问答题 3.  Every year, various organizations and magazines publish college rankings issues in their countries. These rankings often get a lot of attention from the media, colleges and college-hound students and their parents. But are these rankings actually a good thing? The following excerpts are opinions from two American experts on this issue.
    Write an article of NO LESS THAN 300 words, in which you should:
    1. summarize both opinions;
    2. express your opinion towards college rankings.
    Excerpt 1
    Philip Altbac, Research Professor in the Lynch School of Education at Boston College
    College and university rankings are ubiquitous worldwide. Big decisions are made on the basis of rankings. Students and their families use them for deciding where to study, governments sometimes allocate funds on the basis of rankings and the academic community obsesses over its current score.
    In today's world of mass and competitive higher education, rankings are probably and unfortunately inevitable. But what do the rankings measure? Everything and nothing.
    They claim to provide in a single score the essence of quality. But quality cannot be measured easily, and some aspects of educational performance cannot be accurately assessed at all. Research performance is most easily assessed; it is possible to count articles, grants, books and to measure the impact of work in the sciences.
    Most rankings rely a lot on measures of reputation, such as asking administrators and academics what they think about various universities. These are notoriously inaccurate. No one has wide knowledge of a range of schools, particularly if asked about institutions in other countries, and subjectivity reigns supreme. Other key variables cannot be accurately gauged. Teaching quality and learning outcomes are among the most problematical—and most important.
    Further, one size does not fit all in higher education. Harvard University differs immensely from Bunker Hill Community College, just a few miles away. Rankings generally measure the research and neglect the rest. Some of the rankings change their criteria from year to year, thus making it difficult to trace trends over time.
    Excerpt 2
    Paul Glastris, American journalist and political columnist
    I like rankings. So do most students and parents. Rankings provide a quick and easy way for normal, busy people to visually grasp the results of assessments that are often quite complex. We rely on rankings—Zagat for restaurants, Angie's List for contractors, Consumer Reports for just about everything also—to be our arbiters of quality and value because we don't have the time or ability to reliably figure out all the products and services in the marketplace on our own.
    This is especially true of colleges. Higher education is the biggest investment many people will ever make, and often the most fateful. College is also what economists call an "experience good"—that is, a good or service whose quality isn't readily apparent until after you've consumed it. It's almost impossible to buy an experience good intelligently without some reliable third party assessment.
    Though certainly not perfect, popular college rankings are a great way to sift through thousands of universities and find college options that are most in tune with an individual's wants and needs. In the broadest sense, rankings provide a list of top colleges. This allows prospective students to identify and expand the list of potential 4-year or online schools based on quality of degree programs, majors available, career opportunities and more. For example, If a small school is your priority, you can find a list of the top ten small schools. If you're primarily looking for a social experience, you can check out the top ten party schools.