Inflated College Rankings
Ever since we started writing our book…
Maybe it’s my reticular system noticing questions and articles on education. Maybe it’s the law of attraction. Either way readers and friends keep sending me articles and asking me questions. Most recently a friend sent me an article from National Review on inflated college rankings. They wrote a great article Beware College Rankings.
In this article they look at Barrons’s Profiles of American Colleges. In the last decade the number of schools earning the top rating “most competitive” went from 54 to 82 (a 52% increase). The number of schools earning the next best rating “highly competitive” increased from 92 to 109 (an 18% increase). Did Barrons relax their standards? Not at all. What has happened is grade inflation.
Barrons rates schools based on:
- Class ranking
- GPAs
- SAT scores
What appears to have caused the increase? The GPA of high school students has creeped up over the last decade. This has occurred without an increase in SAT scores or other indicators of educational achievement.
The dubious value of ivy league schools
This just confirms that elite schools provide minimal additional value. This is backed up by research and by personal experience. What I’ve found is that after a couple years no one cares what school you attended. What they care about is your skills and performance.
Think about it. When you go see your accountant do you ask him/her where they went to school? Does a judge ask a lawyer about their law school? In almost every case what matters is what you can do and how you perform.
It’s why we are writing our book. We wanted to provide people a high quality lower cost alternative. It is possible to get a top quality education at a fraction of the cost (12% of the cost of in state tuition, 7% of the cost of out of state tuition, and 5% of the cost of private colleges).
