US News America’s Best Colleges 2008 - Do Japanese Students Care
In a post at one of my other sites TheBizOfKnowledge - I wrote the US News America's Best Colleges 2008 - 8 Questions in Need of Answers
In that post, I listed up 8 questions that were passed around to the business writers of the KnowMoreMedia network.
The last question is relevant to RisingSunOfNihon-
8 - Does the US News college ranking make a difference to Japanese students?
Absolutely - Japanese students look at the list as a sort of
wish list…what they want for Christmas or their birthday - to be accepted into a top school…starting at the very top and then working their way down. A good Japanese student might not be able to put a 10 word English sentence together but they can name the top ten schools on the US News list.
A Japanese student might not have a clue where a school is located geographically but they do know where it ranks on the list. And, that's what matter.
One of my students showed up here in Northern Ca to do research at Stanford in a field she wasn't particularly interest in.
Why, because she got accepted at Stanford. That's why.
The rankings do make a difference to Japanese. Colleges/universities also use the rankings to recruit the best from Japan and other Asian countries - China or India or Japan or Korea or Thailand or Singapore or….
When these students come, it puts the pressure on American home-grown students to perform. This is good news for the college all around. More students stay, finish, perform, get better grades, better jobs, give back more to the college and so on.
Japanese students care about the rankings and the rankings make a difference to the college because of the students they get as a result.
What do you think?
Tags: 2963, 3202POSTED IN: All about Japan
1 opinion for US News America’s Best Colleges 2008 - Do Japanese Students Care
Deas
Aug 19, 2007 at 9:20 am
My college recently had a press release that implies bias in the rankings. Could be mere skepticism, but I’m sad that my college won’t make the list. The Japanese students who’ve attended Furman in the past have loved it. Oh well. They also provided further reading from the NY Times (sign in required), Inside Higher Ed, USA Today, and CNN. With more colleges opting out of the rankings, they will eventually start to lose validity. They already have in the domestic sense. I just hope that word spreads to international students, too. It’s no longer a full picture, and what’s presented could be misleading.
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