Press Releases
Press Release September 2, 2009
College Ranking Service Annual Announcement 2009
(Palo Alto, California) For the ninth straight year, the College Ranking Service (CRS, rankyourcollege.com), has found that prestige in colleges and universities correlates with the size of endowment. The richest schools are the most prestigious. For the ninth straight year, the CRS has found no difference between the prestige of Harvard, Yale, Princeton, MIT, Caltech, and Stanford. They are all incredibly prestigious and wealthy. In fact, they are so wealthy that the CRS wonders why anyone continues to donate money to them. They don't need your money folks. They have billions upon billions of dollars. By continuing to solicit money from you, they are just being greedy.
For the ninth straight year, the CRS has found no difference between the prestige of Northwestern, Dartmouth, Brown, Duke, Penn and about a dozen or so universities that aren't quite as wealthy as Harvard et al. While they don't have endowments in the 10 plus billion range, they do have endowments in the 5 billion dollar range. They too are wealthy enough. They don't need your money either.
For the ninth straight year, the CRS has found no correlation between the prestige of a university and the quality of its education.
For the ninth straight year, the CRS has found that state universities continue to be squeezed by state governments. They will never be as prestigious as the universities above because they don't have their wealth. But they are the engines that provide this country with its educated workforce. Without Harvard et al., this country would still do well. Without UCLA et al., this country would be in real trouble. The CRS suggests that you take the money that you would normally give to your prestigious and already wealthy alma mater (if you perhaps went to one of those schools) and give it to your state university instead.
For the ninth straight year, the CRS has found that US News' college ranking:
1) Tries to make quantitative distinctions between universities on the basis of statistically insignificant differences;
2) Jiggles its methodology every year to make sure the rankings change in order to generate public interest.