Gotta Love It! NPR Ranks the College Rankings

National Public Radio (NPR) in the United States turns the tables on the various versions of college and university rankings (e.g., US News, Barron's, Princeton Review, etc.) by rating the rankings themselves.The flaw with all such rankings is that different people will weight different factors differently; that is, reputation may matter a lot to one student (and her family), while it may be relatively unimportant to another. Likewise, some factors that the ratings take into account may be relatively uncorrelated with outcome measures such as success in life.An example of the later is revealed in NPR's analysis of data the Gallup organization collects when studying engagement among students. In short, Gallup found that

"... when you ask college graduates whether they're 'engaged' with their work or "thriving" in all aspects of their lives, their responses don't vary one bit whether they went to a prestigious college or not."

The percentages of students who were "engaged," or "thriving" in some aspect of their lives ...

"... did not vary based on whether the grads went to a fancy name-brand school or a regional state college, one of the top 100 in the U.S. News & World Report rankings or one of the bottom 100. A slight edge did go to those who attended campuses with more than 10,000 students, while for-profit college graduates saw worse outcomes.

What we have always known, now supported by data. Lots of it.