Weigh In on College Rankings

Dickinson is helping to lead an effort urging college and university presidents to de-emphasize the importance of the U.S.News rankings by refusing to promote or advertise their placement on "the list."

The following comments were posted in response. Please add your own comments.

Name:	Kevin Hess Dickinson alum Class of 1969
Date:	Fri Sep 7, 2007 2:21 pm
Comments:	It is good that President Durden has taken this bold and necessary step of disassociating from the U.S.News rankings. There is nothing I can add to his articulate explanation for doing so, except to state my deep regret that my other alma mater, The Dickinson School of Law, has not seen the wisdom in following President Durden's lead. While it is a very small gesture I am expressing my solidarity by not renewing my subscription to U.S. News.
Name:	Christopher Ladd Student
Date:	Fri Sep 7, 2007 2:22 pm
Comments:	I support what President Durden is doing. The reputation of this school should not be based on what the competition thinks, the reputation of this school should be based on the product the school puts out into the world.
Name:	Gail Watt Class of 1966
Date:	Fri Sep 7, 2007 5:12 pm
Comments:	There is a definite need for a more professionally based ranking system. College choice is far too important to leave to commercial and/or other considerations not based on factors/data the colleges themselves can agree upon. An increase in creditbility of rankings is indeed necessary.
Name:	George Honadle alumnus, 1966
Date:	Fri Sep 7, 2007 6:38 pm
Comments:	Kudos to Bill Durden and others at Dickinson. You are building an alternative trail that will be much traveled by discerning prospective students and their families and you are furthering the understanding of the dangers of linear rankings (they are an alternative to serious thought about student-college fit). But make any groupings (eg high/medium/low)based on objective data. Just a few suggestions for the Annapolis Group committee: (1) be sure to include such outcome indicators as the % and/or # of graduates serving in the Peace Corps, entering different kinds of graduate programs, starting their own businesses/advocacy organizations/service organizations, etc, publishing works of fiction/poetry/music/non-fiction or doing other creative things (acting, choreography, directing,painting, sculpting, etc)both within 5 years of graduation and later in their lives. Leadership in professional organizations is also useful here. (2) be sure to include process variables that capture the tone of the college learning experience, such as group projects, site visits, team learning approaches, exposure to other cultures,interdsciplinary teaching and projects, visiting lecturers, independent study, presenting results of research to others (including those outside the academy) as well as physical attributes of the campus and satellite locations that foster such processes and provide learning opportunities. (3) do not make everything quantitative -- some anecdotes will give life to the data and also reveal much about the values and perspectives integral to the institutions and to the type of experience that students will encounter. (4) let the faculty participate in developing indicators of positive interactions with students both in and out of the classroom, excursion or lab settings. and (5) give an idea of the relative weight given to such factors as research, publication, teaching styles and quality, advising student organizations, creating new classes and topics, collaboration with people outside the discipline in which the faculty member was trained or the department or program which hired him or her, initiating/creating new teaching approaches and experiential opportunities for students when hiring and promoting faculty. And try to relate the architecture of the campus and the design of new buildings to both an ecological awareness and a sense of the needs of students. The degree to which a college engages in both teaching and action that enhances the sustainability of the complex ecosystems that make this planet hospitable to us should make it into the assessment, too. In fact, indicators such as the % of food obtained from an originating source within 20 miles of the campus, % of energy derived from renewable sources,green building practices followed by the college,incorporation of ecological perspectives into non-science courses and experiences, and environmentally sound contracting processes are all facts that should appear in the assessments. This is obviously not a comprehesive list of ways to depart from the US NEWS model, but it may trigger some reactions and stimulate some better ideas. You have set sail on an exciting voyage and you have the opportunity to create both a better vision of the nature of the academy and a pioneering product that sets a new standard. Be bold.
Name:	Jon Rogers Class of 2006
Date:	Sat Sep 8, 2007 6:05 pm
Comments:	I think that the largest problem with the rankings found in popular magazines is that they provide only a single set of rankings, determining for the reader which aspects of a school's quality are most important. While it would be nice for many of the wonderful qualitative traits of Dickinson to be included in the rankings, this simply isn't possible. Measurement of such qualities would always be controversial and completely unhelpful. Rankings based on raw numbers are valid, but should not be combined with one another by anyone other than the student evaluating his or her own choices. These are the numbers that are readily available and verifiable such as SAT ranges, student body demographics, etc. The way that US News, for example, combines these figures into a comprehensive ranking assumes that students have the same values as a group of journalists. What I would like to see is an independent organization dedicated to researching what makes a specific institution special. This organization needs to be completely free from review by the institutions it studies. One reason potential students rely on the rankings provided by popular magazines is that they are bombarded by brochures stating numbers that smack of self reporting. Sometimes the numbers provided in marketing materials are misleading if not outright false. I spent my senior year researching the way that students decide on institutions of higher learning. In the course of my studies, I found major discrepancies between numbers published by colleges (especially in terms of scholarships/aid) and figures reported in the national magazines. A completely independent organization would have no incentive to falsify such statistics. This is not to say that colleges are deliberately lying, but that errors do happen. I have to go now, but I will likely continue later.
