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Neoliberalism In Colleges And Universities

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“The rankings are turning college admissions into a high-stakes, pressure-packed game, in which the goal is to gain bragging rights over instead of finding the school that is the best fit,” said Andy Ziccarelli a writer for the Notre Dame and St. Mary’s newspaper The Observer. While this is not an inaccurate statement, sadly it definitely isn’t ground for shocking material. Writers for the New York Times, The New Yorker, and The Atlantic have all written the same article at some point saying that U.S. News and World Report Annual University Rankings are bad. But no one seems to be asking the question: how did rankings become so important to both students and universities? The root cause of rankings stems from the rise of neoliberalism. The …show more content…
News and World Report to make exceedingly high profits. The rankings, which are based on arbitrary criteria has turned schools into rivals and shifted the focus from giving students a quality education to improving the university's bottom line. Neoliberalism caused a shift in the world economic system that directly impacted USNWR and rankings that were created. Before Neoliberalism took its hold on the American economic system, we experienced a time period that David Harvey calls embedded liberalism from the 1950’s -1960’s. During this time period the business cycle was controlled and there were high rates of economic growth (Harvey, 10-11). At this point USNWR was owned by the founder of the company David Lawrence, who stepped down from his position in 1962 (Sumner, 85-87). When Lawrence stepped down he became Chairman of the Board for USNWR and handed down his company to employees that had been working for him for at least one year (Sumner, 87). The golden years of embedded liberalism quickly took a turn for the worse as unemployment and inflation rates skyrocketed (Harvey, 11). During this time period USNWR was experiencing …show more content…
In 1983 rankings were calculated by using 100 per cent academic reputation, but the ranking now are calculated by using seven categories with different weights and sub-weights. Under the 1983 ranking Stanford a public state university was ranked higher than any private school in the country at the number one spot, but in 2015 Princeton a private school was ranked number one. The drastic change is how ratings are calculated can be explains by adjustments made to fit the interest of consumers (students and parents) (Hazelkorn, 28). This keeps the demand for their rankings high by reflecting the USNWR puts higher percentage weights on categories that matters to those who will potentially be looking at their rankings (Hazelkorn, 28). The seven categories that USNWR uses to are as follows: Academic reputation 22.5 percent, graduation and retention rates 22.5 percent, faculty resources 20 percent, student selectivity 12.5 percent, financial resources 10 percent, graduation rate performance 7.5 percent, and alumni giving 5 percent. Notice that each of these categories are based on measurable data and excludes a lot of information that may be more important. For instance the rankings do not consider learning outcomes, learning environment, and research. Another important aspect to note is that from the 1983 rankings to the 2015 ranking the focus shifted from academics to financial components that favor wealthier

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