Law Schools

If U.S. News Really Wants To Improve Social Mobility, They Need To Include Tuition In Their Rankings

Including tuition in the rankings would incentivize college administrators to cut costs.

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I didn’t think rankings companies like U.S. news cared much about social issues. And I don’t think they should. Their jobs are to get information about schools, give various weights to a number of factors, put them together, and then use the results to convince us why we should buy their magazine and take them seriously. Improving one’s lot in life should be the individual’s responsibility. But it looks like U.S. News wants to play social justice warrior and try to improve society’s income inequality through their infamous rankings system.

For the 2019 college rankings, U.S. News included “Social Mobility” in its rankings criteria. This factor looks favorably at colleges that graduate students who have received federal Pell grants, a need-based scholarship. The Pell grant is awarded to students coming from families making less than $50,000 per year, although most recipients come from families earning less than $20,000 per year.

If you think this change will catapult your local community college into the national rankings, prepare to be disappointed. This didn’t affect the status quo, at least at the top of the hierarchy. The Ivy League colleges remain at the top of the rankings, even though many of them have the highest tuition in the country and many of their students come from wealthy families. This is because social mobility only accounts for 5 percent of the school’s total rank. This confirms a suspicion I had about the U.S. News rankings: an unspoken rule that any changes to the ranking methodology is fine so long as the elite schools remain on the top.

So it seems like this new change is just window dressing. It gives their reader-customers the impression that they care about social inequality without creating a serious disruption. Thankfully, U.S. News cannot implement this on their law school rankings because graduate students with a bachelor’s degree are ineligible for Pell grants.

But there is one tweak that U.S. News can do to improve social mobility.

They should include tuition price in their rankings. The lower the tuition, the higher the school’s score for rankings purposes.

I like to think that the people at U.S. News are smart enough to be aware of the total $1 trillion+ student loan debt in this country. Most graduates are leaving college with five- to six-figure debt loads and their entry-level salaries can barely cover the interest. Their debt loads makes it harder for them to live like adults — such as raising families and obtaining loans for houses and major purchases. And since these debts are nearly nondischargeable in bankruptcy, one missed payment or an unexpected layoff can create a financial catastrophe that can last years. If there is one thing that is hindering social mobility for young people, it is student loan debt. And this primarily affects people coming from lower- and middle-class families, as rich people can easily pay the tuition.

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Including tuition in the rankings would incentivize college administrators to cut costs. This means that schools will stop trying to outspend each other only to have their students foot the nondischargeable bill.

But more importantly, their graduates will leave with lower student loan debt. This will ultimately be good for the economy, with people having more money to spend or invest as opposed to paying interest to lenders. This would do a lot more to improve social mobility as opposed to keeping track of students with Pell grants.

So why hasn’t U.S. News done this? Of course, I have no idea what the people at U.S. News are thinking, but here are some arguments.

First, schools will try to game the system. For example, they can cut tuition but will try to make money by imposing all kinds of mandatory fees that do not count towards tuition. This loophole can be closed by adding mandatory fees (or similar semantics) into the tuition calculation.

Second, schools cannot control how their students will spend their money. Schools can charge very little tuition or even offer full scholarships. But if their students are going to max out their loan and use the money to live luxuriously or gamble on cryptocurrencies, it won’t matter. Although how students spend their money is ultimately irrelevant to tuition, I understand where they are coming from.

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Third, schools will argue that they need to increase tuition costs in order to pay their expenses. That’s a fair point. But there is a popular belief that colleges have a huge administrative bloat. In the short term, I’m sure that there are some cuts that can be made, particularly in colleges that have a dean for every dorm building. But in the long term, there should be no additional spending cuts but any spending increase proposals will be looked at carefully. If cost cutting is taken too far, educational quality will also take a hit, which will also have a negative effect on a college’s rankings and reputation. No school wants to be known as the Spirit Airlines of education.

Finally, students may not want a cheap education. A recently published research paper found that higher tuition resulted in higher enrollment. I am skeptical about the paper’s claims but it noted that one possible reason for this behavior is because of the knowledge and availability of income-based repayment programs. Since more people are aware that they can just pay based on their income no matter how much they borrow, they may as well pay the school that is charging more because they think the more something costs, the better it must be. It’s unfortunate that some people are choosing schools the same way they choose German luxury cars. Driving a BMW is fun for a while but eventually no one cares and the maintenance costs that come a few years later are ridiculously high. Similarly, most of your clients won’t care where you went to law school and the income tax bill that comes when your loans are forgiven will also be ridiculously high.

In a few years, we’ll see if the addition of social mobility to the U.S. News rankings will affect schools’ behavior to the benefit of their students. Personally, I don’t think this will convince schools to start marketing to low income families. Some of these schools may end up putting their students in a financially worse situation after graduation. But I think a more effective way to change the schools’ behavior is to include tuition in the U.S. News rankings. It will incentivize schools to cut costs or minimize spending, and focus more efforts on fundraising. Also, the school’s graduates are more likely to have minimal student loan debt. It might be a perfect solution, but it will do more to improve social mobility rather than keeping track of Pell grant recipients.

Shannon Achimalbe was a former solo practitioner for five years before deciding to sell out and get back on the corporate ladder. Shannon can be reached by email at [email protected] and via Twitter: @ShanonAchimalbe.

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