Columbia University is a private Ivy League university in New York City. Founded in 1754, the college is the fifth-oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and considered to be one of the most prestigious universities in the world. The school has had a pivotal role in several scientific breakthroughs, has educated four US presidents, and has produced a number of other influential figures, accounting for its popularity in the academic world. In addition, with an acceptance rate of just 6.7% in 2020, the school is one of the most competitive universities in the country. Columbia University was ranked the second-best college in the United States by US News and World Report in 2021, but in 2022 the ranking of Columbia plummeted to the eighteenth position after a months-long controversy.

The status of Columbia being the second-best school in the nation was never questioned until mathematics professor Michael Thaddeus accused the school of presenting inaccurate and highly misleading statistics. Thaddeus, himself a Columbia faculty member since 1998, created a blog post in February 2022, presenting a lengthy statement stating that the university submitted rigged numbers to drive up the school’s position in the influential US News rankings. Amongst other accusations, Thaddeus criticized claims the university made about the size of classrooms and misinformation that the entire faculty held the highest degrees in their field. Columbia immediately defended its numbers, stating that they were honest errors in calculations; however, pressure from students and the public eventually caused the university to confess on September 16 to altering its statistics. Despite Columbia refusing to submit information itself for the most recent US News ranking charts, the media company used federal data to rank the university in eighteenth place, an appalling sixteen-place drop for the university. This caused severe uproar, backlash, as well as discussions on the importance of the rankings.

The drop in the school’s national ranking has additionally led to questions on whether the ranking of a school really matters or impacts the quality of education received at the school. Further, debates over the cost of tuition at Columbia have multiplied; students generally end up graduating from colleges like Columbia with thousands of dollars in debt, making people wonder if the education is even worth paying such a large sum of money. This sentiment is even echoed within our own school, with Spoorti Kalashetti (‘23) stating, “I feel like we need to realize that rankings really don’t matter and that all that matters is the quality of education you receive.” Kalashetti feels that there are a plethora of lesser-ranked schools that can offer a comparable quality of education. After the revelation of the lengths Columbia is willing to go for their ranking, society must decide the importance it places on the name-value of certain schools and whether or not schools like Columbia have been taking advantage of those seeking an education for far too long.