Ha, pretty funny article. Well written for sure, but it's got major "if only they let ME run things, everything would be fixed in day!" vibes. College rankings aren't broken because some data scientist made a bad decision, they're broken because they're an essential part in the contemporary American class system: sending your kid to SAT bootcamp and then a "prestigious" university is one of the few ways the top 10% can separate their children from their poorer peers. Private high school doesn't really go that far these days, other than for social conditioning and getting them into a good university where the real networking is unlocked.
All of the above applies tenfold for foreign students coming to prestigious US universities, as they pay exorbitant sums to get the name recognition, creating all sorts of weird incentives.
As someone who went to a somewhat prestigious university (Vanderbilt), fingers crossed we nationalize the whole system sometime soon... I think we can all agree that focusing on football, campus amenities, and marketing aren't where these billions should be going. Vanderbilt, to their credit, gamed the rankings a ~decade ago by offering to meet 100% of student's government-determined financial need with grants, which is probably the best outcome possible of this weird system.
Supplying free rides results in students who don't have "skin in the game". If one works to pay the tuition, one is incentivized to get the most value out of their classes.
Without such skin in the game, a student is more likely to do as little as possible and focus on having fun instead.
Maybe! Not sure I've seen data that supports that, but it's a sound hypothesis among some populations. That said, the students who do the very least work and learn absolutely nothing are the ones too poor to ever become undergraduate students in the first place ;)
I see it all the time. Money is a very effective motivator. Working to get money is very much going to influence what you choose to buy with it - and you're going to want to get your money's worth.
Money is an effective motivator until it isn't. I quit an extremely lucrative job because I hated the person I was turning in to and haven't looked back.
I would be wary of making generalizations on motivation which is highly variable person to person.
I neither wrote nor implied that money is the sole motivator of people. There are many things I won't do for money. For example, I won't engage in the lucrative business of drug dealing. That doesn't imply that money doesn't motivate me.
I bet you still do things for money, even if you'd rather have fun instead.
My parents paid for my college tuition. This was also the case for many of my peers. They turned out just fine. Honestly they seem to have done better than those who took out loans purely because they don't have loans.
I bet your parents didn't give you whatever you wanted for free.
My parents gave me the necessities of life for free, but if I wanted more than that, I had to work for it. For example, I bought my first car at 15 from proceeds of a paper route I had for years.
My parents made a deal with me that they'd pay half of my tuition, and I had to come up with the other half. By the time I was a junior, I was making enough on the side I could afford the rest myself, and phoned my parents and said don't send me any more money. It felt really really good to do that.
Yes, I know that college is considerably more expensive these days.
All of the above applies tenfold for foreign students coming to prestigious US universities, as they pay exorbitant sums to get the name recognition, creating all sorts of weird incentives.
As someone who went to a somewhat prestigious university (Vanderbilt), fingers crossed we nationalize the whole system sometime soon... I think we can all agree that focusing on football, campus amenities, and marketing aren't where these billions should be going. Vanderbilt, to their credit, gamed the rankings a ~decade ago by offering to meet 100% of student's government-determined financial need with grants, which is probably the best outcome possible of this weird system.