Malcolm Gladwell Analysis

For young prospective students looking to transfer, and those trying to find the best education possible, many often turn to college and university rankings from various reputable sources. These institutions provide crucial information for those looking to attain a higher level of education, as well as setting the stage for the quality of education and perception of the school in the eyes of employers, being a base by which workplaces judge potential new hires. In doing so, the ranking of one’s school that a degree was attained at becomes a major cornerstone of future careers, in that serious employers are more likely to hire individuals that went to higher ranked, more prestigious, universities. However, as outlined by Malcolm Gladwell in …show more content…
In doing so, he points to the fact that rankings must either be heterogenous, or comprehensive, and that when the two factors are combined in a single ranking test, it becomes horrifically misshapen and misperceived. Gladwell claims that a ranking that takes both of these components into consideration becomes skewed due to the fact that it measures way too many things, and attempts to put them all together into a single test to determine an outcome that is encompassing. In doing so, Gladwell states that the US News college ranking, “is also comprehensive. It doesn’t simply compare schools along one dimension--the test scores of incoming freshmen, say, or academic reputation. An algorithm takes a slate of statistics on each college and transforms them into a single score… a single score allows us to judge between entities (like Yeshiva and Penn State) that otherwise would be impossible to compare.” (Gladwell, New Yorker) This becomes a major problem, because as the author mentioned in the article, two schools can have enormous differences between them, based on size, price, school body, and so many other factors, that putting them together alters the integrity of the ranking itself, and essentially makes it inaccurate. The reason that a …show more content…
Specifically so, he states that, “there’s no direct way to measure the quality of an institution--how well a college manages to inform, inspire, and challenge its students.” (New Yorker) When considering these less tangible variables that the college rankings system often doesn’t take into consideration, it is also evident that these factors are a major part of the education that a student receives, and how well they do in their future careers and workplace. The ability for faculty and staff to engage with their students on a personal level, and provide them the advice and guidance that they need, can be the make or break between an individual who attains a degree and goes on to do great things, and one who gets the degree and is unable to do anything with it. In doing so, the system is deeply flawed here because it takes into account for superficial variables to judge the schools that it ranks, and gives very little attention to the inherent learning and educational outcomes that the university provides. As such, “US News fixates on how selective a school is. It focuses on the academic caliber of a school’s freshmen, not on what happens once students arrive at their schools. That’s like judging a hospital by how sick the patients are when they arrive. Are schools

Show More