Why Do We Rank Schools? Vote for PayScale at SXSW, and Find Out

How does South by Southwest pick its panels? By asking the internet to choose which of its most burning questions deserves an answer first. This year, PayScale has three potential sessions up for your approval: The Rankers on College Rankings: Why We Do It; How To Diversify Tech & Hack Our Unconscious Bias; and How Working in a Social Agency Made Me Hate Social. Use the SXSW PanelPicker, and tell organizers what you need to know.

(Photo Credit: eschipul/Flickr)

The Rankers On College Rankings: Why We Do It

The best school in the country might not be the best choice for you, especially if it winds up costing you more in student loans than you can comfortably pay off. No one knows that better than PayScale and media outlets that rank schools – so why do we bother to do it? This session examines criticism of current college ranking systems, plus how parents and prospective students can use these tools to make good choices. Finally, we’ll look at why the federal government has shifted its approach to holding colleges accountable for student outcomes.

Speakers

Katie Bardaro, PayScale
Kim Clark, Money Magazine
Rob Franek, The Princeton Review
Jordan Matsudaira, Cornell University

How To Diversify Tech & Hack Our Unconscious Bias

Women take computer science courses in college, so why do so few of them major in STEM fields, and go on to work for tech giants like Facebook and Google? This panel looks at why the tech industry has such trouble recruiting and keeping female workers and invites the audience to examine their own unconscious biases to help come up with solutions to the problem.

Speakers

Aubrey Bach, PayScale
Matt Wallaert, Microsoft
Liz Morgan, LinkedIn
Kieran Snyder, Textio

How Working in a Social Agency Made Me Hate Social

The digital world moves at lightning speed and agencies can’t keep up. This session looks at why the agency model is broken, including lack of access to stakeholders and failure to integrate social objectives at all levels of the organization – and what needs to happen in order to build the future of social media marketing.

Speakers

Brian Steel, PayScale
Ron Schott, Microsoft
Karianne Stinson, Priceline

Tell Us What You Think

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