The US News rankings have a very negative incentivization for schools also. One of the things that my alma mater, Virginia Tech, used to do to (and I'm sure still does) is lure top tier students into their (admittedly great) engineering program. However, they then use a bootcamp style, much harder than necessary first year "weed out" program for the freshman engineering students. The effect is that 50% of the incoming engineering students fail out or are forced to transfer to the school's less prestigous programs, particularly business. The relatively high SAT scores of these students then allow these other schools to inflate their rankings with US News. By the way, I know for a fact that Perdue and a few other state schools with good engineering programs do the same thing.
The first time I saw videos of top tier freshman engineering, math, and comp sci courses, I was schocked. The problems were manageable, the pace was reasonable, the teachers were engaging..... and when I saw the course material and realized the tests were easier than the ones I took at my much lower ranked school, I realized I'd been had.
The worst, most socially irresponsible aspect of this practice of "funneling" and "trapping" your students into less desirable majors is that students who otherwise would have been engineers end up learning less useful things. Virginia Tech, and schools like it, are responsible for making the world have less engineers than it should.
But its usually just the door that is hard to get into, once through the door its usually smooth sailing. Actually, this occurs in many exclusive programs/institutions over and over again. But in reality, they have to be selective: the world doesn't need that many engineers, especially ones that aren't that smart, just like we really don't need that many doctors (especially ones that aren't that smart). Computer science is the same: sure you could double or triple the size of your program to except just anyone that wants to program, but then you would flood the market with substandard talent and your reputation goes into the trashbin!
Now, would we prefer a hard program where students would fail out instead of being stopped at the door? This also seems like a waste of resources, but it could work given the right technology (e.g. online courses).
Did you continue with engineering after the freshman classes? I also went to VT, and my classes got harder every year, except for maybe senior year but then I was expected to do a senior design project on top of regular classes. But talking to my other engineering friends, it was very dependent on the major. For Civil engineering freshman year was the weed out year, for Aerospace senior year is the weed out year.
The US News rankings have a very negative incentivization for schools also. One of the things that my alma mater, Virginia Tech, used to do to (and I'm sure still does) is lure top tier students into their (admittedly great) engineering program. However, they then use a bootcamp style, much harder than necessary first year "weed out" program for the freshman engineering students. The effect is that 50% of the incoming engineering students fail out or are forced to transfer to the school's less prestigous programs, particularly business. The relatively high SAT scores of these students then allow these other schools to inflate their rankings with US News. By the way, I know for a fact that Perdue and a few other state schools with good engineering programs do the same thing.
That's not a specific university. That's engineering schools in general. "We'll throw you head-first into the ocean, and see if you survive. If you do, congratulations, you've learned to swim!"
The first time I saw videos of top tier freshman engineering, math, and comp sci courses, I was schocked. The problems were manageable, the pace was reasonable, the teachers were engaging..... and when I saw the course material and realized the tests were easier than the ones I took at my much lower ranked school, I realized I'd been had.
The worst, most socially irresponsible aspect of this practice of "funneling" and "trapping" your students into less desirable majors is that students who otherwise would have been engineers end up learning less useful things. Virginia Tech, and schools like it, are responsible for making the world have less engineers than it should.