are examining how we (as Penn students, members of society, whatever) view rankings and the media that publish them, raise questions about these views, and determine why we put such an emphasis on rankings.
Let’s start with this controversial Forbes list. Does it say something about Forbes? Does it say something about us? Probably both. When Forbes releases its top 500 CEOs every year and half of them are Penn alum, we don’t think twice, and we post it right up. But let’s face it, we’re all pretty skeptical in this case. We begin to question Forbes‘ credibility, which leads to the uncomfortable question: Does this mean we should disregard all Forbes lists or just the ones that don’t jive with our thinking?
When the US News & World Report consistently tells us that we’re in the top ten, we put our full faith and credit in their calculations. They must know, we tell ourselves. They’re the experts, after all. But why are there separate lists for national universities and liberal arts colleges? And if each incoming class is better and brighter than its predecessor, why did we drop from #4 to #5 last year? Was it something we did? And if so, assuming we care enough (and it seems that we do), how do we prevent such a drop in the future?
So here’s the million dollar question: Does Penn’s (usually) high ranking reflect its success as an academic institution or is Penn a “good” school because it gets these high rankings? In other words, are Penn’s education and amenities (for lack of a better word) really so amazing in and of themselves, or is it simply Penn’s reputation that attracts intelligent students and faculty? The answer, we think, is that these two factors push each other forward; a good reputation brings in bright people who in turn create a better reputation, which brings in even more brilliant people, etc. If one of these factors loses its pull, then Penn is just another northeastern urban campus. And that is why we care about rankings: because we recognize that our success is greatly dependent on Penn’s, and if Penn loses its reputation, we lose ours.
Tags: News, caring, forbes, rankings, reputation, us news and world report, why we care
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By thank you on August 5, 2011 at 1:03 pm
thank you for a worthwhile post for once. thank you, thank you, thank you. now sandra, please have morgan finkelstein read this, and tell her this is how intelligent people write.
i do truly appreciate you writing something intelligent. i’m not saying every blog post on utb should be like this, but one every few days would be greatly appreciated.
also, thank god the bachelor is over. i seriously doubt any one read those or cared.
Seconded, “THANK YOU”.
….i cared
I agree with the author’s opinion 100%. We usually tell ourselves the rankings aren’t that big of a deal, but we all know they matter at least somewhat. Higher rankings tend to attract higher quality students, thus (hopefully) pushing the ranking even higher.
I usually just browse the posts and never take the time to comment on this blog, but I felt this was very well-written and especially worthy of complimenting, so, as others have said, thank you!
^this
http://memegenerator.net/instance/9230865
I really like Morgan’s posts. They’re zany and funny and the reason that I started liking this blog in the first place. So maybe I could care less about the Bachelorette; it’s still nice to know that if I did care, I would know a place to read up on episodes I missed. Under the Button has serious posts and funny posts, they make you laugh and they make you cry. And maybe they don’t really make you cry but so what? Nobody puts Under the Button in a corner. UTB RULES!
Maybe the author didn’t intend this, but it comes off as incredibly snotty/snobbish to people and schools of “lower rank”. This is why the people at your internship think you’re stuck up-because their campus blog says things like, “just another northeastern urban campus.” MOST people just go to a regular ol’ campus, it’s not something to be ashamed of. (Success isn’t “greatly dependent” on where you went to school anyway, as evidenced by many a study showing that those who can get into top schools succeed about the same whether they go to a top school or not.)
I also take offence at the last line: “And that is why we care about rankings: because we recognize that our success is greatly dependent on Penn’s, and if Penn loses its reputation, we lose ours.” …is the author projecting her opinion to the entire student body with “we”? Personally, I really could care less whether Penn is #4 or #44 or #444 on any list for my remaining years at Penn. In any case, it just seems like insane insecurity. My personal reputation (what does that even mean?) will not be affected if Penn even gets unaccredited for God’s sake.
To put it another way, do you think less of someone’s reputation if they go to a community college because their parents can’t pay $50,000/year (or whatever FA gives them)? That’s basically what I’m getting…that if Penn doesn’t have a good rep, ‘we’ don’t have a good rep. And it follows, if your school doesn’t have a good rep, you don’t have a good rep.
Finally, in response to ‘thank you’, I don’t think this is an example of “how intelligent people write”. Asking ~15 questions (a quick control F of “?”) doesn’t make for a good essay. The author makes no truly revolutionary stances and more importantly, uses very little outside reporting than her own ‘ideas’, it seems. I’m not against long essays on UTB-in fact, I think it’s better than most formats in terms of creating a dialogue about Penn, but I think the standards should be set higher.
the bachelorette posts were hilarious and smart. please do them every season.
did anyone else notice that 25% of the Forbes rating comes from professors’ scores from ratemyprofessors.com? That has to be the worst way to judge a school ever. Only a tiny fraction of students use that site, and it’s only going to be the disgruntled students who want to complain about a terrible professor. If they’re going to use teacher evaluation data, use real data please!
They also judge 25% based on 4-year grad rates. But Penn is awesome in that it has so many dual degree programs – hence, many students graduate in 5 years…but with two fricking degrees. Yet, that gets penalized in these rankings. wtf
I completely agree with Sandra – ratings matter. Which is why I’m pissed about the stupid criteria Forbes uses. As a distinguished publication, they should really re-think not only their criteria but the data they use to get it…
Without a doubt, Penn is a top 10, if not top 5, school in the country. Personally, I’m offended to have busted my ass for 4 years to be compared with Bryn Mawr, DePauw, and others I’ve never heard of. Thanks for sandwiching us in between Cornell and Vandy, so we don’t feel too bad about ourselves, but FUCK YOU FORBES. Bryn Mawr…really?
Loved this post because it summed up my thoughts better than I ever could.
@Am I The Only One: You are. Maybe not the only one, but certainly you’re in the minority. You wouldn’t have thought the post was snotty if it had been written on a “lower rank” school blog, because the post is essentially about school pride. Perhaps Sandra doesn’t follow the standard writing seminar protocol, but she raises many important questions.
@Forbes’ Ratings: Not only that, but most Penn students don’t even use RateMyProfessor, and I doubt Forbes was thorough enough to find Penn Course Review and actually pull some real data from it. I’m sure other schools have their own form of PCR that were also not taken into account.
you know something’s fishy when your ranked below cornell… in regards to the part about half of Penn alum being on Forbes Top 500 CEO, that is basically contradictory to this ranking which shows how poorly it was done. just sucks that we have to be represented this way by a “respectable” publication.
ever wonder how we know we go to penn? we drop words like ephemeral. thats how
I liked the Bachelorette posts!
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/02/14/110214fa_fact_gladwell
about 18% of the ranking is based on ratings from ratemyprofessor.com. Which of course, is stupid because a student at any given school is rating professors against other professors at THE SAME SCHOOL. So it just measures whether students decided a 2 was “average” or a 3 was “average.” On top of that, nobody here uses ratemyproffessor because of Penn Course Review.
However, it makes it really easy to game the system and spam the ratings of Penn Prof’s with perfect scores. This is the single biggest thing driving down our ranking, and I suggest people go ahead and throw a bunch of perfect ratings in there. Wouldn’t be surprised if other schools do it.
the philosoraptor meme?
Ouch: http://www.ivygateblog.com/2011/08/princeton-review-and-forbes-magazine-pretend-to-rank-the-ivy-leagues/
Philosoraptor makes another appearance:
http://neighborhoods.redeyechicago.com/hyde-park/2011/08/01/the-philosoraptor-test/