Criticism of college and university rankings (North America)
Encyclopedia
Criticism of college and university rankings
refers to movements which developed among faculty and administrators in American Institutions of Higher Education as well as in Canada
.
refused to participate in U.S. News and World Report annual survey. According to Reed's Office of Admissions, "Reed College has actively questioned the methodology and usefulness of college rankings ever since the magazine's best-colleges list first appeared in 1983, despite the fact that the issue ranked Reed among the top ten national liberal arts colleges. Reed's concern intensified with disclosures in 1994 by the Wall Street Journal about institutions flagrantly manipulating data in order to move up in the rankings in U.S. News and other popular college guides. This led Reed's then-president Steven Koblik to inform the editors of U.S. News that he didn't find their project credible, and that the college would not be returning any of their surveys."
Rolling Stone
, in its 16 October 1997 issue, argued that Reed's rankings were artificially decreased by U.S. News after they stopped sending data to U.S. News and World Report. Reed has also made the same claim. In discussing Reed's decision, President Colin Diver
wrote in an article for the November 2005 issue of the Atlantic Monthly, "by far the most important consequence of sitting out the rankings game, however, is the freedom to pursue our own educational philosophy, not that of some newsmagazine."
(ASSU) Vice-President Nicholas Thompson founded FUNC or "Forget U.S. News Coalition" in 1996 as a show of support for Reed College
's decision not to participate in the U.S. News and World Report survey. FUNC eventually spread to other colleges and universities and was composed of a "group of students at universities across the country who argue that ranking something as complex and variable as a college education with a single number is an oversimplification. FUNC claims that the process makes college administrations focus on numerical rankings rather than on educating students."
FUNC also involved then-Stanford President Gerhard Casper
. On 23 September 1996, Casper sent a letter to James Fallows, editor of U.S. News & World Report, stating, "As the president of a university that is among the top-ranked universities, I hope I have the standing to persuade you that much about these rankings - particularly their specious formulas and spurious precision - is utterly misleading."
In January 1997, then-president of Alma College
, Alan Stone, asked 480 colleges to boycott the U.S. News and World Report Rankings due to the peer assessment survey which counts for 25% of a college's ranking. According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, in 1996, Alma College surveyed 158 colleges about the rankings. The result of the survey indicated that "84 per cent of the respondents admitted that they were unfamiliar with some of the institutions they had been asked to rank. Almost 44 per cent indicated that they 'tended to leave responses for unfamiliar schools blank.' " Stone stated, "this makes me wonder just how many votes are being considered for each school's academic-reputation ranking."
In February 1997, Stanford University contemplated following both Reed and Alma by not filling out the ranking survey, a move advocated by FUNC. On 18 April 1997, Casper issued a letter critical of U.S. News and World Report college rankings titled "An alternative to the U.S. News and World Report College Survey" Casper's letter circulated among college presidents and led to a decision by Stanford that it will "submit objective data to U.S. News, but will withhold subjective reputational votes." Stanford also announced at this time that it would post information about the University on its website. In 1998, Stanford posted an alternative database on its website, stating: "This page is offered in contrast to commercial guides that purport to "rank" colleges; such rankings are inherently misleading and inaccurate. Stanford believes the following information, presented without arbitrary formulas, provides a better foundation for prospective students and their families to begin comparing and contrasting schools." . It has since been posted annually as the "Stanford University Common Data Set." FUNC eventually disbanded and Stanford currently participates in the survey.
, which since 1937 has followed the Great Books
Program, runs counter to the usual emphasis on rankings and selectivity. , St. John's has chosen not to participate in any collegiate rankings surveys and has not sent them their requested survey information. However, the school is still included in the U.S News
college ranking guide and ranks in the third tier. This may be due to school's decision not to send information to U.S. News. President Christopher B. Nelson stated that, "in principle, St. John's is opposed to rankings." He notes that
jointly refused to participate in the Maclean’s University Rankings survey. The president of the University of Alberta
, Indira Samarasekera
, commented that, "Canadian
universities are listening with great interest as the call to boycott U.S. News & World Report rankings continues to increase in volume among our colleagues to the south. Many of our American colleagues say that they would like to resist the rankings, but fear it can’t be done, especially if only a few institutions act. I write to let you know that institutions can take on the rankings. About a year ago, a growing number of Canadian institutions began to raise the same alarm, ultimately resulting in 25 of our 90+ institutions — including many of our leading universities — banding together to take just such a stand against the fall rankings issue of Maclean's, our Canadian equivalent [...] It’s time to question these third-party rankings that are actually marketing driven, designed to sell particular issues of a publication with repurposing of their content into even higher sales volume special editions with year-long shelf life."
