Last week, Princeton Review and Forbes released their college rankings, unleashing the perennial wave of anxiety through college-bound students everywhere. A few days later, Standard & Poor's, one of the most prominent members of the credit rating oligopolies, downgraded the United States' debt from "AAA" to "AA+," striking fear into the hearts of investors and potentially wreaking havoc on the global economy. These events, though seemingly disconnected from each other, are only two of the latest examples of our collective obsession with ratings and rankings of any sort.
Scores like these are often trivial or can have a limited effect on a specific demographic. College rankings, for instance, have attained an almost canonical importance for kids eyeing elite universities despite the generally-admitted fact that myriad factors should be taken into account when considering one's best college fit. Ranking and scoring systems like these, whether legitimate or not, have weaved their influence into the fabric of society.
Consider Standard & Poor's. Credit rating agencies were known for supposedly providing objective analysis of investment risks up until the near-collapse of the financial system in 2008. Following this crisis, they came under fire for the inherent conflict of interest because raters are paid by the entity whose debt is being rated. This week, those criticisms have made a comeback, along with the allegation that credit agencies are taking advantage of the country's financial problems in order to further entrench its influence over the millions of financial transactions that occur in its wake. Whether these allegations are true or not, the financial sector and private investors have taken heed, allowing stocks to resume their freefall and creating another wave of the uncertainty that has characterized global markets for the past three years. When these rating agencies discard their ethical adherence to objectivity, they assume control over the same systems they proclaim to merely observe. We, by being unable or unwilling to think for ourselves, place our society under their sphere of influence.
We choose not to think for ourselves because a deluge of content and statistics, helped along by the influx of new technology and media, threatens to drown us under its immensity. We want others to think for us to crunch the swirling numbers and tangential connections of a complicated system into a clear, definitive score and spit out a conclusion that we can assimilate as our own understanding of complex issues.
But because rankings try to quantify the unquantifiable, gross generalizations are bound to occur. Yet we hold a strong desire to base our decisions on a quantified form, stripped of complexities and intangibilities, which, according to the author of "How We Decide," Jonah Lehrer, "give the illusion of control." The reality is far from it. By trusting in these agencies, we outsource our opinions and place ourselves under their arbitrary influence.
Complacency and blind faith in rankings and ratings may suppress the ability of the public to think for itself. People must understand that these external opinions must be taken with a grain of salt. Most importantly, we need to understand that no criteria are more important than our own. But don't take my word for it. Decide for yourself.
