Category: college rankings

U.S. News rankings through the years

As part of its recent package of stories about the college rankings game (and as reported on this blog a few weeks back) , The Chronicle of Higher Education offers a table showing how the highest-ranking universities and liberal arts colleges have fared over the past 25 years. It’s a nice tool that might be useful for those schools that have managed to crack the top 50 during that quarter century — or for those who want to attempt to glean some insight about how those schools by looking at the data over time. But for the rest of us, it doesn’t do a lot of good.

Link via SimpsonScarborough, where Elizabeth Scarborough discusses the subject in more detail.

U.S. News rankings guru gets into blogging

Robert Morse, the guy who develops the methodology behind U.S. News & World Report‘s annual college rankings, is now blogging about the process on the U.S. News website. His blog — cleverly titled Morse Code: Inside the College Rankings — is billed as offering “deeper insights into the methodologies and is a forum for commentary and analysis of college, grad and other rankings.”

I’m not sure how much of a true forum Morse’s blog will be (there’s no option to leave comments on Morse’s post) but it’s heartening to see U.S. News is attempting to get transparent about the rankings process. In fact, it warms the cockles of my rankings-wonk heart.

Welcome to the blogosphere, Robert! Don’t forget to bookmark us.