Why is there such a fixation on university rankings in the United States? Postsecondary rankings don't seem to matter as much in other Western countries.
Not true of the UK, France, Korea or Japan. I don’t know if they care about what are basically league tables but any educated citizen would find it no more difficult to reel off five to ten of their best universities than an American would to list Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, MIT etc.
I can see how it would look weird from a German, or possibly a Dutch or Nordic perspective but a deliberate effort to bring up the bottom and limited attempts to raise the top is extremely different from the US system, where there are large and growing returns to excellence.
Also the US elite just have smaller enrollments as a share of population. Oxbridge, the grandes écoles or Korea’s top three enrol 1-2% of yearly students. The top ten US universities maybe a tenth of that.
From within Dutch universities, rankings are considered very important (more by the non-academic staff than by the academics). The general public doesn't really care all that much yet, but they do more and more each year. It's especially for international (student) recruiting that the rankings (national and international) are important, and that's seeping through into everything else for last 10 years or so now.
(not disagreeing with you, just adding some nuance about the direction of things)
As a Dutch PhD student, I am not sure I agree. There is some hype around the rankings of the universities and specifically the bachelor and master tracks at a given university, but not many students really care about them. I certainly did not choose my university based on their ranking, and don't know many that did. Choice is based much more on travel distance and other factors, not on perceived quality of a university. I also would not be able to point out the best universities in the Netherlands, which says something as well.
Also, I think as a student you're quite shielded from it. Ask your professor (not the postdocs or the assocs, the real ones) some day, I'm sure they have an opinion on it.
Yes for sure, in academia the perceived ranking is quite important. But, at least in my field, ranking is decoupled from the ranking of a university and is more on a department basis. I.e., the physics department of a specific university might be well regarded internationally, even though the university itself not so much. This is of course helped by the fact that Dutch universities are all quite highly ranked.
Fair enough, although I'm not sure how what you say is at odds with what I said. As you indicate, Dutch students don't care much if any (yet). It probably depends on the university as well. The highly international ones (Wageningen, Maastricht, some institutes in Enschede, maybe Delft, at least the TU?) certainly do.
I have worked at universities in the UK and Norway, and believe me, this stuff matters. A lot.
Its great that students can make an informed choice about where to start, particularly if they do not come from an academic household. Its not a given that people have heard of places like MIT, and these lists are a somewhat neutral way of seeing which universities are the most "legit". You have to remember that a lot of low-quality institutions are marketing themselves pretty hard to students, and if it weren't for rankings it would be easy to make bad choices when choosing a place to study.
Is there actually a big fixation on university rankings? I had no idea what my school's ranking was (apparently it's now #40) and I'm not sure I've ever had conversation where university rankings came up outside of specifically talking about where a high school student is thinking about applying. Even then it's not like it's common for people to pick which school to go to out of the ones that accepted them based solely on rankings.
People who care about Ivies and the such don't care because the Ivies have a high ranking. Someone who went to Harvard who wants to use that fact to their advantage isn't going to say that they went to a "top 3" school.
> Is there actually a big fixation on university rankings?
I've sat in department wide meetings where deans of engineering compared their schools to 'the competition,' both in terms of US news rankings and their own preferred metrics. Usually to bemoan how unfair it is that Texas is a petrostate with 10x the population that can fund top tier engineering schools.
But by and large, the tiers are static and a uni in the #47 slot isn't making to the top 10 any time soon. Might not even make top 40. For undergraduate education I think you're right, nobody really cares. There's really three categories of schools: private schools / ivies, flagship state schools, and the rest. I'm guessing if you asked employers to rank schools, they would largely match selectivity -- how hard it is to get into the school. (or more depressingly, how good the athletics programs are doing lately)
If you dropped 200k-300k on an education, you'll be invested in either the continued value or and improvement in your investment's reputation, which as the years go on is really its only value.
200k is about what I spent on my education and I can't say I've really had any reason to care about my school's reputation past my first job after graduation.
Tech jobs generally don't care, but traditional management and those tracks really care about that.
Because getting a job in those areas is about abstract abilities that can't be (somewhat) measured with code tests, technology signifiers, and tricky questions like tech interviews.
So a certain school is a "class entry cue" for such tracks.
Sure, but that first job is likely to determine the rest of your career, if your career path is somewhat traditional. So the school reputation would still have been quite important overall (especially if you wanted to aim high and get hired from a top employer right out of university).
> I'm not sure I've ever had conversation where university rankings came up outside of specifically talking about where a high school student is thinking about applying.
Most high school students/parents/guidance counselors/etc check the rankings, reputation, average salary of graduates, etc. It even extends to majors and rankings within majors - which might matter more.
> Even then it's not like it's common for people to pick which school to go to out of the ones that accepted them based solely on rankings.
Who said solely? Of course there are many other factors ( location, tuition, scholarships, etc ). But rankings/reputation/etc are a big part of a high schooler's college decision.
The rankings mattered to me when applying to schools because it seemed like a useful metric to judge the quality of education I would get, and the usability of that education.
When you're making one of the biggest decisions of your life, rankings can help you know how good your choices are.
Not saying rankings are correct...
But for those applying, they likely appreciate having a ranking mechanism.
