College ranking systems are inherently political

Very few things in life are purely objective. And yet, college students find themselves buying into the facade of infallibility presented by U.S. News and World Report’s hailed Best Colleges ranking system. And for another truism: almost nothing is apolitical. The Very Important College List is no exception.

Like reality television, rankings are supposed to appear observational and objective — but, similar to Keeping up with the Kardashians, orchestrating factors lurk in the background; those factors are naturally tied to and influence the administrative nucleus within the world of higher education. The U.S. News rankings are not an objective judgment of academic caliber; rather, they are the result of varying political influences that are aware of each other and operate synchronously.

Thus, the wheel turns: Mostly wealthy students from the American elite attend selective universities, ascending to positions of power, sometimes within academia. They then either support the ranking system directly — through all-too-influential peer evaluation — or indirectly by preserving institutional bias toward prestigious universities. These universities increase tuition, which does not affect on the wealthy elite who attend, and spend more money, increasing rankings, which boosts application numbers and lowers admissions rates. And the cycle repeats itself.

“Peer evaluation,” the first determining factor, asks university presidents to rank other universities, perpetuating prejudice within the politics of the academic elite. The reputation of Harvard, for example, has no bearing on the education a Harvard student will receive or how that education might compare to a Caltech student’s education. But its reputation — based on the opinions of people who come from elite institutions — does have significant bearing on the published ranking.

Distinguished institutions tend to recruit from the elite and produce the elite, who end up in positions of academic power and expand institutional influence. Considering that nearly 40 Harvard alumni are also university presidents, it’s clear that the elite turns right around to reinforce its own importance.

Another determining criterion is the selectivity of the admissions rate, a statistic almost as easy to believe as it is to manipulate. By the calculations of U.S. News, a school with lower admissions rates will receive a higher ranking — even if applicants are not well-qualified.

The last and most unfortunate factor is university spending on programs. Spending more money on university programs increases institutional ranking, which results in higher application numbers — decreasing the admissions rate and eventually improving university ranking. Enjoy and repeat. The funding to get the ball rolling can easily emerge from tuition increases. So, if you attend a top-ranked university, you might as well slap on that bumper sticker — after all, you paid for it.

The game doesn’t end with U.S. News and its magic calculator. Although students may not be aware of ranking politics, universities are not, and continue to manipulate rankings.

One of the easiest ways universities move up is simply spending more money. For private institutions, this is fairly easy. Start fundraising. Dip into your endowment. Raise tuition. USC is a prime example: President C. L. Max Nikias is working toward the administration’s $6 billion endowment goal. As the Los Angeles Times’ Larry Gordon stated last spring, “In two decades, [USC] has climbed from 51st to 25th in U.S. News’ rankings of national universities. Behind that success is an elaborate and powerful fundraising machine.”

Universities also influence rankings by increasing applicant pools simply to turn away more students. The spring admissions policy caters exactly to this need — spring admits are not considered part of the “entering class,” and thus, universities can enroll the desired amount of students for an even more attractive admissions rate.

Or, instead of only tangentially misrepresenting information, colleges could just cheat, like Claremont McKenna College, who falsified test scores of their admits for years on end. Finally, some schools simply refuse to participate, like Reed College.

To add insult to injury, cultural pressure surrounding university admissions encourages students to preserve the ranking system. Students at elite institutions are incentivized to support them to boost the value of their degree through the name brand of their university.

The rankings peddled by U.S. News should be viewed not as the sole reflection of academic success, but rather as their academic power paired with the university’s success in gerrymandering rankings. When the next Best Colleges list arrives, this column won’t be the only thing playing politics.

Lily Vaughan is a freshman majoring in history and political science. Her column, “Playing Politics,” runs  Fridays.