U.S. News has devised several diabolical measures to prevent other colleges from pulling out of its system. In a presentation to the Annual Forum for the Association for Institutional Research in May 2014, Robert Morse, the director of data research for U.S. News, revealed that if a college doesn’t fill out the survey, then the guidebook arbitrarily assigns certain key statistics at one standard deviation below the mean. In other words, the guide automatically ranks non-responders as well below average. This statistical penalty has become a strong incentive for colleges to keep playing the game—or slip in the rankings.
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