Columbia University will no longer participate in US News World & Report undergraduate rankings, after several high-profile medical and law schools stopped submitting data for the influential lists.
(Bloomberg) — Columbia University will no longer participate in US News World & Report undergraduate rankings, after several high-profile medical and law schools stopped submitting data for the influential lists.
“We remain concerned with the role that rankings have assumed in the undergraduate application process,” the New York-based university said in a statement Tuesday. The university also cited the “outsize influence” rankings play, adding that they “distill a university’s profile into a composite of data categories.”
US News said Tuesday that it would continue to rank Columbia’s undergraduate school.
“At a time when enrollments are declining and costs are soaring in higher education, U.S. News & World Report will continue to serve students by ranking all undergraduate schools that meet our eligibility requirements,” US News Chief Executive Officer Eric Gertler said in a statement.
The debate over college rankings gained traction last year when Columbia professor Michael Thaddeus questioned the accuracy of data that the Ivy League university submitted to US News. In a lengthy critique posted on his website, the math professor called the US News rankings “irredeemable.”
Columbia’s ranking plummeted to No. 18 from No. 2 after the university acknowledged some of the data were inaccurate.
In November, the law schools at Yale and Harvard University both dropped out of the rankings and were followed by medical schools at Stanford University and the University of Pennsylvania, among others. The graduate schools argued that the rankings methodology was flawed and didn’t accurately represent the student experience.
US News released its ranking of law schools and medical schools last month, saying it had updated its methodology to place “emphasis on the results that these graduate schools can deliver.”
More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com
©2023 Bloomberg L.P.