Letter to Dickinson Community | Patriot-News Article

Magazine's annual college rankings fail to make grade

Robert Massa
Vice President for Enrollment and Student Life
Dickinson College

The following commentary appeared in the Harrisburg Patriot-News on Sunday, September 15, 2002.

On September 11, the very day that communities will gather to commemorate the most tragic day in our history, USNews has elected to release the embargoed results of its 2003 rankings to all 1400 colleges and universities it surveyed last spring. The schools receive this news early and are instructed to keep quiet, since the rankings will not be announced to the public until two days later. The news magazine making news itself! You gotta love it.

But America is clamoring for these results. Prospective students and parents can't wait because the rankings give them a shortcut to replace the real work they must do to find the right college. College administrators and trustees can't wait because they look to the rankings for validation of the hard work they do to position their institution or, if their ranking is low, they dismiss the publication as irrelevant.

But let's face it. In spite of the good efforts by the staff at USNews (and they have tried to be fair and objective), the "rankings" exist to make USNews lots of money. Not cynical—true. Why else would they have changed from the every other year format of the 1980s to the every year format now in use? Colleges do not change dramatically from year to year (except when changes in methodology cause a college to jump up and back in less than three years). Money is the simple motive. The "Best Colleges" issue is by far the largest seller for USNews; they cannot abandon it.

But if we as a society are doomed to receive an annual copy of the rankings, and if we are so tuned into this proxy for quality and prestige that we must run out and buy this magazine, then we should at least insist that the formula to rank the schools use objective data to arrive at the findings.

USNews itself spends significant resources to collect and analyze data, giving the appearance of scientific process. How can they possibly claim any degree of accuracy, though, when 25% of the total score is based on an academic reputation survey of presidents, provosts and chief enrollment officers? My colleagues and I know precious little about the programs at most peer institutions—certainly not enough to objectively rate them. Our ratings, therefore, are usually based on inherited reputation, biases developed over the years and a close reading of last year's USNews.

The next best thing to eliminating the rankings is to scratch the reputation survey. For rankings based on supposedly objective data, how has USNews been permitted by the public to factor this subjective and largely uninformed designation in their final score—let alone one quarter of that score? USNews editors: let it go!

Since the rankings are probably here to stay and people are paying good money for access to them, the public should insist that the non-objective measure of academic reputation be eliminated. At best, it double counts for student behavior that is objectively measured by student selectivity, SAT scores, and graduation rates. It is also quite subject to administrative bias and misinformation.

Check out the Chronicle of Higher Education's 2002-3 almanac for the ranked list of college and university endowments as of June 30, 2002. The order bears a striking resemblance to the USNews rankings, is available for free and, not surprisingly, asks no questions about academic reputation.