College Rankings and Admissions Today
The Brian Lehrer Show
WNYC
4.6 • 1.5K Ratings
🗓️ 27 September 2023
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Susan Dominus, staff writer for The New York Times Magazine explains why many colleges have for years been operating under an unofficial affirmative action policy...for men. Liam Knox, admissions and enrollment reporter for Inside Higher Ed talks about the changes to the U.S. News and World Report's college ranking system, and how it affected where different schools fell on the influential list.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | It's the Brian Merishow on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. On the show, we've been |
| 0:16.8 | examining the idea of selective college admissions since the Supreme Court's affirmative action |
| 0:23.3 | decision this summer. We will continue to do that now with two guests on the topics |
| 0:27.8 | of U.S. News revising its criteria for ranking colleges, those rankings help determine |
| 0:34.0 | how selective schools can be, and the topic of affirmative action for men. On U.S. News, |
| 0:40.6 | we're seeing changes to the methodology that they use to rank schools, now weighing metrics |
| 0:45.6 | like social mobility more heavily than in years prior, and joining us with a look at how |
| 0:50.8 | universities are reaching to, are reacting to the new ranking system is Liam Knox admissions |
| 0:57.4 | and enrollment reporter for Inside Higher Ed. Liam, thanks for coming on with us today. Hello. |
| 1:03.0 | Hi, Brian. Thanks for having me. And additionally, the end of race-based affirmative action has |
| 1:09.5 | shined a light on a different unofficial kind of affirmative action that has been taking place for |
| 1:14.3 | a while. According to the New York Times, colleges have adopted affirmative action for men in response |
| 1:20.6 | to declining male enrollment and widening gender ratios. Susan Dominus, staff writer for the New |
| 1:26.4 | York Times, joins us to share her findings on that. So Susan, welcome back to you to WNYC. |
| 1:33.1 | Thank you so much, Brian. It's a pleasure to be here. And so let's take a look first at the |
| 1:37.4 | news coming from U.S. News, the college rankings. Liam, what does social mobility mean in the context |
| 1:44.6 | of college rankings and how has the decision to weigh a school's social mobility score affected |
| 1:51.0 | this year's rankings? Sure. So it's not necessarily a brand new metric U.S. News is considering. |
| 1:59.2 | They adopted some extent of social mobility metrics back in 2018. But this year they really amplified |
| 2:07.0 | its weighting in college's actual standing on the list. They actually called it the most |
| 2:13.5 | significant methodological change in their history. And what it really means is kind of measuring |
| 2:19.4 | how likely a degree from this college is to bring a student up beyond the economic and |
... |
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