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New TIME ranking system causes major controversy

Is TIME’s new university ranking system the first step in a higher-ed revolution?

wikipedia-influence-learn-work [1]A recent eCampus News [2] story revealed that when deciding which university to attend, students may be more influenced by what people say on social media than national publication rankings such as U.S. News & World Report [3].

In response to this change in student search, TIME [4] has released a controversial way of selecting universities by ranking schools based on the prominence of their most distinguished graduates on the online encyclopedia Wikipedia.

TIME explores all living people that list at least one alma mater in the U.S. They factor in the number of words on the page, the internal links to other Wikipedia pages, external links to other sites, and the number of additional Wikipedia categories it belongs to.

The more prominent the person, the more words they’ll have on the page and the more relationships they’ll have with other people and subject areas. To discourage users from manipulating the system, TIME [4] says that it will rerun the alma mater counts daily and check every new edition by hand.

(Next page: Why TIME’s emphasis on social media is so controversial )

However, this new ranking system is controversial because results are unscientific and determined by Wikipedia and social media metrics, and not traditional academic benchmarks such as the SAT or ACT.

For instance, U.S. News & World Report [5] ranks Princeton as the best university in the nation, with Harvard in second place. Yet when reputable alumni including former Vice President Al Gore, NBA star Jeremy Lin, and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger are calculated in TIME’s algorithm, the Ivy League schools are ranked in reverse [4].

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Harvard University is 2.43 times more influential than Princeton University. [6]
According to TIME, Harvard University is 2.43 times more influential than Princeton University.

A more dramatic example of TIME’s controversial database is with the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill [7]. U.S. News & World Report ranks UNC Chapel Hill the 30th best university in the nation and Emory University [8] the 20th. However due to the enormous influence of Michael Jordan [9], a Tar Heel considered the greatest basketball player of all time, TIME favors UNC Chapel Hill nearly eight times more influential than Emory [4].

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According to TIME, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is 7.59 times more influential than Emory University. [10]
According to TIME, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is 7.59 times more influential than Emory University.

Since the ranking system pulls data from Wikipedia, will this change the collegiate marketing strategy to one that’s more focused on social media? Why or why not?

Share your thoughts in the comments section below and by following me on Twitter @Michael_eSM [11].