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Ranking Colleges - Truth Behind the Scoop - US News & World Report vs. Washington Monthly vs the U.S. Dept of Education

By Ellen Dannin, with Richard Lempert Employment Policy Research Network (EPRN)
The Department of Education is creating its own college ranking system based on access, affordability and performance. US News and World Report has long been aware that it uses a deeply flawed system for assessing colleges' educational quality. In 1997, the National Opinion Research Center. The NORC study found, '...the current approach is that the weights used to combine the various measures into an overall rating lack any defensible empirical or theoretical basis.'
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