Going to College: Weapons of Math Destruction

In chapter 3 of “Weapons of Math Destruction”, Cathy O’Neil starts talking about the use of algorithms in a college setting, more specifically with rankings and admissions for those colleges. For almost a decade, Cathy O’Neil spent time as a math professor at Barnard College, which gives her a bit of first hand experience with those rankings and admissions. It also gives her the skill to to deal with some of these mathematical models when they are at their most complex. Her background in hedge funds have given her the opportunity to create some of these complex mathematical models herself.

Cathy starts talking about how an idea from a low level newspaper company would grow and mature into a very well known ranking system of colleges across the United States. The idea of this ranking system was a bit challenging, because it was difficult to figure out what attributes of a college were needed in order to form its rank. US News developed a model that would focus on only a few things such as, public opinion of the college, graduation rate, SAT scores, student-teacher ratios, acceptance rate, and a few others. After this ranking system became more widely utilized and recognized, colleges began adjusting their strategies in order to boost their overall rank. They did things such as putting more money into athletics to boost acceptance rate, accept more students on average to boost overall test scores, and more. The problem with any of this is that if another college is doing the same things but better, it’s only going to decline your rank.

My biggest take away from reading this chapter is that colleges seem to focus more on establishing themselves as a great college in terms of getting a good rank, instead of focusing more on the quality of life for students, teachers, and other staff. Seeing a college’s rank is something that is good to take into consideration, but there are more factors to a good college than just a number.