Name:	John R. McClelland Class of 1963
Date:	Sun Sep 9, 2007 3:21 pm
Comments:	Unless Dickinson's position is a clever attempt to gain favorable publicity and "academic reputation" for the US News rankings, I believe that the college is making a mistake. After all, one should not pick a publicity fight with someone who "buys his ink by the barrel and his paper by the train car."
Name:	Jon Rogers Class of 2006
Date:	Sun Sep 9, 2007 5:04 pm
Comments:	As I was saying before, the only valid rankings are those based on verifiable numbers. A better system for evaluating colleges/universities would be to place them in categories. Dickinson has recently hovered around the 40th position in the rankings of liberal arts colleges, but I have seen little difference between Dickinson and any of the top ten programs. Moreover, so much of the student experience is based on the surrounding community. There are fundamental differences between rural and urban schools that have nothing to do with quality, but everything to do with the student's college experience. I support the grouping of institutions into relatively wide bands, in somewhat the same manner that law schools are grouped into tiers. Obviously, top tier schools are the most selective, offer the best program, employ the best faculty, and provide the best results. But what really separates the 40th placed school from the 39th or 20th for that matter? To see what I mentioned earlier about customizing rankings to a student's criteria, visit http://graduate-school.phds.org/. This is a site that allows potential grad students to build their own set of rankings by weighting a set of scores. I found it most helpful in deciding on Economics programs and it is still helping me decide on Political Science PhD programs. I'm sure that something similar must exist for undergraduates. Again, I have to leave, but if you can't tell already, I care deeply about this issue.
Name:	Thomas H. McGowan Father of Brendan J. McGowan '07
Date:	Mon Sep 10, 2007 11:13 am
Comments:	I was surprised to see that the New York Times in reporting on the recent U.S. News College rankings, stated that none of the most select schools refused to participate with the magazine in making its findings. I found that each of the top ten (according to U.S. News) Liberal Arts schools in the country are also members of the Annapolis Group. Does this mean they are members of the Group and also participants in the creation of these rankings? I sent the Times an e mail about this and after a cdouple of days they replied that they stood by the story and that a correction was not necessary. Do Annapolis Group members also participate in these rankings? If so it would seem somewhat disingenuous.
Name:	Jon Rogers Class of 2006
Date:	Mon Sep 10, 2007 6:01 pm
Comments:	I wouldn't be surprised if the top ranked liberal arts schools are still fully participating in the US News program. These are the programs that directly benefit from the rankings. How many high school seniors would know the names Williams College, Carlton College, or even many of the more famous schools were it not for US News? Liberal arts colleges don't generally have division one football teams and have much smaller networks of alumni. But when a student (especially one who looks at the online US News listings but doesn't pay for the full service) sees schools listed as strictly better or worse than one another, it makes the decision seem easy. What incentives do any of the top ranked programs have to change the current system?
Name:	Bruce Wiley parent of Dickinson freshman
Date:	Mon Sep 10, 2007 7:10 pm
Comments:	What I see makes the most sense. Build and contribute to a common data base, let the rankers have access to that data, abstain from submitting subjective evaluations of self or others.
Name:	Jefferson L. Blomquist parent - 2011
Date:	Tue Sep 11, 2007 9:05 am
Comments:	From a consumer standpoint, the following are of primary interest: What is the teaching methodology: large lectures, smaller lectures, seminar, etc. What is the pressure on faculty to publish or to pursue independent research grants versus to teach undergraduate courses. Is the professor the primary teacher or does a graduate assistant spend significant time in the classroom. What resources, including ready access to the professor or to a graduate assistant are available for a student who is struggling with a course. For example, at Johns Hopkins University, a prestigious institution, many classes are lecture format. There is an institutional emphasis on research, grants and publication, not on teaching undergraduates. Graduate assistants who often are not fluent in English constitute the primary resource for a struggling student and often preside over some classroom presentations. There is an emphasis on research, but not on writing and communication skills in many of the programs. Such an environment is well suited to a student with certain learning skills and more poorly suited to a student with auditory and colaborative learning skills. It would be refreshing if institutions would focus on such matters so that our young people could be matched with an institution that will more likely kindle a thurst for knowledge because the teaching methodologies are well suited to the learning propensities of the student body.
