Breaking ranks:Ratings creep for colleges means students might be overpaying
Frederick M. Hess, Taryn Hochleitner | The Daily
It’s June, and millions of high school seniors have chosen a college — a choice often made with the help of college-ranking guides like Barron’s or U.S. News and World Report. Unfortunately, families may not know higher education’s dirty secret: these rankings mean a lot less than you might think.
More and more schools are entering the top tiers of competitiveness rankings in the respected Barron’s Profiles of American Colleges, largely because of application and grade inflation — not increased academic quality. Indeed, between 1991 and 2011, the number of schools ranked by Barron’s as “most competitive” increased from 44 to 87. While the usual suspects maintained their high ranking (Harvard, Princeton, Yale, etc.), the list grew to include schools that were previously ranked at least two tiers down, like George Washington University and the University of Southern California — and the share of institutions in the top three categories has risen from less than a quarter to nearly a third.
https://www.aei.org/article/education/higher-education/consumer-information/breaking-ranks/