June 19, 2007

More colleges plan to snub annual U.S. News ranking

… or so says the headline from a Bloomberg story published online earlier today.

A group of U.S. liberal arts colleges plans to stop participating in U.S. News & World Report’s higher- education rankings, saying the magazine’s yearly survey misleads students.

A majority of representatives at a meeting today agreed not to cooperate with the annual U.S. News assessment, said Christopher Nelson, chairman of the association, called the Annapolis Group because it was founded there in 1993. Members will work with other organizations to develop alternative ways to evaluate colleges.

Although it is unclear what role Amherst played in this meeting, if any, the Bloomberg reporter decides to drop a few names:

The decision by the group, which includes colleges such as Williams, Amherst and Swarthmore, compounds the resistance to the system used by U.S. News, which compiled its first rankings in 1983 and began publishing them annually in 1987. The Washington- based magazine is facing criticism for using subjective criteria to evaluate a school’s value, particularly a survey asking administrators to pass judgment on other schools’ reputations.

Despite the assertion that a boycott is brewing, the article notes that the vote was informal and essentially non-binding. In my opinion, that strips any real significance away from the vote and the message it is purported to announce. Each school will still have the ability to “make its own choice about whether, or to what extent, it will cooperate with the magazine.”

Does anyone know if Amherst was represented at this meeting, and if so, what was the College’s vote?

I’ve added a few random thoughts below the fold. For those interested in reading more, the Christian Science Monitor supplies more detailed reporting on the meeting and the underlying issues.

UPDATE 6/20: Tony Marx is quoted in today’s New York Times article on the meeting:

Other college presidents who attended the meeting were more cautious. Anthony Marx, the president of Amherst, which is ranked second among liberal arts colleges, said he was not ready to stop cooperating with U.S. News and wanted to continue to discuss the issue.

While most people with an opinion on the topic agree that the US News rankings are flawed, it is hard to imagine that even a complete boycott will be fatal to the rankings, given the heavy demand with which each annual installment is greeted (it is one of the magazine’s best selling issues each year). As noted in the Christian Science Monitor report, if large numbers of schools do not turn in their reputation surveys, US News may turn to other sources, including college guidance counselors, to provide the reputation scores.

There’s also the issue of which college presidents will really be on board with a decisive action. Despite its flaws, the US News rankings benefit the schools which are prominently featured, and good performances in the rankings have been trumpeted by more than one communications office at colleges with which we are familiar (see final paragraph of press release). Some college presidents may be hesitant to openly part ways with rankings that have provided free publicity over the years. Those who benfit most from the rankings might have a hard time staying the course with a boycott. An example from this year’s law school rankings illustrates such a departure:

Those who have followed the US News law school rankings (and the “gaming” it allegedly inspires) know that concerted action to downplay the rankings has had little effect. In April, 2006, a large number of law school deans signed this letter which called the US News law school rankings “unreliable” and “unworthy of being an important influence” on a student’s application and matriculation decisions. Despite the unity displayed in the letter, several deans who signed it subjected themselves to accusations of public hypocrisy the following spring when they lauded positive movements by their respective law schools in the very same US News rankings they had sought to discredit the year before.

We shall see if the presidents of liberal arts colleges do any better.

Dave Nardolillo '98 | June 19, 2007 11:33 PM | Administration | Publications

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