General Information

As you explore U.S. education you will discover that we employ a variety of titles and designations for institutions and programs. This can all be quite confusing, and USNEI wants you to have the following information to assist you in finding out what you want to know.

The titles and designations of U.S. study programs and types or levels of educational institutions are not set forth in law or protected or reserved, and therefore may vary from place to place.

Since standards are enforced via accrediting associations, state regulation, and professional standards, laws regulating titles and designations are not necessary in the U.S. system in order to distinguish types and levels or assure quality. Do not assume that the absence of national laws means an absence of standards!

Degree designations are fairly standard across the United States, so that educators and employers have general expectations when someone presents a credential indicating award of a certificate, diploma, or degree of a certain level.

Program content and the name of the subject concentration often varies from institution to institution, so U.S. educators and employers usually examine student records in order to determine what an individual has in fact studied and what they are qualified to do at the degree level which they have completed. A few degrees in professional subjects are closely regulated by state governments and professional associations and have uniform content if awarded by an accredited institution.

The designation or name of an educational institution is not as important in the United States as is the degree level, the content of the study program, and whether an institution is accredited to offer a particular program at a particular level. Our system does not segregate types of education or levels to the extent that many other systems do. Many U.S. institutions award credentials at several levels in both academic and occupational fields.

In the United States all institutions awarding degrees, from the associate to the doctorate, are considered part of higher education. We do not consider institutions awarding different degrees to be at different levels of quality, nor do we recognize concepts like "university status" or "nonuniversity status." American educators regard each degree level as both important in its own right and in relation to other degree levels, and our system provides the means to progress both vertically, through each degree level, and horizontally across types of programs.

Institutional and Program Rankings

In recent years an industry has emerged, in the United States and elsewhere, of persons and organizations purporting to measure the quality of institutions and programs by examining certain statistical variables associated with them. In most cases these analyses are based on questionnaires addressed to students, faculty, and administrators and factual data on quantifiable concepts. The questionnaires usually ask respondents to rank their institution and others they may have heard about in certain categories. Institutions and programs are then ranked based upon responses received and descriptive statistics about the institution or program.

Why Ranking Lists are Flawed

You may have heard of, or seen, some of the numerous rankings of U.S. institutions and programs that are widely published and available on the Internet. Before you accept such ranking lists as accurate, however, USNEI urges you to consider the following:

Rankings of institutions and programs are mainly produced by private sources, news media outlets, and other corporations. They are not produced by government authorities or by sources recognized as authoritative by the entire U.S. educational community.

Ranking research is financed by the sale of products containing the rankings and is dependent upon the voluntary cooperation of institutions and individuals who desire to participate. These conditions require striking a delicate balance between objective accuracy, avoiding undue offense to the status quo, and increasing sales through public excitement.

The high cost of data collection, balanced with the need to market results, frequently causes short-cuts such as reliance on untested data sources (cheaper than original surveying and cross-checking) and an emphasis on broad categories such as "undergraduate," "history," or "engineering" rather than serious efforts to distinguish strengths and weaknesses in specializations or variations in program features.

Serious methodological problems often hinder ranking efforts, including such difficulties as conceptual errors, generalization, imbedded bias and assumptions, interrater reliability and scoring errors, sampling errors, and vulnerability to inaccurate reporting by institutions and other data sources.

Often, in order to obtain a final "top ten" or "top twenty" ranking, list makers will use percentage "scores" for institutions that are carried out several decimal places. This is done because, in fact, there is frequently no statistically significant difference in the scores of most or all of the institutions or programs on the list.

The consequence of this flawed but very popular process is the production of ranking lists that report minor scoring differences as major differences in quality; fail to adequately warn the user about important weaknesses in concept and method; ignore important differences in programs among and within institutions; and are based on shortcuts rather than detailed and sound procedures.

In addition to flawed analyses, ranking lists are also inappropriate ways by which to select institutions or programs in the U.S. system. Why?

U.S. education is not centrally controlled, nor does it have uniform titles, designations, and approaches across the system. As a consequence, ranking methods that assume comparability and uniformity are not useful indicators of quality.

U.S. educators and employers do not evaluate quality on the basis of fixed assumptions about uniform content, but rather on a case-by-case basis using standard assessment approaches to analyze often quite different individual situations. Rankings play no part in this process.

Educational institutions often have very different social missions even when they operate similar programs. It is both invalid and improper to attempt, for example, to compare an institution serving young, gifted, elite students with one serving working adults, since the same missional criteria do not apply to both. Indeed, the institution serving less privileged adult part-time students may do a better job than the institution serving elite youth.

The available raw data for making comparisons, even when collected and analyzed by reputable organizations that do not have commercial interests, are not sufficiently detailed to enable scientifically sound analyses to be made. Cost, complexity, and U.S. privacy laws mean that such analyses are unlikely in the near future.

For the very good reasons stated above, USNEI does not link to commercial ranking lists of U.S. institutions or programs, nor do U.S. government or educational authorities recognize or endorse such rankings or accept them as valid evidence of U.S. educational quality when used by domestic or foreign authorities.

How Can Good Evaluations be Made?

If you want to find out what U.S. programs or institutions are considered the best and may be best for you, there are several things you need to do.

Determine very precisely what it is you want to study, teach, or evaluate. Even though there are thousands of U.S. institutions and faculties, there may well be only a few that emphasize teaching or research in the specialty you seek. In other words,

Do not assume that any U.S. program in any subject, such as biology or business, always offers the same specializations within the field;

If you need a place that offers a particular type of educational experience, such as Waldorf education or accomodation of special needs, narrow your investigation to those places only; and

Recognize any other parameters, such as whether you need traditional or nontraditional education, what level you seek, and for what purpose the education is needed (professional, academic, personal interest, etc.).

Learn what institutions and programs that you are interested in are accredited by recognized associations, which is your first assurance of both quality and consistent standards.

Contact both U.S. associations and experts, and those in your home country, who can provide authoritative guidance on what to expect from a good program or institution in a given field, and then apply that information to the program descriptions of individual institutions and departments.

Do not assume that institutions called one thing, such as "university," are automatically superior to ones called another name, such as "college" or "institute." Remember that these names do not represent a formal typology in U.S. usage.

Assess your own capability and level, or that of the students you advise, and apply that assessment to your list of U.S. possibilities. In doing so, remember that:

Your own national qualifications are not automatically valid in the U.S. any more than U.S. credentials are in other countries;

The competent U.S. authorities, the educational institutions, will ultimately decide the level at which they will place you to study if admitted; and

U.S. education requires other capabilities, including a fluent command of English, good computer skills, a willingness to participate actively in discussions with faculty and not remain respectfully passive, completion of many academic requirements outside your field, and a high degree of intiative.

If you follow these steps you will quickly narrow your search to the institutions and programs that offer what you need, in the manner in which you need it, and that are judged by genuine authorities in their fields to offer sound education. Also remember that we have a very large system! Do not be suspicious if your search turns up 50-100 or more excellent institutions or programs. One hundred schools is still less than 3 percent of all U.S. higher education.