College Rankings and AI

In the third chapter of Weapons of Math Destruction by Cathy O’Neal she talks about a model that heavily influenced college admissions for the last 35 years. In 1983 a struggling magazine, U.S. News & World Report published an article that ranked 1800 colleges and universities in the United States based on a few different criteria's. This model placed different weights on different parameters such as test scores and job placement after graduation. This article which was not very accurate on how good an actual school was, was surprisingly widely accepted by the public. This model, even as basic as it was, played a big part in decision making for choosing where to go to college for future college students.

Cathy O’Neal goes in depth on how these models deeply affected education past high school. These models further affected how colleges would handle their admissions. They would find out what exactly affected their ranking and spend money trying to improve that aspect so they could move up on the list. This list created a system that hurt the schools that were lower on the list and would help the schools that were higher on the list. The schools that moved down lower on the list would be less attractive to students and would move even further down the list.

I think that these models, while based on some statistics were still somewhat of an opinion. Because whoever created the model is still deciding what parameters to add and what weights each parameter will actually have. I also think that there could be a direct correlation between the heavy increase in tuition prices and when these models became relevant. These schools were spending more and more money on making their school more attractive so students would want to go there instead of somewhere else. This money had to come from somewhere.