While various college rankings may grab headlines and contribute to several of a university's decision, a new report has found that students do not pay much attention.
According to the Huffington Post, the new report comes from the American Council on Education (ACE) and is intended to expose a flaw in President Obama's pending rating system for federal funded schools.
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ACE argues that college rankings contribute to a variety of decisions a school will make often with "negative consequences.
"They influence institutions' strategic positioning and planning, staffing and organization, quality assurance, resource allocation and fundraising, and admissions and financial aid," reads the report.
Obama's proposal, introduced in Aug. 2013, would allocate more federal financial aid to schools with higher ratings based on graduation rate and other performance metrics. The proposal has been met with highly mixed results, but the loudest voices seem to be in opposition.
ACE is one of those against Obama's proposal and their main argument is that students will not care which schools are more highly ranked.
In their report, ACE cited data from the 2013 Higher Education Research Institute Cooperative Institutional Research Program. In that survey, only 24 percent of college freshmen from wealthy families said college rankings were "very important" when choosing a school to attend. Among low- and middle-income families, that figure dropped to 10 percent.
ACE also argued that those who create the rankings are from those high-income families and tend to rank more expensive schools higher. Ideally, Obama's proposal would let highly rated schools offer more money to students from low- and middle-income families, but it is a matter of how much financial aid will be enough.
Financial aid was far more important to those students, ACE found in its report. Various college rankings can include publications like the Princeton Review and U.S. News and World Report with lists like "best law schools," "highest paid graduates" and "best research universities."
U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan and Obama have repeatedly stated that the proposal is far from finished and will not look like the rankings we are used to. Still, most of the public response from college and university leaders has seemingly been negative.