Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Colleges ranked by value added

The choice of college is among the most important investment decisions individuals and families make, yet people know little about how institutions of higher learning compare along important dimensions of quality. This is especially true for colleges granting credentials of two years or less, which graduate two out of five postsecondary graduates. Moreover, popular rankings from U.S. News, Forbes, and Money focus only on a small fraction of four-year colleges and tend to reward highly selective institutions over those that may contribute the most to student success.

Drawing on government and private sources, this report analyzes college “value-added,” the difference between actual alumni outcomes (like salaries) and the outcomes one would expect given a student’s characteristics and the type of institution. Value-added captures the benefits that accrue from aspects of college quality we can measure, such as graduation rates and the market value of the skills a college teaches, as well as aspects we can’t.

The value-added measures introduced here improve on conventional rankings in several ways. They are available for a much larger number of schools; they focus on the factors that best predict measurable economic outcomes; and they attempt to isolate the effect colleges themselves have on those outcomes, above and beyond what students’ backgrounds would predict.

TO: All students wondering “Can I get into my dream college?”
CC: All parents wondering “Can we afford it?”
FROM: Educational consultant Kristin M. White

MEMO: COLLEGE RANKINGS DON’T MATTER. This claim might sound crazy, but it’s true: Research shows that where you go to school makes little difference to future financial success or quality of life—personal qualities such as ambition, perseverance, and a sense of purpose are all more important.

Kristin M. White has helped hundreds of parents and students look beyond the dream-school hype and focus on what’s most important. Now, in It’s the Student, Not the College, she shows how to avoid unrepayable debt and set yourself up to grow, excel, and enjoy yourself at any school.

Instead of obsessing over GPA cutoffs and SAT scores, students will learn how to build a personal “Success Profile”—by adopting the traits that help stellar students make the grade in school and life. Plus . . .
•Why what you do in school counts more than where you go
•14 surefire ways to develop your Success Profile as a student and beyond
•Criteria to consider when choosing a college
•How to find a good fit for your family’s finances
•And tips for graduating career-ready and landing a great first job.
Expensive, elite colleges have too much sway over the minds and bank accounts of students and parents. It’s the Student, Not the College breaks that stranglehold—and reveals the real secrets of success.

For decades, Americans have been infatuated with the U.S. News college rankings, which is foolish because those rankings have almost nothing to do with educational results and everything to do with input measures and subjective estimates of “reputation.” (For the Pope Center’s assessment, see this paper Michael Lowrey and I wrote in 2004.) Quite a few rival college rankings have appeared on the scene, but so far not one has put much of a dent in the dominance of U.S. News. The Brookings system is vastly superior, and might do so.

One reason for liking it is that the data help to crush some mistaken notions about higher education. We often hear, for instance, that students should always prefer the most prestigious school they can possibly get into because they do so much more to enhance a student’s chances for success.

But that’s not necessarily so. Near the top of the four-year schools, we find Harvard and Drake University (Des Moines, Iowa) with almost identical numbers. Apparently, Drake is doing quite a lot for most of its students. Good students who can’t get into Harvard or other elite universities shouldn’t despair because it’s possible to get a good, useful education at colleges few people have heard of. That, incidentally, is the point of Frank Bruni’s recent book Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be, which I reviewed here. The Brookings results support his argument.

Let's just set aside the obvious problems of monetizing humans for a bit, and focus on the idea that improving college rankings is a lot like adding after-market accessories to an old Yugo.

I often tell students that when I was selecting colleges for both undergraduate and graduate school, the things that turned out to matter most to me were not the things I agonized over in deciding.

Now that I am 25+ years beyond the PhD, I feel fortunate to have had great experiences and opportunities as a student that led to a gratifying career, despite being clueless in the college selection process.

Would you care to share those things which mattered most, but were not considered in your selection process?

"Excellent Sheep"[/i] ]The compulsive overachievement of today's elite college students-- the sense that they need to keep running as fast as they can-- is not the only thing that keeps them from forming the deeper relationships that might relieve their anguish.

Isolated from their peers, these kids are also cut off from themselves. The endless hoop-jumping... that got them into an elite college in the first place--the clubs, bands, projects, teams, APs, SATs, evenings, weekends, summers, coaches , tutors, leadership, service -- left them no time to figure out what they want out of life.

Too many students, perhaps after a year or two spent using college as a treadmill to nowhere, wake up in crisis, not knowing why they have worked so hard.

"I hate all my activities, I hate all my classes, I hated everything I did in high school, expect to hate my job, and this is just how it's going to be for the rest of my life."

The result is what we might refer to as credentialism. The purpose of life becomes the accumulation of gold stars. Hence the relentless extracurricular busyness, the neglect of learning as an end in itself, the inability to imagine doing something that you can't put on your resume...the constant sense of competition....to be played out within the same narrow conception of what constitutes a valid life: affluence, credentials, and prestige.

If those of us who went to college in the 1970s and '80s no longer recognize the admissions process, if today's elite students appear to be an alien species --Super People, perhaps, or a race of bionic hamsters