“Life in Pieces” was a sitcom that appeared on CBS from 2015 until 2019. It starred Diane Wiest and James Brolin as the matriarch and patriarch of an extended family, and what made it different from other sitcoms was that each episode consisted of three separate vignettes.
Think of this as a blog post in pieces. Instead of focusing on a single topic, this edition of ECA will offer brief updates and commentaries on three recent stories in the news.
Item #1: U.S. News recalculates the ranks for 213 schools.
In case you missed it, on October 27 U.S. News and World Report announced corrected ranks for 213 colleges and universities for the 2024 edition of the rankings published five weeks before.
The revisions impacted each of U.S. News’s ten ranking categories:
National Universities National Liberal Arts Colleges
Regional Universities–North Regional Liberal Arts Colleges–North
Regional Universities–South Regional Liberal Arts Colleges–South
Regional Universities–Midwest Regional Liberal Arts Colleges–Midwest
Regional Universities–West Regional Liberal Arts Colleges–West
The revamped rankings impacted institutions in all but two states (Delaware and South Dakota) plus the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the Northern Marianas Islands. More colleges from Puerto Rico (23) were affected than for any other geographic area. If you didn’t know that Puerto Rico had as many as 23 colleges and universities, join the club.
Most of the changes occurred lower in the rankings, with the most prominent institutions involved being Colorado College, which moved from 29th to 33rd among National Liberal Arts Colleges, and the Rhode Island School of Design, which moved from first to fourth in the Regional Universities (North) category.
What led to the changes? U.S. News blamed the mistakes on what it called an “anomaly in the code” it uses to produce the rankings. ECA reached out to U.S. News’s rankings guru, Bob Morse, to request more insight about the anomaly. To his credit he responded almost immediately, but he also declined to provide more detail. I’m sure the code is proprietary.
U.S. News deserves praise for voluntarily and transparently disclosing the anomaly, but there is a larger issue here (ECA readers know how much we love larger issues). Should we really care? Publishing the changes promotes one of the flawed assumptions underlying college rankings, the false precision. Does it really matter if Colorado College is ranked 33rd rather than 29th? It may matter to people at Colorado College, but is CC any less impressive an institution because U.S. News ranks it four places lower? I’d suggest not.
Item #2: Vanderbilt reaches settlement in financial aid lawsuit.
Last week Vanderbilt became the second university to agree to a settlement in a lawsuit filed last year against 17 universities charging that they were colluding with regard to financial aid policies and packaging. The terms of the Vanderbilt settlement have not been announced, but the University of Chicago previously settled for $13.5 million.
All of the colleges cited in the lawsuit, which was filed in the U.S. District Court in the Northern District of Illinois, were formerly members of the 568 Presidents Group. That group, now defunct, was named for a section of a federal statute that allowed colleges and universities to collaborate on financial aid policies as long as they practice need-blind admission. The exemption allowing collaboration expired in September of 2022.
The plaintiffs in the lawsuit alleged that the universities were not completely need-blind in their financial aid practices. The argument was that the colleges and universities named give admission advantages to legacies and full-pay applicants, meaning that they are not truly and purely need-blind.
The universities have claimed that they have done nothing untoward, but just as with some of the federal and state election interference cases, every time one defendant settles we must wonder how fast others will follow. Stay tuned.
Item #3: ACT goes BOGO.
Loyal ECA reader Sue Rexford reached out a couple of weeks ago with a suggested topic for this blog. She had received an email from ACT around Halloween with what was described both as “a spellbinding 2-for-1 opportunity!” and a “BOO-GO” offer, complete with ghost emoji (👻).
The email trumpeted a new offer made by ACT whereby students who registered for the December 9 administration of the test would receive a free retest in 2024. That’s the first time I’ve seen that kind of “if you order now” offer made by the testing industry.
It’s not totally clear why the offer appeared when it did. Was ACT hoping that all of us would substitute 2-for-1 ACT registration coupons for candy on Halloween? And would that constitute a trick or a treat?
The more likely answer, of course, is that it was trying to stimulate business right before the deadline. The BOGO (“Buy one, get one free”) approach is common in other businesses, and is usually associated with trying to incentivize potential customers to purchase the product in question. That incentive usually suggests that business is not as vigorous or robust as desired. This may be one more sign of just how much the test-optional movement has hurt the bottom line of the testing industry.
ACT states in the email that “This second chance can be key to maximizing their superscore, enhancing college applications, and unlocking scholarship opportunities.” I’d probably make the same claims if I was writing advertising copy for the 2-for-1 offer, but as a consumer I can’t say that it would convince me to go immediately to act.org to take advantage of the offer.
The bigger question is whether we want college admission testing, or, for that matter, any part of the college admissions process, to resemble or be advertised like products such as ginsu knives or Ronco products like the veg-o-matic or Mr. Microphone. Do we need the College Board or the ACT doing late night infomercials? And will we soon see the “test-o-matic”?
That’s it for this edition of Ethical College Admissions. 3-for-1 is always > 2-for-1.