It's one of the few objective measures of universities available.
How do you know, otherwise, if this university that wants to charge you $40,000 per year is really going to deliver on their promise?
You can't just go back to school again and start over.
It's a life decision, so there is a desperate desire for the applying student to have an objective way of stack ranking the choices.
(Disclosure: I attended MIT. And I basically just applied to the top 5 or 10 computer science universities -- again, using rankings. And hoped to get into one of those.)
> Is there actually a big fixation on university rankings?
I've observed that, among people who care about university rankings in hiring, there are exactly two categories: the top five, and everything else. If you went to #200, you're the "same" as somebody who went to #25.
Rankings drive enrolment, especially international enrolment, which is a major source of revenue. Also prestige helps to attract the best researchers, who are being wooed by many top schools.
A mix of trying to get a sense of educational quality and prestige.
In some specific programs, you'd want to aim for the schools known to have the more robust curriculum but outside of that, it's mostly ego/prestige. "I got to a top N school, I went to harvard", etc.
That badge signals _something_ to your peers, parents, and future employers. Think of all those companies that explicitly filter for "target schools". It works pretty well too, you'll get a call-back to an interview because you have an Ivy on your resume even if you barely passed your classes.
Australia here. Universities consistently market their national ranking here. As a staff member I've found management consistently pushes things that will raise their ranking. As a student initially at a high ranked university, I found I got a better education by switching to a much lower ranked university.
> As a student initially at a high ranked university, I found I got a better education by switching to a much lower ranked university.
That’s interesting. I’ve consistently heard the same sentiment from ex-students and alumni of certain highly ranked Canadian universities (undergrad) as well. They’ll generally complain about a lack of student support and restrictive policies at these institutions, making it needlessly difficult for students to succeed.
I suspect the higher ranked universities might be under pressure to artificially increase the difficulty of their programs, in order to distinguish their alumni from the alumni of other schools, who’s programs cover more or less the same subject matter.
In Australia, the rankings often seem to be based on outcomes unrelated to undergraduate studies (citation needed). I've found that makes for a situation where there is very little need to increase or maintain the quality of learning at the lower levels. While Uni Melbourne is consistently rated high[1], the quality of teaching and support was very poor[2] and opportunities within the university extremely limited.
In contrast, when I moved interstate and transferred institutes, despite being at a much lower-ranked university I received (subjectively) better tuition and support from low and high-level staff. I was even (enthusiastically) given the opportunity to contribute to active research in my vacations.
My wife did a law degree at a very highly ranked university in the UK after doing a business degree at a comparatively lowly ranked institution (although still very well regarded) - coincidentally the latter being where I did a CS degree and thought the teaching was excellent.
She said the quality of teaching at the higher ranked university was almost comically bad compared to the lower ranked university.
The usual justification I have read for these things is that the top universities have already selected the best candidates, so they don't actually need too much teaching. Which seems to be missing the point.....
Also, which rankings are meaningfully measuring student experience and give it weight? I know some send around questionaires, but for the things I looked at it seemed a minor concern.
I'm not 100% up to speed on this as, for the most part, it doesn't impact me as lower-tier research staff. Management is often pushing us for more papers in higher-ranked journals as that seems to be the biggest factor. Student questionnaires seem to be used only internally though even then I suspect they're mostly ignored [anecdotal at best].
The justification we're given for higher ranking is overseas students are more likely to chose a university based on these (domestic students are more likely here to go to whichever university is closest). Due to fee-capping on local students, international students have become a big source of income for universities here. Whether it is accurate to do so or not, the universities keep insisting on higher rankings to attract those students.
Education is a market. To make money, universities need to attract customers. And they do that by being highly ranked.
And I disagree with your statement. Many other western countries have their "ivy league" equivalent. Not all schools are equal in the rest of the world either. But I do however agree that the "marketing" aspect is definitely more pronounced in the US.
As a general rule, you aren't allowed admittance into the Cathedral unless you've demonstrated proper indoctrination at the most "prestigious" universities.
I was talking to a few European friends (1 Dutch, 1 French) and what they described was that even the most bright students typically go to their regional universities which are all "equally good". Here in the US, the rankings are almost a proxy for admissions rate. Since "top schools" are exclusive, the student population tends to be at least one the following: talented, precocious, or well-connected/rich. I attended a "top 25" university, which is a ways from the Stanford, Harvard, Yales of the world but the environment was very special. Hard to describe, but you are surrounded by passionate, ambitious people, you can't help but feel energized. Is this a fair system? That's a whole another conversation.
the importance of professional connections are understated in my opinion. You can make a career out of only knowing the right things and you can make a career out of only knowing the right people but you really excel when you know the right things and know the right people.
It’s what drives enrollment and tuition fees are a huge part of revenue. In other countries, there’s more state support and you don’t need to market universities
I can see how it would look weird from a German, or possibly a Dutch or Nordic perspective but a deliberate effort to bring up the bottom and limited attempts to raise the top is extremely different from the US system, where there are large and growing returns to excellence.
Also the US elite just have smaller enrollments as a share of population. Oxbridge, the grandes écoles or Korea’s top three enrol 1-2% of yearly students. The top ten US universities maybe a tenth of that.