The number of schools ranked highly in guides such as Barron's Profiles of American Colleges is increasing, without any evidence that these schools' instructional quality is also increasing. Applicants and their families should be wary of letting these rankings serve as the main criteria in their college decisions.

Frederick M. Hess, AEI director of education policy studies and Education Week blogger, released today his second annual "Edu-Scholar Public Presence Rankings." Traditional measures of research productivity, which focus on academic publication, are useful in their own right, but do not offer as much insight into how education scholars influence thinking and the national discourse.

In the most recent Education Outlook, AEI scholar Rick Hess and Taryn Hochleitner explain how the inflation of college rankings contributes to a false sense of exclusivity and rising tuitions.

Today, RHSU unveils the 2012 Edu-Scholar Public Presence rankings. The metrics, as explained yesterday, are designed to recognize those university-based academics who are contributing most substantially to public debates about schools and schooling.

Grade inflation and multiple applications can make schools look deceptively good.

Scholars, education leaders, and rankings experts will explore the history and practical implications of university performance assessment at this conference.

College rankings are useful in trying to distinguish the great from the mediocre and the good values from the rip-offs.

As the housing market struggles to keep pace with economic recovery elsewhere, homeowners would love to have a crystal ball.  Absent that, however, they have AEI resident fellow Edward Pinto, one of seven panelists to be awarded with Zillow and Pulsenomics' Crystal Ball Award.