Americans place a great deal of trust in college ratings to discover which schools are supposedly excellent and which are supposedly of lower quality. For many years, U.S. News & World Report had a lock on this, but now there are a bunch of competitors in the field.
In today’s Martin Center article, Ashlynn Warta takes a look at one of them — Niche.com. Apparently, it has become very popular. But does it provide useful information? She’s quite skeptical.
Niche is, Warta writes, “trendy” and as you’d expect, a top matter of concern is how “diverse” colleges and universities are. And, again as you’d expect, “diversity” is confined to the usual leftist obsessions: “As the reader will note, Niche’s understanding of ‘diversity’ is entirely defined by such progressive concerns as race and sex (or ‘gender’), with a dash of regional and economic distinction thrown in. But are such markers really of greater importance for colleges than diversity of thought, not to mention academic quality?”
Furthermore, Niche claims to eliminate “bias” in its evaluations, but Warta finds that claim to be questionable. “The issue with most any survey methodology,” she writes, “is that biases can persist despite the measures taken to avoid them. The language on Niche’s website implies that its method is superior because it removes the opportunity for bias by not using data submitted by colleges; however, Niche appears to disregard the very present opportunity for bias where student reviews are concerned.”
Should students and parents put their trust in Niche to find the best college? If they do, they’ll probably focus on the wrong characteristics and reject some schools that would offer a serious education and gravitate toward others that are popular.