I came across a great podcast yesterday that exposes the myth of the US News & World Report college rankings that everyone loves to cite when academic standing comes into play in conference realignment discussions.

Turns out that the biggest factor in the rankings is a “peer assessment” metric, which seems to be very similar to college football coaches voting on a top 25, except that the academics necessarily have even less first hand information about their peers than the coaches (or their proxies) do. Malcolm Gladwell, the podcast narrator, later takes the analysis of the flaws in the USN&WR rankings - which began as a marketing ploy to differentiate that magazine from Time and Newsweek - to make the case that historically black colleges and universities are commonly undervalued. But I think it is fair to say that bias and stereotypes also influence rankings of other schools, including some in the heart of Appalachia like WVU and Virginia Tech.

The podcast also reveals that a statistical analysis proved that USN&WR likely “punished” a small liberal arts school on the west coast that chose not to cooperate in providing data for the rankings.

Whether you believe the podcast’s takeaway or not, it is an interesting listen and one that ought to be in the back of your mind the next time folks start debating the academic merit of, say, NC State and Oklahoma State.