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September 07, 2011 10:00 AM
U.S. News to Rank For-profit Colleges (Really)
I was joking back when I wrote on April Fool’s Day that U.S. News & World Report would being to rate online, for-profit schools. But apparently the publication is actually going to do this in the 2012 ranking, which will be released on Sept. 13.
According to an article by Caralee Adams in Education Week:
The 2012 U.S. News and World Reports’ Best Colleges ranking to be released on Sept. 13 will include for the first time for-profit colleges and universities that grant bachelor’s degrees and are regionally accredited—many of which are online programs.
This news came in a piece written by Robert Morse explaining the methodology for this year’s ranking system:
For the first time, U.S. News has included in the rankings all for-profit colleges and universities that grant bachelor’s degrees and are regionally accredited. These include many schools that have large online bachelor’s degree programs. Many of these schools ended up as being unranked since they did not meet the ranking criteria.
Morse neglected to explain what, if anything, had changed to cause the publication to include such institutions this year.
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Vicky Phillips on September 08, 2011 4:06 PM:
What changed is that the for-profit college sector is by far the biggest customer for pay per lead student recruitment systems and US News uses a pay per lead ad system. If they rank for profits it will greatly increase their ad client base.