, members discussed the letter to college presidents asking them not to participate in the "reputation survey" section of the U.S. News and World Report survey (this section comprises 25% of the ranking). As a result, "a majority of the approximately 80 presidents at the meeting said that they did not intend to participate in the U.S. News reputational rankings in the future." However, the decision to fill out the reputational survey or not will be left up to each individual college as: "the Annapolis Group is not a legislative body and any decision about participating in the US News rankings rests with the individual institutions." The statement also said that its members "have agreed to participate in the development of an alternative common format that presents information about their colleges for students and their families to use in the college search process." This database will be web based and developed in conjunction with higher education organizations including the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities
and the Council of Independent Colleges
.
On 22 June 2007, U.S. News and World Report editor Robert Morse issued a response in which he argued, "in terms of the peer assessment survey, we at U.S. News firmly believe the survey has significant value because it allows us to measure the "intangibles
" of a college that we can't measure through statistical data
. Plus, the reputation
of a school can help get that all-important first job and plays a key part in which grad school someone will be able to get into. The peer survey is by nature subjective
, but the technique of asking industry leaders to rate their competitors is a commonly accepted practice. The results from the peer survey also can act to level the playing field between private
and public colleges
." In reference to the alternative database discussed by the Annapolis Group, Morse also argued, "It's important to point out that the Annapolis Group's stated goal of presenting college data in a common format has been tried before [...] U.S. News has been supplying this exact college information for many years already. And it appears that NAICU will be doing it with significantly less comparability and functionality. U.S. News first collects all these data (using an agreed-upon set of definitions from the Common Data Set). Then we post the data on our website in easily accessible, comparable tables. In other words, the Annapolis Group and the others in the NAICU initiative actually are following the lead of U.S. News."
College and university rankings
College and university rankings are lists of institutions in higher education, ordered by combinations of factors. In addition to entire institutions, specific programs, departments, and schools are ranked...
refers to movements which developed among faculty and administrators in American Institutions of Higher Education as well as in Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
.
Reed College
In 1995, Reed CollegeReed College
Reed College is a private, independent, liberal arts college located in southeast Portland, Oregon. Founded in 1908, Reed is a residential college with a campus located in Portland's Eastmoreland neighborhood, featuring architecture based on the Tudor-Gothic style, and a forested canyon wilderness...
refused to participate in U.S. News and World Report annual survey. According to Reed's Office of Admissions, "Reed College has actively questioned the methodology and usefulness of college rankings ever since the magazine's best-colleges list first appeared in 1983, despite the fact that the issue ranked Reed among the top ten national liberal arts colleges. Reed's concern intensified with disclosures in 1994 by the Wall Street Journal about institutions flagrantly manipulating data in order to move up in the rankings in U.S. News and other popular college guides. This led Reed's then-president Steven Koblik to inform the editors of U.S. News that he didn't find their project credible, and that the college would not be returning any of their surveys."
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...
, in its 16 October 1997 issue, argued that Reed's rankings were artificially decreased by U.S. News after they stopped sending data to U.S. News and World Report. Reed has also made the same claim. In discussing Reed's decision, President Colin Diver
Colin Diver
Colin Diver is the president of Reed College in Portland, Oregon He was named the college's 14th president on October 5, 2002, replacing acting president Peter Steinberger, dean of Faculty, and succeeding Steven Koblik, who departed Reed College to run the Huntington Library in San Marino,...
wrote in an article for the November 2005 issue of the Atlantic Monthly, "by far the most important consequence of sitting out the rankings game, however, is the freedom to pursue our own educational philosophy, not that of some newsmagazine."
Stanford University, FUNC, and Alma College
Associated Students of Stanford UniversityStanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
(ASSU) Vice-President Nicholas Thompson founded FUNC or "Forget U.S. News Coalition" in 1996 as a show of support for Reed College
Reed College
Reed College is a private, independent, liberal arts college located in southeast Portland, Oregon. Founded in 1908, Reed is a residential college with a campus located in Portland's Eastmoreland neighborhood, featuring architecture based on the Tudor-Gothic style, and a forested canyon wilderness...
