All Posts Tagged: 'U.S. News & World Report'


The Soul of Trinity

February 13th, 2010 | Category: Undergraduate Education

I heartily recommend Daniel DeVise’s profile of Trinity Washington University president Pat McGuire in this weekend’s Washington Post magazine. McGuire and her colleagues embody much of what is good and right about higher education. By transforming a failing women’s college into thriving university dedicated to serving minority and first-generation students, she is working in the [...]

America’s Worst Colleges

October 6th, 2008 | Category: Undergraduate Education

If you write enough blog posts on a given topic, eventually p.r. people will start emailing you stuff in hopes of getting a mention. So it was a while back when someone from RADAR magazine sent me an advance copy of their annual list of “America’s Worst Colleges.” It’s funny and some of it is [...]

Unigo

September 24th, 2008 | Category: Undergraduate Education

The U.S. News & World Report college rankings will be irrelevant in three years and dead in ten. They will not be killed by outright competitors like the Princeton Review, the Fiske Guide to Colleges, or even the recent Forbes magazine rankings utilizing Ratemyprofessor.com. They’ll be slayed by a 20-something named Jordan Goldman.
Goldman is not [...]

Fame and Fortune are Only an Excel Spreadsheet Away

November 6th, 2007 | Category: Undergraduate Education

Today’s your lucky day. You, personally, can join the elite circle of infamous college rankers, and accrue all the notoriety it entails.
Here’s why: a few months ago, I wrote an article for Washington Monthly that included a ranking of “America’s Best Community Colleges,” along with a profile of Cascadia Community College, one of the best. [...]

Least Surprising Education Headline of the Year

October 22nd, 2007 | Category: Undergraduate Education

The Center on American Progress sponsored an event last week focused on college rankings. I was on the panel along with a representative of U.S. News & World Report, and recent late-night comedy star Paul Glastris. During the Q&A, I made a point that I try to make whenever someone gives me a chance, and [...]

College Rankings for Fun and Profit

March 19th, 2007 | Category: Undergraduate Education

InsideHigherEd reports that the President of Arizona State University will get a financial bonus if ASU climbs in the U.S. News & World Report rankings. If the rankings were based on measures that actually had anything to do with student learning, this might not be a bad idea. But as it stands, the most likely [...]

NCLB Higher Ed? No, Not Really

March 7th, 2007 | Category: Undergraduate Education

Alex Kingsbury has an informative state-of-play piece in U.S. News & World Report about measuring student learning in higher education, and how that information might be used to hold colleges and universities accountable for doing a good job teaching their students.
There’s an extremely reductive way of talking about these issues, which goes something like this:
“The [...]

College Rankings Dirty Tricks

March 5th, 2007 | Category: Undergraduate Education

Richard Vedder of Ohio University, an outspoken member of the recent Spellings Commission on the Future of Higher Education, has a higher education blog called “Center for College Affordability and Productivity.” It’s smart, provocative and well worth reading. If there’s ever an award for “Least Bland Blog With the Most Bland Name,” it would definitely [...]

Harvard slips in new U.S. News college rankings – Larry Summers’ revenge?

August 18th, 2006 | Category: Undergraduate Education

The new U.S. News college rankings were released this week, to the usual amount of fanfare. Harvard and Princeton flip-flopped on the top of the national university list, with Princeton now at #1. The numbers for the two universities are almost identical so this slight shift means virtually nothing. I do note, however, that [...]