College Guide

Blog

September 04, 2009 11:57 AM A Suggestion from a Reader

By Jesse Singal

Facebook Twitter Digg Reddit StumbleUpon Delicious

“Jason Becker” on the issue of colleges lying to U.S. News:

One has to wonder why USNews depends on this reporting for accuracy rather than going to the Integrated Post-secondary Education Data Set (www.nces.ed.gov/ipeds), where this information already freely exists and is reported to the federal government each year.

I think we’re far less likely to find these gross inaccuracies when colleges and universities can’t tell the federal government one thing and a ranking organization another.

Jesse Singal is a former opinion writer for The Boston Globe and former web editor of the Washington Monthly. He is currently a master's student at Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Policy. Follow him on Twitter at @jessesingal.

Facebook Twitter Digg Reddit StumbleUpon Delicious

Feed the Political Animal

Donate

Washington Monthly depends on donations from readers like you.

In the Current Magazine

Introduction: A Different Kind of College Ranking
By the Editors
Dropouts Tell No Tales
An African American journalist returns to his college alma mater to find out why so many students like him never make it out. By Jamaal Abdul-alim
America's Worst Community Colleges
The San Francisco Bay Area’s economy may be high tech, but its community colleges are the bottom of the barrel. By Haley Sweetland Edwards

From the Archives

The New Water Wars
On the Missouri and rivers further east, dying industries control the flow and leave emerging businesses high and dry. By Bill Lambrecht May 2005
The Great Black Hope
What's riding on Barack Obama? By Benjamin Wallace-Wells November 2004
A Fish Story
How an angler and two government bureaucrats may have saved the Atlantic Ocean. By Alison Fairbrother May/June 2012

Best of Political Animal

More News & Views

The Fallout from Failing to Govern
What if voters don’t punish extremism? By Ed Kilgore 10/03/2013
Real College Graduates
An associate degree is a college degree, too. By Robert Kelchen 10/02/2013
Shutdown Psychology Made Simple
Why this disaster happened how it did. By Cass Sunstein 10/01/2013
Why Politicians Who Lose a Primary Can’t Win a General Election
Many state laws prevent this from happening. By Seth Masket 09/30/2013
One of These Countries is Not Like the Others
The real meaning of American exceptionalism. By Cass Sunstein 09/30/2013
Hands Across the Water
Can a trade pact with Europe help America tame China? By Dane Stangler 09/30/2013
Deaf to America
The Ted Cruz Republicans seem to listen only to themselves. By Ezra Klein 09/27/2013
Life in the Red
Maybe we’re just going to have to get used to high debt for college attendance. By Daniel Luzer 09/27/2013
What the GOP Can Learn From Woodrow Wilson
Averse to compromise, he died a bewildered and broken man. By Michael O’Donnell 09/27/2013
America the Bystander
Is U.S. influence really declining? By Ali Wyne 09/25/2013
How Democrats Lost the Colorado Recalls
They spent too much money on television and radio. By Stefan Hankin 09/24/2013
Math Is Hard
Why are third-party predictions so weirdly pptimistic? By Keith Humphreys 09/23/2013
Sheriff Yellen
What would Janet Yellen be able to accomplish as Fed chair? By Max Ehrenfreund 09/23/2013
Brothers in Armchairs
For Allen and John Foster Dulles, regime change was an extension of the family business. By Jacob Heilbrunn 09/23/2013
Just Get Rid of High School Sports?
Would we be better off without them? By Daniel Luzer 09/21/2013
The Summers Problem
The fight over who should lead the Fed reflects real debate about what financial regulation is supposed to do. By Ezra Klein 09/21/2013
Single-family Housing: A Smart Growth Strategy
Serious increases in density are possibly with only slight modifications. By Jonathan Zasloff 09/19/2013
A New Rome?
Pope Francis: A less political pontiff. By Martin Longman 09/19/2013
Pay or Don’t Play
Paying college athletes isn’t just fair to players; it could improve college basketball. By Louis Barbash 09/18/2013
Congress Is Poised to Bury “Tough-on-Crime.”
Obama should hang back. By David Dagan and Steven M. Teles 09/17/2013