's decision not to participate in the U.S. News and World Report survey. FUNC eventually spread to other colleges and universities and was composed of a "group of students at universities across the country who argue that ranking something as complex and variable as a college education with a single number is an oversimplification. FUNC claims that the process makes college administrations focus on numerical rankings rather than on educating students."
FUNC also involved then-Stanford President Gerhard Casper
Gerhard Casper
Gerhard Casper was the 9th president of Stanford University from 1992-2000. He is currently the Peter and Helen Bing Professor in Undergraduate Education at Stanford...
. On 23 September 1996, Casper sent a letter to James Fallows, editor of U.S. News & World Report, stating, "As the president of a university that is among the top-ranked universities, I hope I have the standing to persuade you that much about these rankings - particularly their specious formulas and spurious precision - is utterly misleading."
In January 1997, then-president of Alma College
Alma College
Alma College is a private, liberal arts college located in Alma, Michigan. The enrollment is approximately 1,400 students, and the college is accredited by the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools. The college's 13th President, Dr...
, Alan Stone, asked 480 colleges to boycott the U.S. News and World Report Rankings due to the peer assessment survey which counts for 25% of a college's ranking. According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, in 1996, Alma College surveyed 158 colleges about the rankings. The result of the survey indicated that "84 per cent of the respondents admitted that they were unfamiliar with some of the institutions they had been asked to rank. Almost 44 per cent indicated that they 'tended to leave responses for unfamiliar schools blank.' " Stone stated, "this makes me wonder just how many votes are being considered for each school's academic-reputation ranking."
In February 1997, Stanford University contemplated following both Reed and Alma by not filling out the ranking survey, a move advocated by FUNC. On 18 April 1997, Casper issued a letter critical of U.S. News and World Report college rankings titled "An alternative to the U.S. News and World Report College Survey" Casper's letter circulated among college presidents and led to a decision by Stanford that it will "submit objective data to U.S. News, but will withhold subjective reputational votes." Stanford also announced at this time that it would post information about the University on its website. In 1998, Stanford posted an alternative database on its website, stating: "This page is offered in contrast to commercial guides that purport to "rank" colleges; such rankings are inherently misleading and inaccurate. Stanford believes the following information, presented without arbitrary formulas, provides a better foundation for prospective students and their families to begin comparing and contrasting schools." . It has since been posted annually as the "Stanford University Common Data Set." FUNC eventually disbanded and Stanford currently participates in the survey.
St John's College
St. John's CollegeSt. John's College, U.S.
St. John's College is a liberal arts college with two U.S. campuses: one in Annapolis, Maryland and one in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Founded in 1696 as a preparatory school, King William's School, the school received a collegiate charter in 1784, making it one of the oldest institutions of higher...
, which since 1937 has followed the Great Books
Great Books
Great Books refers primarily to a group of books that tradition, and various institutions and authorities, have regarded as constituting or best expressing the foundations of Western culture ; derivatively the term also refers to a curriculum or method of education based around a list of such books...
Program, runs counter to the usual emphasis on rankings and selectivity. , St. John's has chosen not to participate in any collegiate rankings surveys and has not sent them their requested survey information. However, the school is still included in the U.S News
U.S. News & World Report
U.S. News & World Report is an American news magazine published from Washington, D.C. Along with Time and Newsweek it was for many years a leading news weekly, focusing more than its counterparts on political, economic, health and education stories...
college ranking guide and ranks in the third tier. This may be due to school's decision not to send information to U.S. News. President Christopher B. Nelson stated that, "in principle, St. John's is opposed to rankings." He notes that
- Over the years, St. John's College has been ranked everywhere from third, second, and first tier, to one of the "Top 25" liberal arts colleges. Yet, the curious thing is: We haven't changed. Our mission and our methods have been virtually constant for almost 60 years. So when it comes to the U.S. News and World Report rankings, we would rather be ourselves and have our college speak for itself, than be subjected to fluctuating outside analysis.
Maclean's boycott
In September 2006, a number of universities in CanadaCanada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
jointly refused to participate in the Maclean’s University Rankings survey. The president of the University of Alberta
University of Alberta
The University of Alberta is a public research university located in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Founded in 1908 by Alexander Cameron Rutherford, the first premier of Alberta and Henry Marshall Tory, its first president, it is widely recognized as one of the best universities in Canada...
, Indira Samarasekera
Indira Samarasekera
Indira Vasanti Samarasekera, OC is the 12th and current President and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Alberta. Succeeding Roderick Fraser on July 1, 2005, she was the first female president of any university in Alberta.-Biography:...
