Columbia University To Pull Out Of U.S. News Undergrad Rankings

Columbia University issued a statement on Tuesday indicating that it will not submit data to U.S. News & World Report for its undergraduate rankings this year, claiming that it had concluded that the “rankings do not accurately capture the student experience or the priorities of the institution.”

Columbia, which had earlier pulled out of the U.S. News rankings of its law, medical and nursing schools, said, “we remain concerned with the role that rankings have assumed in the undergraduate application process both in the outsize influence they may play with prospective students, and in how they distill a university’s profile into a composite of data categories. Much is lost in this approach.”

The school also pointed to the upcoming Supreme Court decision on affirmative action as a factor. “Finally, the impending Supreme Court decision on affirmative action has brought us to a historic moment that may well lead to a reassessment of admissions policies in ways we can’t even contemplate at this point.”

Instead of submitting data to U.S. News, Columbia will instead post data to the Common Data Sets for its undergraduate schools – Columbia College and Columbia Engineering, and Columbia General Studies. Those data sets can be found here.

Columbia University has had a tangled relationships with U.S. News over the recent two years. In September of last year, it acknowledged that it had submitted some inaccurate data as part of its participation in the college rankings done by U. S. News & World Report for the 2022 edition of its Best Colleges (published September 2021).

The Columbia ranking foul-up began when Michael Thaddeus, a professor of mathematics at the university, posted a lengthy critique of the data that Columbia had submitted for those rankings.

After first defending its data, the University admitted that “on two of the metrics questioned by our faculty member, class size and faculty with terminal degrees, we determined we had previously relied on outdated and/or incorrect methodologies. We have changed those methodologies for current and future data submissions.”

Tuesday’s announcement from Columbia was less confrontational in tone that some of the earlier statements several universities have made as they explained why they were dropping out of the rankings of medical and law schools.

“The college application process can be enormously complex, and we value efforts, whether public or private, to help applicants navigate it. We are especially encouraged by the emergence of new tools and resources that demonstrate outcomes, an area where the U.S. Department of Education has shown welcome leadership. To that end, the university applauds U.S. News’ recent announcement that it will change its undergraduate rankings methodology to focus on “success in graduating students from different backgrounds,” said Columbia’s statement.

U.S. News has said that it will continue to rank colleges, even if they don’t submit data. “Students rely on the rankings and information we provide to navigate the confusing and uncertain admissions process,” said Eric J. Gertler, chief executive of U.S. News. “Our critics tend to attribute every issue faced by academia — including the impending Supreme Court case mentioned in Columbia’s announcement — to our rankings.” Gertler added, “we have consistently stated that our rankings should be one factor in that decision-making process.”

Columbia now joins Colorado College, the Rhode Island School of Design and Stillman College in pulling out of the U.S. News undergraduate rankings. Whether other elite universities will follow Columbia and withdraw, creating a domino effect like we saw with the earlier law school and medical school exodus, remains to be seen.