Education

Meddling In College Admission


Well, it has happened again—evidence of meddling in elections. As the United States presidential election draws close, with it, stories abound of foreign entities interfering in an effort to influence the outcome of our political process. I want to shed light on the more blatant meddling that has long been conspicuously contrived in the culture of college admission—commercial rankings. 

That’s right, earlier this fall, U.S. News & World Report released their annual “Best College Rankings.” Predictably, college and university marketing and communication teams have wasted no time in touting their school’s standings in these flawed and harmful commercial indices. Sadly, too many students and families have taken the bait, seemingly unaware (or at least unconcerned) of how they are being played.

As a nation, we celebrate our liberty and go to great lengths to protect our freedom of choice. When we fear that this independence is being manipulated, we revolt, protest, and legislate. Yet, like lemmings, we remain deferential to others influencing where we apply to college based on where a name falls on a list. Meanwhile, we condone the obvious ways that colleges are complicit in yielding to the power and impact of these rankings. Where is the outrage?

A history of hysteria

To be sure, U.S. News is not the only ranking enterprise. Throughout the fall, multiple sources have released their annual commercial rankings—from Niche and Princeton Review to Washington Monthly and The Wall Street Journal. They all have their flaws and unquestionably contribute to the misleading and toxic culture around selective college admission. Together, they feed the obsession with status and prestige, simultaneously driving institutional policy and personal pressure. Students and schools are exploited to fixate on achievement and reputation rather than engagement and mission. This malady has multiplied over the past decades and while other companies have shared in the spread, U.S. News has led the corrupting charge since the 1980s.

In his new book “Who Gets In And Why: A Year Inside College Admission”, author Jeff Selingo provides a comprehensive look at the history of the U.S. News rankings and their ongoing impact. He specifically unpacks how Northeastern University intentionally manipulated the rankings and successfully elevated their standing. But at what toll? Selingo writes, “In many ways, rankings have become the tail that wags the dog in higher education. The race for prestige has produced winners among colleges, their presidents, and trustees, as well as their alumni who feel their degree is worth so much more now than the day they graduated. But many of those victories have come at a cost to applicants and society as a whole.” He adds, “prospective students are too often blinded by prestige and fail to take inventory during their search about what they really want out of college.” 

Selingo also points to studies that show the enormous financial burden that colleges must assume to climb in the rankings, and how this contributes to rising tuition costs. In another recent piece in The Chronicle of Higher Education“The Rules of The Game: How the U.S. News rankings helped reshape one state’s public colleges”, journalist Francie Diep, provides an in-depth look at how the University of Florida, much like Northeastern, set out to increase their ranking. Diep shows how this fixation changed the whole structure of funding for public education in the State.

Polluting policy and practice

Commercial rankings undeniably prescribe policy and practice decisions in admission. The criteria for rankings change and, like a reflex test, colleges and universities jerk their knees. This trend is evident in so many areas of the process, but perhaps most pronounced with testing and the proliferation of Early Decision (ED) applications.

As we watch the pandemic hopefully begin to loosen the long term grip of the SAT and ACT on college admission, it also reveals the obsession we have with standardized testing. Despite a growing test-optional wave, families are traveling across the country to find a testing site for their children in the hope that a high score will give them a leg up in the Hunger Games of the selective admission process. Why has this spun out of control? In a recent piece for The Atlantic, Selingo wrote, “The tests became cemented in the admission process when U.S. News & World Report chose test scores as an important element in its college rankings. Colleges felt compelled to report high average scores in order to retain their place in the higher-education hierarchy and keep applications flowing.”

The escalation of ED applications is another example of how policy is sculpted, not by student development or educational pedagogy, but by corporate interest and an unhealthy fixation on climbing the rankings. In his book, Selingo describes the evolution of ED since the 1950s, writing, “the surge of millennials arriving on college campuses allowed colleges to worry less about filling beds and more on using ED to game the rankings,” through controlling yield and selectivity. He explains that “in this game, few moves are as consequential as early decision. Indeed, few things have contributed as much to the insanity of the admission process.” Selingo adds, “it has been called a ‘racket’ that ‘penalizes nearly everyone’ by the former editor of U.S. News and World Report, the same organization that produces the rankings that early decision is partly designed to game.”

What is it going to take?

There have been countless articles and books written that accentuate how absurd and arbitrary commercial college rankings are. Denise Pope is one of the founders of Challenge Success, a nonprofit organization affiliated with the Stanford Graduate School of Education. They wrote a white paper, “A ‘Fit’ Over Rankings: Why College Engagement Matters More Than Selectivity” that reviewed the literature and research on rankings and college outcomes. She explains, “Our hope is that by sharing research that consistently demonstrates that the selectivity of a college does not have a long-term impact on learning, future job prospects, future thriving, etc., we can begin to move the needle and focus on what really matters—it’s not where you go to college, but what you do once you get there that matters.” 

Even as hard evidence such as this encourages students and parents to ignore the rankings, the cultural capital of a prestigious college, as suggested by these lists of top schools, inevitably sucks consumers in. Selingo reports that U.S. News and World Report had 29 million unique views to their website in 2019. It will require a collaborative and intentional effort to undo this obsession and see it for what it really is, corporate greed, not a public good.

