the most important decision of one's  entire life: where to attend college.

Anxious about their future,  pressured by their parents,  

and armed with only the most basic  understanding of compound interest,  

would-be college freshmen make the kind  of customer most businesses only dream of.

An 18-year-old is more informed about the  brand of shoes they wear than the institution  

at which they'll spend 200 weeks of  their lives and $84,000 on average.

It's not their fault.

The basic problem is information asymmetry.  Prospective students can take tours, deciding  

whether a school's trees are a satisfactory shade  of green and buildings sufficiently old looking,  

but nearly everything else they know  comes from just one source: the seller.

Now imagine making this decision 7,000 miles away,  

having never stepped foot in the country,  and as a non-native English speaker.  

That's the challenge faced by America's  340,000 Chinese international students.

So, what does a diligent  young adult do to compensate?  

They turn to the Consumer Reports  of education: college rankings.

But for this prudence,  

little do they know, they're rewarded  with a mix of fraud and deception.

It's not just that rankings are inaccurate or  misleading — though make no mistake, they are!

The real problem is much, much deeper.

In fact, almost everything wrong with higher  education today — the student loan crisis,  

inequitable admissions, academic plagiarism, and  the collapse of tenure are ultimately symptoms.

…Symptoms of one giant,  interconnected web of deceit.

Sponsored by Fabulous, the app  that uses behavioral science  

to help you build healthy habits like  meditation, exercise, and better sleep.

From the day a baby is born in China,  he or she unknowingly enters a race.

Although they won't take the Gaokao, China's  college entrance exam, for another 18 years,  

it alone will ultimately determine  their career and social class.

And “determine” means determine — there are no  letters of recommendation, extracurriculars,  

awards, or alternate pathways. The  Gaokao is the only race that matters.

Because it's held just once a year  and the results highly publicized,  

the cost of failure is enormous.

Every hour of sleep lost, every  hobby forgone, and talent abandoned  

is easily justified — it could be the  difference between one's dream and fallback.

Why do Chinese students collectively sacrifice  what the rest of the world calls “adolescence”  

for a single exam? In a word: fairness. The  poor farmer's daughter and chief executive's  

son take the same exam, in the  same room, at the same time.

Of course, in the real world, the rich and  powerful usually find a way. Contradictions,  

after all, have never stopped China,  

a “Communist” country with the 2nd  highest concentration of billionaires.

For middle and upper-class kids, an overseas  education is a lifeboat on the Titanic — an  

escape from academic pressure and  the public spotlight, respectively.

Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam's  

son and Chairman Xi Jinping's  daughter both attended Harvard.

Now, hold that thought for a moment.

Seven in ten Americans attend a public college.  

But despite coughing up over 21,000 US dollars  a year for in-state tuition, room, and board  

on average, students themselves only directly  contribute one-fifth of their school's budget.

Most of the total — about  40% — is covered by state,  

federal, and a bit of local government  grants, contracts, and appropriations.

What this means is that public universities  are largely at the whim of their federal  

and state governments, who, in turn,  depend on a healthy stream of tax revenue.

During “normal” times — which is to say, a long  time ago — this was no big deal. The system,  

imperfect as it was, chugged along mostly…  fine… enough until the 2008 recession,  

when schools were painfully reminded of  the house of cards they're built upon.

People lost their jobs, the  government lost its tax revenue,  

and thus universities lost their funding. Oops.

Not only was there just less money  going around, but because there was  

less money going around, universities were  under greater scrutiny to use it well.

Less money, yet more demands.

So what did they do?

What every good Capitalist does, of  course! They commodified education,  

casting their line further and further  afield in search of untapped markets.

They both exported the product — slapping  their logos on deep-pocketed modular  

architecture everywhere — and imported customers.

International students weren't some  new invention but universities were  

shocked by how deep the wells  were — particularly in China.

It all began as a short-term  solution to an acute problem:  

fill a hole in the budget. But  they soon realized the potential.

