Forbes’ America’s Best Colleges List
Forbes just released a list of America’s best colleges to try to complete with the US News & World Report rankings.
In conjunction with Dr. Richard Vedder, an economist at Ohio University, and the Center for College Affordability and Productivity, Forbes.com inaugurates its first ranking of America’s Best Colleges, an annual list. In this report, the CCAP ranks 569 undergraduate institutions based on the quality of the education they provide, and how much their students achieve.
I have some concerns about how they are evaluating which school are better. My major concern is that the list uses 25% of the weight they give to school from the average ratings of teachers on RateMyProfessors. Although I consider it a good site and use it to evaluate my own teachers, this rewards easy schools and school with grade inflation as students are more likely to write favorable reviews. Anyhow, take a look at the list below and let me know what you think:
- Princeton University
- California Institute of Technology
- Harvard University
- Swarthmore College
- Williams College
- United States Military Academy
- Amherst College
- Wellesley College
- Yale University
- Columbia University
- Northwestern University
- Wabash College
- Centre College
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Bowdoin College
- United States Air Force Academy
- Middlebury College
- University of Chicago
- Smith College
- Pomona College
- Wesleyan University
- Haverford College
- Stanford University
- Hamilton College
- Sarah Lawrence College
- Barnard College
- Brown University
- Whitman College
- New College of Florida
- Brandeis University
- Vassar College
- Boston College
- Bryn Mawr College
- Kenyon College
- Franklin and Marshall College
- United States Naval Academy
- Colby College
- Washington and Lee University
- Westminster College
- Claremont McKenna College
- Rice University
- Cooper Union
- University of Virginia
- Colgate University
- Bates College
- Knox College
- DePauw University
- Tufts University
- College of William and Mary
- Hampden-Sydney College
- Oberlin College
- Harvey Mudd College
- Lafayette College
- Carleton College
- St. John’s College
- Hampshire College
- Kalamazoo College
- Trinity College
- Doane College
- Connecticut College
- University of Pennsylvania
- Wofford College
- Drew University
- Reed College
- Huntington University
- University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
- Sewanee University of the South
- Lawrence University
- Wake Forest University
- Mount Holyoke College
- Cornell College
- Wesleyan College
- University of California, Berkeley
- Colorado College
- Mills College
- Georgetown University
- University of Notre Dame
- Nebraska Wesleyan University
- College of the Holy Cross
- Duke University
- Johns Hopkins University
- Emory University
- Bellarmine University
- Dickinson College
- Salem College
- Bucknell University
- St. Olaf College
- Bard College
- Wheaton College
- Clarke College
- Wheaton College
- Skidmore College
- Davidson College
- Earlham College
- Erskine College
- Carroll University
- Hendrix College
- Emory and Henry College
- Union College
- Bethany College
Although I have no obvious problem with the list I have the same concerns that you do that using ratings on RateMyProfessors.com and giving those ratings 25% weight is probably not the best way to do things. Along with rewarding schools whose teachers inflate grades, the system might not be fair to really small schools where a couple of terrible teachers could really affect the overall rating.
[...] Forbes challenges US News & World Report with their own college rankings based partially on Rate…. Hopefully there’s a boost for high hotness ratings. [College Being] [...]
I go to Knox College and my sister attends Georgetown University. I love my school, but there’s no competition, especially with internships: Georgetown should NOT be so low. That’s really surprising. Knox should be in the top 50; that’s right. I just think Georgetown should probably be in there too.
If you read the methodology of the rankings (http://www.forbes.com/2008/08/13/best-colleges-methodology-oped-college08-cx_rv_0813ccap.html) you will see that the RateMyProfessor.com evaluations were in fact weighted for easiness, so the concern about grade inflation is at least mitigated, if not completely eliminated.
As for the concern about biasing against small schools, this seems unlikely to be the case considering how many of the top 100 are small liberal arts colleges.
Apparently Michigan isn’t a top 100 university, Centre college is better than Stanford, and Duke is the eightieth best college in the US. Couldn’t be stupider.
Aakash, I guess it makes you feel better by bashing Centre- I’m assuming you have never heard of it. However I really have a hard time taking you seriously because you said ’stupider.’ That just made me laugh.
As someone who chose UC Berkeley #73 on this list, over Swarthmore #4, I am rather dumbfounded at these rankings. But then again I take the rankings with a grain of salt.
This is ridiculous- leave the rankings to US News and World Report. They are much more accurate and take more important factors into consideration and weigh them accordingly. Not to mention they break it down many more factors than just straight undergraduate schools with students who are happy with their teachers. Forbes should stick to what it is good at- being the People Magazine of the financial industry. I would put no weight on what Forbes thinks are the best schools.