Rating the New Forbes College Rankings

I previously blogged Forbes' new ranking of 569 colleges and universities, based on this methodology:

• Listing of Alumni in Who's Who in America (25%)
• Student Evaluations of Professors from RateMyProfessors.com (25%)
• Four- Year Graduation Rates (16 2/3%)
• Enrollment-adjusted numbers of students and faculty receiving nationally competitive awards (16 2/3%)
• Average four year accumulated student debt of those borrowing money (16 2/3%)

Today's Inside Higher Ed has two op-eds with very different views on the utility of the Forbes rankings:

• Rankings Are Useful — But Go Beyond "U.S. News," by Richard Vedder (Director, Center for College Affordability and Productivity; Distinguished Professor of Economics, Ohio University):

Let me compare the two most recent rankings, by Forbes and U.S. News & World Report. Full disclosure: I was the lead investigator in compiling the Forbes rankings. ...  There are two features of the Forbes rankings that make them somewhat superior in my judgment.

First, they require no cooperation from the schools, using only data from external sources beyond their control. Thus Forbes ranks Sarah Lawrence (which refuses to provide data) but US News does not. It is harder to “game” the Forbes rankings. Second, and more important, a statistical analysis of all 569 schools in the Forbes rankings shows no statistically significant relationship between spending per student and rankings. It is spending neutral, and buying yourself to the top of the rankings is not an option.

• RateMyRankings: Ridiculous!, by Patricia McGuire (President, Trinity University):

Rankings mania reached a new low recently when Forbes magazine entered the “best college” sweepstakes. Exalting RateMyProfessors.com and Who’s Who in America as dubious measures of academic quality, the Forbes list comes off more as a parody than any real competition for the U.S. News & World Report “Best Colleges” edition, which has its own well-publicized problems with credible outcomes data. Once again, greed trumps truth while masquerading as a consumer service. ...

Pretending to measure instructional quality, Forbes uses the profoundly scurrilous RateMyProfessors.com for 25 percent of its scoring method. Why stop there? Why not add a category for the number of campus sluts outed on JuicyCampus.com? RateMyProfessors invites just as much vicious gossip and cruel slander while providing no legitimate assessment of excellence in teaching.