Daily Bruin should not praise school ranking system
Our superiority complex could not have been more apparent in a recent Daily Bruin editorial (“Top public schools get high rank for low cost,” Aug. 25).
The US News & World Report’s annual college rankings merely feed research institutions’ egos, and such rankings create mass obsession over an institution’s position on the educational totem pole ““ UCLA included.
Regardless of “top” public universities’ low costs, such as UCLA, the Daily Bruin is not required to yield to this unfair hierarchy imposed on us by USNWR.
If the editorial board seriously considers UCLA’s “class sizes, facilities and professor-to-student ratio” laudable, they clearly have not set foot in a liberal arts institution ““ which USNWR ranks separate from national universities.
Educational leaders acquiesce to these rankings in order to maintain their respective institutions’ academic reputation.
The Daily Bruin need not follow suit.
I implore UCLA, an institution in a position of privilege, to challenge the rankings that have benefited us for this long.
The reality is these rankings oversimplify the institution and bastardizes the individual’s own education.
Besides, in the spirit of the upcoming football season, I’d hate my education to be ranked in a BCS-like system.
Rene Tiongquico
Fourth-year, history