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Comment on Bill Gates Says There Is Something Perverse In College Ratingsparent

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That would work for MBAs and perhaps JDs, but why tip the scales against, say, a med school that produces great GPs but not many cosmetic surgeons?

A money-based measurement is also heavily canted toward the "old money" set and their legacy admissions to their alma maters.

Money isn't everything. And often it isn't even accurate at measuring how well a school equips students to make it on their own.

"Things like" would count things that mattered per category. If you wanted to go into pure science, most likely you'd be concerned about the freshman average GPA, the % of graduates who change majors, and the graduating percentage that find employment as researchers and educators.

Medical school costs (and the insurance load to practice medicine) are already tipping the scales against GPs (low return on educational investment), and many medical students already know this. The real looming healthcare crises will be when the margins on being a general practioneer sinks below the educational investment cost, and all we are left with are specialists.

As far as investment return on the cost of college education goes, earnings would be a useful metric, especially when one has to finance the education with student loans that have fixed rates of repayment. It is the most universally applicable metric, and although it may not make everybody's world go around, it does keep things from coming to a grinding halt (apart from coercion and intimidation).

In any case, I doubt the college U.S. News college ranking is the largest signal to where most incoming freshman apply.

Maybe the problem is that, for many kinds of education that are useful and/or beneficial to society, money is a poor measuring stick and market forces are not a desirable influence.

The effect on GPs you describe is already driving a health care crisis in the US. We may be left with an overhang of specialists who will surely argue their education should not become a "stranded asset."

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