Colleges sell themselves by the numbers--rankings, returns on
investments, and top-ten lists--but these often mislead prospective
students. What numbers should they really be paying attention to?
High school and college students are inundated by indicators and
rankings supposedly designed to help them decide where to go to college
and what to study once they arrive. In Metrics That Matter, coauthors
Zachary Bleemer, Mukul Kumar, Aashish Mehta, Chris Muellerleile, and
Christopher Newfield take a critical look at these metrics and find that
many of the most popular ones are confusing, misleading, and--most
importantly--easily replaceable by more helpful alternatives.
Metrics That Matter explores popular metrics used by future and
current college students, with chapters focusing on colleges' return on
investment, university rankings, average student debt, average wages by
college major, and more. Written for students, their families, and the
counselors who advise them, each chapter explains a common metric's
fundamental flaws when used as a basis for making important educational
decisions. The authors then draw on decades of scholarship from many
academic fields to pair each metric with a concrete recommendation for
alternative information, both qualitative and quantitative, that would
be more useful and meaningful for students to consider. They emphasize
that students should be thinking beyond solely using metrics when making
college decisions--students should focus on their intellectual and
academic education goals, not just vocational or monetary ones.
Students' reliance on certain metrics has skewed universities away from
providing high-quality education and distorted the perception of higher
education's purpose, overemphasizing private financial returns over the
broader economic and social benefits of universities. This book aims to
facilitate important student decisions while reorienting public
perceptions of higher education's values and how universities should
measure their own success.
