January 8, 2009
Behind New Online College and University Rankings
The Online Education Database, or OEDb, released its third annual ranking of online educational institutions this week, prompting announcements and press releases from many of those that appeared near the top of the list.
The Houston-based
But the annual rankings are a completely separate service, OEDb founder Andy Hagans told The Chronicle this afternoon. Hagans conceived of the idea when he noticed that there were no mainstream rankings for online schools. Any perceived conflict of interest, he said, should be dispelled by the site’s thoroughly transparent methodology.
OEDb ranks the colleges according to eight separate metrics. Two of the metrics—retention rate and graduation rate—are the same as the ones U.S. News & World Report uses to formulate its yearly ranking of traditional colleges and universities. Several others bear some similarity to U.S. News metrics without being identical: The OEDb rankings do not use peer assessments of colleges, but they do score how many times a particular college’s Web site is linked to from other colleges’ Web sites. The metric, referred to as “peer Web citations,” appears to use these links as a proxy for a college’s reputation in the virtual community of higher learning.
The remaining OEDb metrics are acceptance rate, student-faculty ratio, financial aid, scholarly citations (how often outside scholars have cited the institution’s research), and how many years the institution has been accredited by the U.S. Education Department’s Office of Postsecondary Education.
The most distinct aspect of the OEDb’s formula is that it weights all the metrics equally. For instance, the quality of each college’s financial-aid program is given the same consideration as how many times that college is linked to from other colleges’ Web sites.
Hagans said he decided to assign equal weight to all criteria because “any weighting we could give them would be arbitrary.” He pointed out that visitors are able to view the rankings by individual metric, in effect allowing them to ascribe their own weight to each one. “We also publish all the raw data,” he said, “so people could produce their own rankings if they want.”—Steve Kolowich
Posted on Thursday January 8, 2009 | Permalink |Comments
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If Oxford and Cambridge University make lectures by leading academics available through iTunes, clearly Online Education is the way to go.
Take a look:
http://www.educationinfo.co.uk/oxbridge-lectures-play-on-itunes.htm
— Shaun Jan 8, 11:32 PM #
Although I applaud the effort to provide an evaluation tool for students looking for online education, OEDb has a ways to go. This list includes fully virtual institutions (e.g. Capella, Walden, Jones) but does not seem to distinguish between them and brick & mortar institutions that offer online degree programs (e.g. Nova Southeastern, Upper Iowa). Also, several notable programs, such as the University of Maryland University College and the University of Illinois, Springfield, are conspicuous by their absence from this list.
— Anthony Jan 9, 09:33 AM #
Anthony – Good points.
— K Jan 9, 10:34 AM #
I find it interesting that the variations in online learning models, and the associated expectations that apply to specific models, do not play into the evaluation of online programs. Online programs are designed to support different needs. The idea that they are all the same is missing the mark. It would be useful to see an evaluation of online programs delineated by the positions they occupy on the learning continuum. The dynamics of online learning models vary greatly and cannot be discounted when considering things like student success and persistence rates.
— Gerry Jan 9, 11:05 AM #
Gerry, it would also be helpful if they designated NFP from FP. Thinking that Walden or Capella would be ranked with a university such as Upper Iowa University, which is a private NFP, is like, pardon the triteness of this, comparing apples to oranges. Then there is the issue of size and . . . well, I’d like to see some real rankings that had meaning to them and not this hodgepodge.
— Deborah Jan 9, 11:44 AM #
Here’s a site devoted entirely to online MBAs that provides direct links to programs available in the U.S. No forms to fill out; just a straight-forward listing of links and an accompanying eBook that visitors can purchase. See http://www.edpath.com/onlinembaportal.htm
— George Lorenzo Jan 9, 02:07 PM #
I must say that the evaluation methodology used for this rankings is, shall we say, less than useful. For example, peer web citations is a nearly meaningless metric in the context of program quality. Acceptance rate has no data for about 1/2 of the programs, and the algorithm used to compensate is, well, bogus. I agree with Deborah that some “real” rankings with good data and meaning would be useful. These are not.
— Scott Jan 9, 03:09 PM #
Responding to #5, I think it is refreshing that all THREE sectors(FP, NFP and public) are together without distinction. If the intention of the list is to provide a qualitative ranking (and I certainly agree that the methodology has a long way to go) it is important — I would suggest essential — that the schools NOT be differentiated by corporate organization. This seems to me to be a situation where ownership type should be submerged — and see where the schools, absent any scarlet letters, fall. The choice of institutions — especially the omissions —is baffling. it would be interesting to know how that was done.
— Mike Goldstein Jan 9, 05:03 PM #
After reading “Declining by Degrees” (http://www.decliningbydegrees.org/), I no longer have confidence the U.S. News and World Report Beauty Contest, so ranking online universities similarly appears to be more of a measure of market recognition rather than educational output quality. These online schools however are the early adopters of a trend that is changing higher education, as witnessed by the large participation in iTunesU and Open Courseware, making the information and courses available in ‘the cloud.’ I believe this portends a revolution in the university education process. This student-oriented type of instruction in online universities, without bricks and mortar infrastructure, will defy our current means of quality measures. Eventually, the only ranking metric may be the number of graduates in the workforce.
— Tom Siu Jan 10, 12:02 AM #
The question I have is the number of years the university was accredited: is it for brick and mortar or online? Also, there are some colleges/universities listed that are not accredited by the Higher Learning Commission. It makes me question the legitimacy of the research
— Charles Sprague Jan 12, 08:07 PM #
I think the work that is being done as part of the Transparency by Design initiative will be incredibly effective in showing true educational outcomes to adult students who are trying to decide which college to attend. You can learn more about it here: http://wcet.info/2.0/index.php?q=TransparencyByDesign
— Michael Feb 16, 02:45 PM #