Last week, Forbes published their 2009 college rankings.
The article about the rankings is at http://www.forbes.com/2009/08/02/colleges-university-ratings-opinions-colleges-09-intro.html.
The rankings themselves are at http://www.forbes.com/lists/2009/94/colleges-09_Americas-Best-Colleges_Rank.html.
A discussion of the methodology can be found at http://www.forbes.com/2009/08/02/best-colleges-methodology-opinions-ccap.html.
It's interesting to see the results, and I'm glad that the two schools that gave me degrees made the top 20, but I'm not sure that it really means anything. For one thing, the major sources of data include RateMyProfessor.com andPayScale.com, which are not scientific samples. Moreover, the rankings are based on formulas made up by the people doing the analysis. For example, the RateMyProfessor.com data counts for 25%. Who's to say exactly what weight each variable has in making something best? It's just something made up subjectively by humans, but because they make it into a formula, it's supposed to pass for objective and scientific.
"Best" is not something that can be precisely measured. Yes, there are some colleges that are clearly better than some others on certain variables, but it's not like there is one "best" college that will be best for all students. Different students want different things.
I enjoy working with quantitative data. I just don't like it when people think that quantifying something unquantifiable makes it more scientific.
