How Clemson manipulates their US News ranking | Hacker News Reader

How Clemson manipulates their US News ranking

insidehighered.com

29 pointsDocSavage12 comments

I once suggested to an alumni association official that the university host free parties for recent graduates and have a concerned donor hand out $20's at the door with the request that a donation be made inside. The bump in rankings would lead to more cash coming into the university and have a multiplier effect on the cash dispensed. I wonder what the definition of "donation" is -- Could a rich alumnus send $20 bills in late December, each in a separate envelope with the names of an alumnus who had not yet given that year? I suppose the binary nature of this statistic was chosen to avoid bias toward schools that pump out investment bankers over those who produce <insert lowly paid profession here>.

Obviously, all these numbers can be gamed, and we know this from reading Joel's articles on measuring programmers. However, I wonder if universities might be rational in gaming the system, even to an extent much greater than Clemson. Five years from now, few will recall the talk featured in the article, but the positive feedback loop initiated by such a strong bump in the rankings might continue for decades. Why not take the short term ethical hit?

Years ago, my alma mater gave up on application fees, supposedly for socioeconomic justice. The reality, I suspect, is that they wanted to encourage more applicants so that they could lower their acceptance rates. The trick is to make sure that the additional applicants are complete losers that are easy to turn down and not Stanford applicants adding a safety school to the list. Why not go a step further and offer free iPods for applying? A couple of years ago one university offered cash (bookstore gift cards) to already accepted students if they retook their SATs and obtained higher scores, so there's a precedent here.

> Why not take the short term ethical hit?

Because it's unethical?

[Edit: add a little more of my thinking.

Ethics should count towards your reputation. A reputation for honesty or dishonesty should be important professionally and publically. I think that honouring and rewarding those who get results unethically is corrosive to public expectations, leading people to expect less of others. When this percolates into public life and people have low expectations of the ethics of, say, politicians and police officers, systemic abuse of power is more possible/encouraged - since the main counterweight to such abuse is public opinion, which has had it's expecations neutered. End repetitive rant.

Most collage ranking systems start with a list of top schools and work from there to the ranking system. It's often more a question of how close you are to Harvard than anything else. (Or MIT / Cal Tech for tech schools etc.)

PS: It's not that Harvard needs to be in the top spot, but if Harvard and Yale don't make the top 10 buisness schools they are going to start over.

Good point. Any ranking system that doesn't pass a "laugh test" when viewed won't be influential.

For the record, I agree. However, taking the high road may have its price.

A price worth "sacrificing your good name" for?

If people had higher standards, the cost of being unethical would be higher - hence fewer people would be unethical. A virtuous circle.

I'm surprised at the university representatives who were disturbed by Clemson's gaming of the system. Shouldn't this make those people (and US News) question the validity of the ranking? Instead of making a display of outrage, why not find a better methodology?

The most troubling aspect of this is that good schools feel the need to become arbitrarily more selective in order to boost their ranking.

As if they're not using the same techniques... The 'outrage' is probably just a façade. You can bet that they took notes and will be using some of the same strategies when they get back and start having meetings.

speaking as a clemson alumni, the outrage is either for show, or because someone outed secrets in public.

none of the things that clemson did are secrets or new. the only thing that could be considered to possibly be unethical, imo, would be the class size shifting. but, again, this isn't new. my high school actually did this as well, in order to improve its appearance from outside metrics. and it isn't a secret. students received somewhat regular updates on what the president was doing/implementing, and i distinctly remember this being mentioned. maybe not worded the same way, but the concept was communicated.

I transferred from UCLA to NYU between my sophomore and junior year of undergrad. UCLA counts me in its matriculated stats because I graduated from a university, despite leaving.

I already thought at that point that any rankings were bullshit. That kind of manipulation makes anything +/- 10 or maybe 20 positions to be irrelevant. The problem for US News is that everyone already knows a rough ranking, and doesn't need to be told that UCLA & NYU are somewhere in the top 50 but not top 10.

You know, I submit that lateral transfers are probably one of the highest possible signals there could be. Now, if that was a part of the formula, they schools would game it. So you'd probably have to sit out a year, like players in Div. I sports (all sports, or just revenue generating sports?) have to. Ah, progress.

I wonder if there are highly-paid "educational supplement optimization" consultants who get low-ranking learning institutions higher in the annual results...

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