The intense pressure of the Gaokao, combined with  

China's growing middle-class had produced an  insatiable desire for overseas credentials.

Today, there are two and half times as many  Chinese international students in the U.S.  

as second place India, which is itself two  point seven times larger than third place Korea.

And that's not just because China  is huge. The country is home to 18%  

of the world's population, but 35%  of international students in America.

Demand, in other words, had accidentally  discovered a huge, under-exploited supply.

There was basically no limit to the number  of keen Chinese students they could attract.

Even a decent state school in the middle of  nowhere could arbitrage the American brand,  

converting its U.S. address plus the vague notion  of “international exposure” into cold hard cash.

But, say you're a Chinese student who's never  stepped foot in the States. How do you pick a  

school despite knowing next to nothing about the  country, much less any individual city or state?

You take out your phone, Google “best colleges  in America” and tap on the first result, duh!

Enter college rankings.

Students and their parents are universally  desperate for objective answers — guidance  

in making the quote “right choice”, and  later assurance that they indeed have.

Rankings prey on this anxiety, and doubly  so in the case of international students,  

whose vacuum of knowledge  is ripe for exploitation.

Chinese international students,  in particular, are both, by far,  

the largest kind, and, according to this survey,  the most persuaded by reputation and prestige.

The only little problem is that rankings  are…well, complete and utter garbage.

Let's start with the low-hanging fruit:  It isn't possible to reduce an entire  

university to a single number. At least, not  without losing all meaning in the process.

In what world does Goshen College,  a Mennonite school with 827 students  

in rural Indiana belong on the same list as  a party school, like say, the University of  

Alabama, whose student population is  larger than the entire town of Goshen?

In fairness, they do share  the same basic mission — the  

proliferation of knowledge. But the  same can't be said of all schools.

The Mennonites look like close relatives of  Crimson Tide when compared to Peking University  

— whose charter replaced “freedom of thought”  with loyalty to the Communist Party in 2019.

One building strives to cultivate  the next generation of thinkers.  

The other to churn out obedient workers.

Yet the “big three” international rankings  — QS, ARWU, and The Times — don't even  

acknowledge the fact that entire fields of  study are forbidden at some universities.

But, okay, enough with all  the high-minded philosophy.

At the end of the day, people like to rank things.  

And there is an undeniable difference  between your local community college and MIT.

Assuming that schools can be reduced to a single  number, what specific criteria should be used?

You might suggest student  satisfaction, teaching quality,  

graduate employment rate, or, how  could you forget, the cost of tuition!

Wrong, wrong, wrong, and lol.

What rankings do consider is the  proportion of international students,  

which brings us to the positive feedback loop.

Each new international student increases  their school's ratio, which, in turn,  

boosts its overall ranking. Meanwhile, how  do international students choose schools?  

That's right, rankings!  Around, and around, and around.

At some point, to reject international students is  to willfully forgo prestige, and thereby revenue.  

This irresistible self-perpetuating  cycle encourages schools to admit  

students even with an inadequate grasp  of English, setting them up to fail.

Schools that pursue this strategy tend to  have very large Chinese student populations,  

which often results in “social bubbles” on campus.  After 4 years, they may graduate with few, if any,  

local friends, despite coming, in  large part, for that “exposure”.

Now, to put things in perspective, the  international student ratio only comprises 5%  

of the QS ranking formula. But make no mistake,  their actual contribution is many times larger.

Few Americans pay the price  of tuition shown on Google.  

Those who attend college in their own state  pay only about half the sticker price,  

and even out-of-state tuition  is offset by financial aid.

About the only students who do pay full price are  international students. And on top of that, they  

pay additional “fees”, disproportionately live  in student dorms, and buy university meal plans.

With all that extra cash, schools  can buy their way up the rankings,  

attracting even more students, and so on.

In 2008, Baylor offered new students $1,000  a year in student aid to retake their  

SATs and score an extra 50 points,  artificially boosting its numbers.

