This article is reproduced from: Heart of the Machine
"Do the rankings reflect reality? Unfortunately, the answer is no."
As one of the Ivy League schools, Columbia University is one of the oldest universities in the United States. In the 2022 U.S. News American University Rankings, Columbia was tied for second with Harvard and MIT. Columbia is ranked 11th in the 2022 Times Higher Education World University Rankings.
This prestigious school attracts a large number of outstanding students to apply every year. However, it has recently been involved in the "fraudulent ranking data" controversy.
On Thursday night local time, Columbia University announced that it would no longer participate in the next round of US News’ annual Best Colleges rankings. The reason is that the school is conducting an internal investigation related to the professor’s questioning of data earlier this year.
In February of this year, Michael Thaddeus, a mathematics professor at Columbia University, published a long article questioning Columbia University’s second place in the 2022 US News “Best National University Rankings” rankings.
Article address: https://www.math.columbia.edu/~thaddeus/ranking/investigation.html
"Like other Columbia University faculty and staff, I am very interested in Columbia University's position in the US News university rankings. What is gratifying is that Columbia University has steadily risen from 18th place when it debuted in 1988 to second place this year. It is now second only to Princeton University and tied with Harvard and MIT "
. But he began to wonder: “Are we sure that these data accurately reflect the reality of college life? Unfortunately, the answer is no. As we will see, several key data supporting Columbia’s high rankings are inaccurate. , questionable or highly misleading."
At the time, a spokesperson for Columbia University insisted that there was no problem with the data submitted. But on Thursday night, Columbia University officials issued a notice. Provost Mary Boyce said that after the publication of Michael Thaddeus' article, Columbia University had "immediately begun a review of the data collection and submission process."
"The ongoing evaluation is a matter of integrity and we are not taking shortcuts," Boyce said.
Why is Columbia ranked second?
U.S. News based its rankings on a complex formula that includes class size, financial resources, graduation rates, social mobility, a peer evaluation survey and other metrics.
Thaddeus accused the school of inflating the proportion of classes with 20 or fewer students and inflating instructional funding, both of which helped the school boost its score in U.S. News' ranking formula.
The percentage of courses enrolling undergraduates at Columbia University with fewer than 20 students may range between 62.7% and 66.9%. We can be confident that this is far from Columbia's claim of 82.5%;
the proportion of courses enrolling undergraduates at Columbia with 50 or more students is likely between 10.6% and 12.4%. Again, this is much worse than Columbia's claimed figure of 8.9%;
These numbers suggest that Columbia's class sizes are not particularly small compared to peer institutions. Additionally, year-over-year data from 2019-2021 shows that Columbia’s class sizes are growing steadily. Ironically, Columbia is considering a significant expansion of undergraduate enrollment, which would further expand class sizes.
Columbia University’s strong performance in the financial resources category appears to be attributed to the amount of money it claims to spend on teaching. In documents reported to the government, its teaching spending for 2019-2020 was above $3.1 billion. This is indeed a huge amount of money. It is the largest figure yet to emerge from more than 6,000 colleges and universities reporting to the government, larger than corresponding amounts from Harvard, Yale and Princeton combined.
It is difficult to imagine how Columbia University can spend such a huge amount of money just on teaching.Teacher pay isn't much higher, with full-time, non-medical faculty spending $289 million on salaries in 2019-20, less than 9% of the $3.1 billion. Even if generous allowances are given to part-time and medical teachers, and these are calculated into teaching expenses, huge amounts of money remain "unaccounted for."
Thaddeus noted that in other cases, Columbia has described its spending very differently, claiming to spend less on teaching and more on other things. For example, Columbia University, which often claims to spend more than $1 billion a year on research, says in its government reports that it spends about $763 million on research.
In its consolidated financial statements, Columbia claims to have spent about $2 billion on "teaching and educational administration" (presumably including academic support and student services), which is more than $1 billion less than the figure in government reports. On the other hand, the consolidated financial statements include another very large cost of more than $1.2 billion, "patient care expense," which is completely absent from the government report.
U.S. News: We are not responsible for verifying the accuracy of content submitted by schools
Thaddeus said he would not describe Columbia's statement as a "victory for transparency and accuracy," noting that there are still outstanding issues, including the university's review What will be discovered and whether the school will re-enter the rankings. But the withdrawal "at least shows that Columbia's critics have a point."
U.S. News’ university rankings have faced controversy for many years. On the one hand, there are specific data issues, and on the other hand, the evaluation indicators of “good universities” are more or less subjective. Critics say the list simply reinforces existing ideas about rewarding the wealthiest and most famous institutions.
Reed College of Oregon State declined to provide ranking data to U.S. News but was still included on the annual list. Some critics believe the school's steep drop in rankings is due to this lack of cooperation, and that U.S. News's guide is rife with hidden penalties and statistical gimmicks.
U.S. News said in March that the organization was not responsible for verifying the accuracy of content submitted by schools. However, U.S. News Editor and Chief Content Officer Kim Castro said in a statement on Friday that "Columbia University's admission that they cannot meet the data standards for U.S. News World Report's 2023 Best Colleges rankings raises a series of questions. We are concerned about this and are reviewing various options, including reviewing data previously submitted by Columbia University, to ensure that our rankings continue to maintain the highest level of integrity."
Reference link: https://www.nydailynews.com/ new-york/education/ny-columbia-withdraws-us-news-data-accuracy-best-colleges-20220701-u5dbyay2enc6zjdholq6twnpui-story.html
