Princeton, Williams Top 2020 Best Colleges Rankings

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Princeton, Williams Top 2020 Best Colleges Rankings
See which colleges rose and which fell in this year's rankings.
By Josh Moody, Reporter Sept. 9, 2019, at 8:01 a.m.



Williams College in Massachusetts held onto the top spot in the overall National Liberal Arts Colleges rankings.(GETTY IMAGES)

WITH THOUSANDS OF colleges across the U.S., educational options are abundant for students.

But navigating that landscape can prove difficult with so many colleges competing for the attention of a limited pool of students. Considering the high cost of paying for college and the need to find a program that will lead to jobs after graduation, the decision of where to go to school is one that looms large for many families. Cost and postgraduation employment are only two matters families must consider to determine fit, alongside other factors such as academics, location, campus culture and more.

To help students and families better navigate the college journey, U.S. News has released its 2020 Best Colleges rankings. Out today, the rankings have offered guidance to college-bound students and families since the first edition was published in 1983.

The 2020 edition provides data on more than 1,900 colleges, with rankings for nearly 1,400 institutions. Schools provide U.S. News with most of the data used to compile these rankings in an annual survey and are asked to confirm the accuracy of their data.

Schools are categorized into rankings such as National Universities, institutions that are often research-oriented and offer bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees; and National Liberal Arts Colleges, which emphasize undergraduate education and award half or more of their degrees across liberal arts fields. Additionally, regional colleges and universities are split into eight categories dependent on geographic location and whether master's degrees are offered.

[ SEE: Explore the 2020 Best National Universities. ]

More than 200 institutions changed categories this year because the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education – the most widely accepted classification system in U.S. higher education that U.S. News uses in its rankings – updated its system.
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I get it: this is subject to debate.

Sep 9, 2019, 01:10am
U.S. News Releases Its Annual College Rankings. Here’s What’s Wrong With Them.

Michael T. Nietzel | Senior Contributor
Education

I am a former university president who writes about higher education.

U.S. News & World Report just released its 2020 Best Colleges rankings, covering approximately 1,400 colleges and universities. For the ninth straight year, Princeton tops the National University list, followed, not unexpectedly, by Harvard in second. Columbia, MIT, and Yale tied for third. Williams College tops the list of National Liberal Arts Colleges, and UCLA is No. 1 among Top Public Schools. All the schools ranked in the top 20 National Universities list in 2020 were in the top 20 in 2019. This rankings inertia stems from both institutional continuity and a largely repetitive methodology.

Though U.S. News has revised its methodology over time and continues to tinker with the weights assigned to various measures, fundamental problems remain with the approach, which is based on 15 measures of “academic quality.” It is too easy for schools to game the system and falsify data. Several of the U.S. News’s measures have become proxies for institutional wealth, and their relevance to academic quality is questionable. Nearly 50% of the weighted indicators are problematic on at least one of these grounds. Here are the most glaring problems:

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[NewJeffCT]

1. take college rankings with a grain of salt

yes, they can be a good place to start if you're looking for top colleges, but the rankings don't tell you everything

And, Williams is a great school and tops the LA colleges list every year, but the location is really just out in the middle of nowhere Mass. I live in Northern Connecticut and when we brought my daughter to visit there, it seem to just take forever to get to Williamstown.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

2. I moseyed on over to the "best value" schools. I'm sure those are good schools, but

I'd hardly think of them as providing the most bang for the buck.

[NewJeffCT]

5. some of those top colleges

do well on "best value colleges" as well. The best value colleges also feature a lot of Ivy league schools

[mahatmakanejeeves]

6. I was thinking that a best value college would be a public school, not

Harvard, et al.

[NewJeffCT]

8. most people attending Harvard

are not paying full tuition and will often go on to better paying jobs/careers than graduates of in state UMass

[hlthe2b]

3. I've never thought it appropriate to lump the private Ivy league schools with their $$$$ endowments

with state schools, even though there are a few that do very well. At least they ought to have a fair ranking of just the public universities, IMO.

[NewJeffCT]

4. I think they do have separate rankings of just public universities

and other rankings for regional colleges and universities as well

top public universities - topped by UCLA

https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-universities/top-public

[hlthe2b]

7. I see now that they do. I've typically only seen the main rankings.