Weekly Briefing: Who cares about college rankings?

While students largely ignore the overall picks, some want to know which campuses are strong in their chosen major. ADVERTISEMENT [Weekly Briefing Logo]( Did someone forward you this newsletter? [Sign up free]( to receive your own copy. You can now read The Chronicle on [Apple News]( [Flipboard]( and [Google News](. Do students care about college rankings? It’s been a tough few months for the U.S. News & World Report college rankings. In November, [Yale Law School]( said it would stop cooperating with the publication’s annual evaluations, prompting similar announcements from other law and medical schools. A few undergraduate institutions [opted out as well](. This month the magazine said it would delay the release of its lists of best graduate schools after it received an “unprecedented number of inquiries” from the schools, which can see their rankings before they’re published. Critics of the lists have said rankings do more harm than good because they encourage institutions to admit the privileged students — those whose test scores and ability to pay may elevate the college’s placement in those rankings — instead of working to serve more students. But what do the students actually choosing a college think? After all, according to U.S. News, the lists are there to help them. The Chronicle interviewed over a dozen students on college tours to see what role, if any, college rankings played in their decisions. Hardly any of them had heard about the recent controversies over the rankings. And many students listened to high-school counselors or others who said that “fit” should take precedence over rank. Few students said they relied on rankings, which they understood to be flawed, to make their decisions. However, several students said that they had friends who did care about rankings. The college rankings were created when rates of college attendance were skyrocketing. During the first decades of U.S. News’s standalone America’s Best Colleges guidebook — between 1950 and 1987 — the proportion of young American adults enrolled in college grew from 14 percent to 47 percent. Many of these students were the first in their families to get a higher education; they created a demand for a new, easy way to assess and choose a college. While many students said they didn’t care about rankings, some did consider the top-listed colleges for the fields they wanted to major in — a practice suggested by some high-school counselors. The fact that some students use program rankings, and others put trust in their counselors and others around them, shows that college applicants want some sort of arbiter of quality. Students aren’t the only consumers of the rankings. College counselors at some public and private schools reported that they still use U.S. News and other lists to help students figure out where to apply. Richard Tench, a counselor at Saint Albans, a public high school in West Virginia, said about half of his students plan to attend four-year institutions. He said he advises them to use the rankings lists to find colleges’ retention and graduation rates, which are listed on institutional-profile pages, and the rankings for specific fields that students may want to major in. Tench said the lists can help expand students’ views and help them focus on colleges with good graduation outcomes. [Read more from our Francie Diep](. ADVERTISEMENT NEWSLETTER [Sign Up for the Teaching Newsletter]( Find insights to improve teaching and learning across your campus. Delivered on Thursdays. To read this newsletter as soon as it sends, [sign up]( to receive it in your email inbox. Lagniappe - Read. 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