Newsweek is among a coterie of media publications with a fascination for studying and grading the students at different universities. Yesterday the magazine released its annual list of the “Most Stressful Schools.” Although the University did not place, we are still embarrassed about this compilation, one indicative of a larger trend of list generation that wastes resources and could impact the decision-making process for many prospective students.
Newsweek looked up the numbers for five categories across innumerable schools. First, of course, it checked average SAT or ACT scores. Next, it gathered the percentage of students who had been admitted to each school. Then it discovered what percentage of students was on financial aid and how much financial aid was granted on average. Lastly, it counted the total cost for enrolling. The crime rate of the university communities “was factored in as a bonus percentage.” From this disparate, banal brew it chose the top 25, deemed these the “most stressful” colleges, and put it on the Internet to be picked up by The Daily Beast, The Washington Post and others, where it could be read or ignored on a slow afternoon.
There is nothing corrupt about the list. The numbers are most likely accurate, and the top schools — Washington University in St. Louis and the University of Pennsylvania — probably are pretty damn stressful. But this is an exercise of no interest or use, save for its revealing futility.
At the end of its slideshow, Newsweek lists more of its lists, including the 25 most beautiful colleges — which judges the architecture, the weather, and “the attractiveness of guys and girls on campus.” The University was number 15. Among Newsweek’s other rankings are the traditional favorites including top party schools, happiest colleges, most liberal and most conservative colleges, most and least rigorous, and so on.
Some of these are more frivolous lists that will likely not be taken seriously. But other lists are taken seriously, touted by universities and examined by students. Regardless of topic, the practice of ranking remains acceptable, with its lazy methodology and aggregate messes. It becomes a matter of universities selecting which label to acknowledge and which to overlook, while students must sort through castles of drivel to find any real scheme that could help them pick out a school.
The problem is there are real issues in higher education. But media institutions are devoting their resources to assessing outdated, dumb categories rather than investigating the pressures colleges are actually facing. Even with an algorithm, sorting through so much data for the sake of a list wastes time for journalistic institutions and their audiences, who deserve something more than distraction.
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