College Net/Purpose: Social Mobility Index

“One of the main culprits driving the tuition increases, and thus one of the central impediments to economic mobility, has been higher education’s pursuit of the rankings, particularly those put forward by US News & World Report. Asked to explain the factors behind tuition jumps at Cornell, economists there remarked that “how much the university spends per student for education and maintaining a low student/faculty ratio both weigh heavily in determining rankings. Any slippage in the rankings is extremely costly to the institution.” A study published in Research in Higher Education by a former Provost at the University of Rochester added that if a college or university wanted to move into one of the top 20 slots in the US News rankings it would have to increase spending by tens of millions of dollars a year.

It’s time to confront and change this dynamic – a dynamic that ratchets costs, restricts educational opportunity for American families, and thereby widens income inequality. Any factor that feeds income inequality injures our economy's potential for sustaining growth because it makes recessions more frequent and shortens periods of economic recovery. According to IMF economists Andrew Berg and Jonathan Ostry, "The key result from the joint analysis is that income distribution survives as one of the most robust and important factors associated with growth duration..... increasing the length of growth spells, rather than just getting growth going, is critical to achieving income gains over the long term...." The self-interested chase for US News "prestige" contradicts this key civic and economic responsibility.

One way to stimulate change in higher education would be to recast the competition for “prestige” around factors that improve access, affordability, and graduation, and that advance economic mobility for students.”

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