Name:	Jack Gibala Father of Ann Gibala, Class of 2011
Date:	Thu Sep 13, 2007 7:52 am
Comments:	Congratulation to President Durden and his associates for taking a stand on this issue. Helping the students, not bolstering magazine sales, should be the first goal. Your efforts at creating a more meaningful system demonstrate your committment to the students.
Name:	Dana Staff
Date:	Thu Sep 13, 2007 8:56 am
Comments:	I support a distancing from numeric rankings. A system like the US News and World Report format, I feel, is just dumbing down the responsibility of individuals and families to seriously search for the right college for them. While I'm all for making the college research process more effecient and effective, I'm not for tricking people into thinking they're getting the best possible college education based on one number and the opinions of some abstract analysts who have decided that (among other things), the annual rate of alumni giving is a good measure of educational effectiveness. As with so many other things, it seems the list is more a reflection of some large stake holders protecting investors, rather than an accurate representation of the best schools- the definition of which is of course highly subjective. Thus, again, an ideal system would be one that laid an array of college characteristics out in the open and allowed those in the market place to decide of their own volition and without the looming spectre of a peer presuring ranking, which school was their best fit.
Name:	Jonathan Roberts '08 Student
Date:	Thu Sep 13, 2007 12:23 pm
Comments:	College ranking systems smack of the latest trend in education, which is ultimately damaging schools: Quantification. We have become obsessed with holding our students to objective standards--standardized curricula, standardized testing, NCLB, you name it--while paying very little, if any, attention to what these standards actually are or whether they are at all instructionally effective. This is madness. In the same way that introducing standardized and quantifiable curricula and testing regimes in public schools leads to "teaching to the test", placing a high degree of emphasis on these standards will lead to schools governing themselves in a way that will boost their ratings. Of course, just as disadvantaged students have largely been marginalized further as a result of NCLB, in the college ratings "game" just about the only movement is at the very top level. A school like Dickinson, with a ranking of 44, cannot hope to crack the low 30s without a contribution of $1 billion to its endowment. In this way the privileged schools enhance their reputation, and everyone else suffers. But reading U.S. News' own statement of its methodology reveals that the criteria it uses to divine its ratings are, by and large, completely arbitrary. In the search for quantifiability, they have reduced schools' identity, mission, and success to numbers on a page. As Dickinsonians, we should not be arguing against the sheer frivolity of the U.S. News rating system. We should be railing against all ratings generally. Attempting to quantify learning glosses over and maliciously ignores the real fruits of education. Attempting to quantify an educational institution does away with those things the institution stands for. I believe that for Dickinson, who we are and what we stand for is paramount to understanding the College as a whole. If this is lost, we should disband immediately. I encourage President Durden to spend no more time trifling with a replacement to the broken U.S. News system; he should, rather, inveigh against the insanity of the whole rotten idea.
Name:	Jon Rogers Class of 2006
Date:	Fri Sep 14, 2007 11:09 am
Comments:	In response to Mr. Roberts, rankings do play an important role in helping potential students determine where they might gain acceptance and in allowing schools to compare their recent performance to that of their peer institutions. The problem is not the listing of raw numbers, which has improved somewhat over the last few years, but the combining of those numbers to form comprehensive rankings. I doubt even US News would claim that the figures listed in its rankings reflect the experiences a student is likely to encounter. There is certainly room for an organization that provides potential students with clear and accurate information, possibly in the form of rankings in specific areas. It is certainly not a waste of time for President Durden to seek an alternative system for the comparing of institutions. If we want students to choose Dickinson based on the intangibles, then visitation programs need to be expanded. I don't mean the tourist trap, cow-herd, campus disrupting open houses, but rather small groups of specifically invited students taking part in a Friday to Sunday event. When I say small group, the number of college students involved should equal or exceed the number of high schoolers. Take a lesson from grad schools all over the country. A handshake and a bag of chips goes almost as far as a scholarship and stipend. Students who attend one of these recruiting sessions are far more likely to enroll than those who don't. But now I am getting too far away from the topic of rankings.

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