You are College and university annual rankings They had some credibility, especially when they were carried out by major newspapers like News and World Report. Many families and students looked at these annual rankings to see which American university would be the best place to enroll. However, recently, the strength of this university rankings, It is increasingly decreasing, mainly due to large universities dropping out of the list.
Discredited
Recent scandals, data fraud and even bribery: these are some of the reasons why these ratings have been discredited across the country. Check it out below:
Teacher accuses college
At one of the most famous colleges in the United States, Columbia, one of the same professors was accused of falsifying the data in order to be better placed in these rankings given by the major newspapers. This story happened last year, leaving the institution out of that year’s ranking and dropping from second to eighteenth in the 2023 ranking.
This fact caught the attention of the community, which began to question the reliability and malleability of the ratings. This was a recent shock to the evaluation system, as it was based on data provided by the colleges themselves and from some of the students selected by the universities.
He left Yale and Harvard
The shock was so great that two of the country’s largest universities wanted to leave the rankings, claiming that their reputations could not be linked to lists without credibility. They have recently asked through official means not to mention the names of the institutions in it Categories.
Bribery scandals
Despite recent events, there have been old scandals regarding ratings fraud. It was previously reported by newspapers at the time that some universities were bribing journalists to increase their grades and make positive comments to the university in order to increase the university’s popularity.
Since nothing was really proven, the case was hushed up, but since then the credibility of these classifications has been diminishing until it has reached the point where we are today.
Internet influence
The arrival of the Internet, and the subsequent decline in the popularity of newspapers, was another reason why ratings were not as highly regarded as they once were. Despite this, many universities still want to cooperate with these lists, because for them it is free publicity, and that whether we like it or not, it still attracts new students to campus.