, commented that, "Canadian
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
universities are listening with great interest as the call to boycott U.S. News & World Report rankings continues to increase in volume among our colleagues to the south. Many of our American colleagues say that they would like to resist the rankings, but fear it can’t be done, especially if only a few institutions act. I write to let you know that institutions can take on the rankings. About a year ago, a growing number of Canadian institutions began to raise the same alarm, ultimately resulting in 25 of our 90+ institutions — including many of our leading universities — banding together to take just such a stand against the fall rankings issue of Maclean's, our Canadian equivalent [...] It’s time to question these third-party rankings that are actually marketing driven, designed to sell particular issues of a publication with repurposing of their content into even higher sales volume special editions with year-long shelf life."
2007 movement
On 19 June 2007, during the annual meeting of the Annapolis GroupAnnapolis Group
The Annapolis Group is an American organization that describes itself as "a nonprofit alliance of the nation’s leading independent liberal arts colleges." It represents approximately 130 liberal arts colleges in the United States...
, members discussed the letter to college presidents asking them not to participate in the "reputation survey" section of the U.S. News and World Report survey (this section comprises 25% of the ranking). As a result, "a majority of the approximately 80 presidents at the meeting said that they did not intend to participate in the U.S. News reputational rankings in the future." However, the decision to fill out the reputational survey or not will be left up to each individual college as: "the Annapolis Group is not a legislative body and any decision about participating in the US News rankings rests with the individual institutions." The statement also said that its members "have agreed to participate in the development of an alternative common format that presents information about their colleges for students and their families to use in the college search process." This database will be web based and developed in conjunction with higher education organizations including the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities
National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities
Founded in 1976, the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities is an organization of private US colleges and universities...
and the Council of Independent Colleges
Council of Independent Colleges
The Council of Independent Colleges is an association of nearly 600 independent, liberal arts colleges and universities and more than 70 higher education affiliates and organizations that work together to strengthen college and university leadership, sustain high-quality education, and enhance...
.
On 22 June 2007, U.S. News and World Report editor Robert Morse issued a response in which he argued, "in terms of the peer assessment survey, we at U.S. News firmly believe the survey has significant value because it allows us to measure the "intangibles
Intangibles
The term intangibles is most commonly used to describe things that are recognized but not easily quantified; a common example are economic intangibles which describes something not easily quantified within a given theory of economics...
" of a college that we can't measure through statistical data
Statistics
Statistics is the study of the collection, organization, analysis, and interpretation of data. It deals with all aspects of this, including the planning of data collection in terms of the design of surveys and experiments....
. Plus, the reputation
Reputation
Reputation of a social entity is an opinion about that entity, typically a result of social evaluation on a set of criteria...
of a school can help get that all-important first job and plays a key part in which grad school someone will be able to get into. The peer survey is by nature subjective
Subjectivity
Subjectivity refers to the subject and his or her perspective, feelings, beliefs, and desires. In philosophy, the term is usually contrasted with objectivity.-Qualia:...
, but the technique of asking industry leaders to rate their competitors is a commonly accepted practice. The results from the peer survey also can act to level the playing field between private
Private university
Private universities are universities not operated by governments, although many receive public subsidies, especially in the form of tax breaks and public student loans and grants. Depending on their location, private universities may be subject to government regulation. Private universities are...
and public colleges
Public university
A public university is a university that is predominantly funded by public means through a national or subnational government, as opposed to private universities. A national university may or may not be considered a public university, depending on regions...
." In reference to the alternative database discussed by the Annapolis Group, Morse also argued, "It's important to point out that the Annapolis Group's stated goal of presenting college data in a common format has been tried before [...] U.S. News has been supplying this exact college information for many years already. And it appears that NAICU will be doing it with significantly less comparability and functionality. U.S. News first collects all these data (using an agreed-upon set of definitions from the Common Data Set). Then we post the data on our website in easily accessible, comparable tables. In other words, the Annapolis Group and the others in the NAICU initiative actually are following the lead of U.S. News."
External links
- Teens, parents should avoid College Selection Hysteria - The CapitalThe CapitalThe Capital is a daily newspaper published in Annapolis, Maryland. It serves the city as well as all of Anne Arundel County and neighboring Kent Island in Queen Anne's County. It is an evening newspaper during the week and offers morning delivery on the weekend. Philip Merrill was the publisher...