QS even offers a paid consulting  service, in a clear conflict of interest.

In the best case, this extra cash is  spent hiring more teachers — increasing  

its teacher-student ratio, which  comprises 20% of the QS formula,  

and attracting researchers, who boost the  school's academic citations — another 20%.

Now, you might argue that's how things are  supposed to work. Money affords quality.  

The rich get richer — no surprise there, and  there's no reason schools should all be equal.

But what does “quality” really mean?

Teacher-student ratios tell you  how small a school's classes are  

but not how good the teaching.

Students may wonder why so many of their  classes are capped at 19 or 20 students.  

The reason is that U.S. News counts  the number of classes with 20 or fewer.

The result is that access to the  best professors is restricted.

In a world with an infinite number of great  teachers, smaller class sizes would always be  

better. But, as anyone who's attended college  can tell you, that's definitely not the case.

Citations per faculty is an even worse proxy for  quality. The number of academic publications a  

school produces has almost nothing to  do with the undergraduate experience.  

In fact, more time spent on research  equals less emphasis on teaching.

When folks reminisce about college, they  mention things like the fun social environment  

and maybe one or two stand-out classes.  

What they don't tend to remember is their  school's number of academic citations.

Silly as this sounds, millions of students  

inadvertently choose schools  based on this very criteria.

Yet just 2% of admissions directors  think ranking systems are,  

quote, “very effective” at helping  students find the right school.

All they really do is reward those willing  to play the game, like Singapore's NTU — who  

made massive leaps in the rankings thanks  to a sudden, coordinated burst of research.

…That's, of course, assuming the research being  cited is even good. You can probably think of  

a widely-cited paper linking vaccines  to a certain… neurological disorder.

Now, you might counter that  students are just holding it wrong,  

misunderstanding what rankings  actually measure (research).

But they aren't even good at measuring that!

A full 50% of the QS formula is reputation.  

How does a school gain a “reputation”?  In no small part, rankings!

In other words, rankings measure reputation,  and reputations are determined by ranking.

Professor Imanol Ordorika calls rankings  “Harvardometers” — suggesting they merely  

measure how close a school is to what we already  assume to be the best. Any formula that didn't  

place Harvard near the top would have to  go back to the drawing board until it did.

Still, somehow it gets worse. Way worse.

The way reputation is measured is,  

in part, with online surveys in which  respondents are rewarded with free “swag”.

U.S. News has college presidents to rate hundreds  of their competitors on a scale of one to five.

In one study, Princeton's business school was  ranked in the top 10 despite not even existing.

Meanwhile, according to researchers, rankings  

aren't even precise enough to accurately  distinguish between first and tenth place.

The problem is that we act as though they can.  

In one egregious case, administrators of  the University of Malaya were fired after  

it suddenly dropped 80 places in The Times  ranking due only to a change in definition.

So why not group schools together to at least  avoid giving the false impression of precision?

Because this volatility is a core part of the  rankings business model — it produces an annual  

round of drama and publicity. “Wow, this school  dropped 10 places!” and “this one gained 5!”,  

when nothing effectively changed  as far as students are concerned.

So. Colleges can't be reduced to a single number.  Even if they could, this isn't how you'd do it.  

And even if it were, you wouldn't add  all these different metrics together,  

producing a result that neither accurately  measures reputation, quality, or research.

But remember, rankings are not just  a corporate parasite one can ignore.  

Imagine if Consumer Reports had a total  monopoly on public information about phones,  

TVs, or cars. Apple and Toyota would  design their products not based on what  

we actually want but whatever arbitrary metrics  profit-seeking Consumer Reports decides on.

We've talked about schools that benefit  from this system. But for every Harvard,  

NTU, and Princeton, a dozen more are  held totally captive against their will.

Ranking companies enforce  compliance with a threat:  

Either hand over the data we demand,  or your rankings will suffer.

That's no exaggeration. U.S. News, for instance,