PDF College Program Rankings - Worcester Polytechnic Institute

An Interactive Qualifying Project Report

ON

College Program Rankings

IQP-CEW-1502

Submitted to the Faculty of

WORCESTER POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTE

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirement for the

Degree of Bachelor of Science

by

Sam Abradi Christopher Nota

Penny Over Tung Ton

UNDER THE GUIDANCE OF Professor Craig E. Wills

Friday 13th March, 2015

Abstract

This report analyzes current methods of ranking college programs, and compares them to the preferences of students, educators, employers, and other individuals. Ranking sources are located and classified by the ranking criteria used. A survey is conducted of the general population that determines attitudes towards various ranking criteria. The paper concludes with a comparison between attitudes of survey respondents and the actual criteria used by ranking sources.

Contents

1 Introduction

8

1.1 Problem Statement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

1.2 Motivation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

1.2.1 College Rankings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

1.2.2 Importance of Program Rankings . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

1.2.3 Past Projects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

1.3 Project Goals and Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

1.3.1 Goals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

1.3.2 Ranking Categories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

1.3.3 Subject Areas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

1.4 Road Map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

2 Background

16

2.1 Early College Rankings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

2.2 Previous IQP Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

2.3 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

3 Identifying Available Rankings

19

3.1 Finding Ranking Sites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

3.2 Subject Areas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

3.3 Results of Ranking Searches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

3.4 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

4 Classifying Available Rankings

24

4.1 Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

4.1.1 Ranking Categories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

4.1.2 Data Source . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

4.1.3 College-wide vs. Program Specific . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

1

4.1.4 Weights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 4.2 US News . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 4.3 CollegeFactual . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 4.4 National Research Council Rankings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 4.5 Shanghai Rankings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 4.6 QS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 4.7 GraduatePrograms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 4.8 CollegeXpress . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 4.9 Business Insider . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 4.10 Bloomberg Business Week . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 4.11 Forbes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 4.12 Payscale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 4.13 Best Value Schools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 4.14 Princeton Review . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 4.15 Animation Career Review . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 4.16 Super Scholar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 4.17 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

5 Examination of Available Rankings

46

5.1 Weights by Ranking Site by Category . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46

5.2 Weights by Ranking Site by Data Source . . . . . . . . . . . . 48

5.3 Weights by Category by Subject Area . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49

5.4 Weights by Category by Graduate/ Undergraduate . . . . . . 51

5.5 Weights by College-Wide/Program-Specific Data . . . . . . . . 52

5.6 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53

6 Survey

54

6.1 Motivation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54

6.2 Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54

6.2.1 Goals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54

6.2.2 Research Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

6.2.3 Distribution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

6.3 Survey Breakdown . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

6.3.1 Academic Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56

6.3.2 Program Evaluation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56

6.3.3 Demographics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57

6.4 Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57

6.4.1 Overall Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57

2

6.4.2 Category Ratings Across Subject Areas . . . . . . . . . 58 6.4.3 Information Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 6.4.4 College-Wide vs. Program-Specific . . . . . . . . . . . 66 6.4.5 Academic Backgrounds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 6.5 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69

7 Analysis and Comparisons

71

7.1 Ranking Categories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71

7.1.1 Undergraduate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71

7.1.2 Graduate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78

7.1.3 Overall . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83

7.2 Data Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84

7.2.1 Undergraduate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84

7.2.2 Graduate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86

7.2.3 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87

7.3 Program-Specific/College-Wide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88

7.4 Comparison to Past Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88

7.5 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89

8 Conclusions

90

8.1 Future Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90

8.2 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90

A Full-Text of Survey

96

B Raw results from Survey

101

3

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