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Reporting on the state of education in your community and across the country.

The Week of College Rankings

j.o.h.n. walker / Flickr

Earlier this week, one of the most in-depth national college rankings-- that'd be U.S. News and World Reports-- released their annual lists, which were calculated by analyzing factors including freshmen retention rates, class sizes, acceptance rates, and student-to-faculty ratios.As far as national universities, Princeton University took the top spot. Ohio's highest appearance comes thanks to Cleveland's Case Western Reserve University, who tied for 38th place on the list. Seven other Ohio schools landed lower on the list--which shows the top 200 schools--of national universities.On the liberal arts side, Massachusetts' Williams College is listed as the number one school, while six Ohio schools appeared elsewhere on the list.Regional universities are defined as "schools many bachelor's, some master's and few doctoral programs," and Ohio has fifteen schools on the list. Nine colleges also appear on the list of regional colleges--defined as schools that grant fewer than half of their degrees in liberal arts disciplines.Colleges self-report data to the publication, which is then analyzed. That contributed to a problem for Florida Golf Coast University. A mistake by a FGCU's employee led to the university being erroneously high up on the "most debt" list. Several colleges also reported having similar problems last year.Another problem? Well, according to The University of Akron's president Scott Scarborough, the rankings generalize universities without taking into account student success.“While we analyze objective data in a continuous effort to help each student, rankings don’t help us achieve our overall mission: to be the best university this region needs us to be,” Scarborough told the Akron Beacon Journal. “Rankings of any kind take a cookie-cutter approach that has little to do with the individual success of students. Rankings reward the most selective colleges."Also this week, the New York Times released a ranking of a different kind. The group's College Access Indexlooks the economic diversity at campuses. According to their website, findings are based on comparing both the amount of low-income freshmen receiving Pell grants, and how much low- and middle-income families pay for students to attend.Two Ohio schools--Denison University and Kenyon College--are listed as being economically diverse.