Richard Weissbourd is the faculty director of Making Caring Common, a project of the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He is the lead author of the Turning the Tide report, a collaborative statement from admission leaders that seeks to reduce achievement pressure, emphasize ethical engagement, and level the playing field in college admission. Weissbourd invites colleges and universities to speak out against the rankings and the messages they send to applicants about what matters. Instead of touting their standings as compared to peer schools and celebrating how selective they are, he says, “it’s important that the admission profession looks for innovative, powerful and effective ways to deliver high-quality information about searching for, applying to, and affording higher education.“ He adds, “commercial rankings tend to unnecessarily dial-up achievement pressure and often end up undermining equity, access, and student success.”

Who will lead the way?

Colleges and universities need to stop feeding the beast. We all want our leaders to stand up and speak out when they see interference in our political system. This is true for colleges as well. Who will call these numbers into question—who will lead? Unless your school’s mission includes a statement about maintaining a certain standing in the rankings, stop touting them like they matter. Focus your marketing and messaging around who you are as an institution and what you do for students and society, rather than where you fall in an arbitrary list of the “best schools.” As a school counselor, when I receive one of the countless emails from colleges bragging about their rank, I find myself less likely to recommend that school to students, as clearly their institutional priorities are misplaced. 

College leaders must refuse to respond to requests for information from commercial ranking companies. A fifth of the U.S. News and World Report methodology for ranking the best schools is based on “expert opinion”. They solicit this input through a peer assessment survey sent to college presidents, provosts, and admission leaders. This glorified popularity contest leaves room for uninformed judgments and gaming of the rankings. Furthermore, an obsession with rankings can lead colleges to inflate or misreport data, which ultimately, when revealed, does more harm to a school’s reputation. The global pandemic has demonstrated that institutions can pivot in policy and practice when it is the right change for students, as with the growing test-optional movement. Educate your trustees, alumni, and institutional leaders about the realities and harms of rankings—and then just stop.

Parents, we all want the best for our children, but are we willing to let someone else tell us what that is? Just like in a political election, you would hopefully never take one poll at face value to cast your vote, similarly, you should not with the rankings. We need a thinking electorate, and we need grounded parents in this experience. Do your research—don’t be led by a big machine. If you are concerned with the rank of the schools to which your student is applying, stop, and ask yourself, why? Is it ego—some kind of twisted referendum on your job as a parent? Are you stuck in what Rick Clark, director undergraduate admission at Georgia Tech, describes as the “echo chamber of college admission”? This happens when decisions about college are made based on the assumptions and perspectives of those around you and not by a true understanding of WHY your child is going to college. What are their goals, and what kind of experience do they want to have? No ranking can tell you that, so free yourself—and especially your child—from these restrictive parameters. You will both be better for it.

Companies need to step up and speak out against rankings. This is a plea to c-suite executives, business leaders, Silicon Valley moguls, and elite professional service (EPS) firms—those that are considered to be the top investment banks, management consultants, and law firms. Be vocally opposed to college rankings and more transparent about what you value in hiring. Perhaps then students and their families would truly believe that it is not where you go to college, it’s what you do. Research from Gallup and others, like Stacy Dale and Alan Krueger, reinforces this truth. If you want a productive, engaged, and fulfilled workforce, do this now.

High school and college students are not ones to sit idly by when there are inequities, unjust practices, or threats to the well-being of their generation. From climate change and gun violence to racism and more, they are unafraid to speak truth to power. Therefore, I can only surmise that young people are unaware of how they are pawns in corporate meddling with their freedom of choice in education. On some college campuses, students are increasingly rebelling against what they perceive to be the corporatization of higher education. I would argue that much of this begins with rankings and the power they yield over everything from faculty salaries to bond ratings. Students, it is time to speak out—call out your institutions when they comply with, and celebrate rankings. Boycott companies and schools that advertise on commercial ranking websites and publications and you will find that your dollars speak loudly. Just like so much of our country’s hope is you politically, you can act and vote with your feet—and your head. Don’t be one of those sheep who flock to these lists to conduct your college search. 

Who is meddling in your college search?

Bob Massa is the vice president emeritus of enrollment & college relations at Dickinson College and an adjunct professor of higher education at The University of Southern California. He says, “The fact is that the public loves rankings. The ranking of colleges absolves students from doing serious work to find the right set of colleges to consider.” Again, students, take control of your college search and make your own decisions. Resist the meddling of rigged rankings, and be aware of the opinions of those in your “echo chamber”—friends, relatives, neighbors, coaches, teacher, and others—and how they influence you. Consider the experience YOU want to have in college and make choices based on your intentional reflection and research. Find your voice, and use it. Some of you will be of age to vote in the November presidential election, and I implore you to exercise this important responsibility. Others will have to wait four years for this privilege. Where you hope to spend these next four years is a choice YOU get to make, so protect the integrity and autonomy of this decision and think for yourself.



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