The USN&WR rankings are not only methodologically flawed, they encourage colleges and universities— our most serious communities of intellectuals— to engage in intellectually dishonest activities. As a parent, I think it is significant that the Annapolis Group has combined its criticism of the ranksters with a significant effort to cooperate in developing a better source of comparative information about institutions of higher education than the ranksters, who are commercially motivated and give not a hoot about the educational value of their enterprise, can manage. Good for them. At last, meaningful leadership is emerging from our most admired liberal arts colleges on this issue.

Mommy, at 11:05 am EDT on June 25, 2007

PR, marketing

Why these debates over rankings? Don’t people know that it is simply a matter of PR and marketing? Schools who find some source that ranks them highly will use that to promote themselves. US News does have lots of power, given it has emerged as the principal source of rankings, and maybe that is an issue that can be addressed in the marketplace. Of course, the rankings are misleading in many ways. They would hardly be valuable as promotional material otherwise. That being said, it is the prerogative of colleges to ignore them and promote themselves in other ways if they like.

Angelo, Professor at liberal arts college, at 11:30 am EDT on June 25, 2007

What???? USnews does a great job.

How can you possible deny that Princeton and Harvard Universities are NOt the top schools in the US?

Is it unfair to say that a top educational institutions such as Villanova does not deserve to be 1st in the North?

Isn’t Yale and Harvard the best law schools in the US?

Is columbia (teacher’s college) and Harvard not the best educational institutions in the US?

COME ON PEOPLE! Really. Give some credit to USnews, please.

Luis Almeida, at 3:35 pm EDT on June 27, 2007

Rankings

Are you serious? US News and World Report simply uses the “rankings” as a marketing play -it sells a lot of magazines (it is the academia version of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition). Wake up!! Prospective students should evaluate each and every college on its merits. Do your own homework-don’t let a for profit magazine do it for you!

SL, at 9:30 am EDT on July 10, 2007

Measuring Education Quality

If one truly wants to measure the quality of the educations provided by colleges and universities, the two most important assessments are probably (in order of importance):

1. Students2. Initial employers

Certainly USN&WR could give significant weighting to student and employer survey information.

However, both of these stakeholders are not looking to college rankings for information on the quality of the institutions educational delivery processes. But rather they are looking for personal branding (in the case of the students) and an enriched population of the best-and-brightest (in the case of employers).

So who really cares about educational quality? It may be that the higher educational student populations that most highly value educational delivery quality are vocational and working adult students. I find it interesting that the for-profit higher education providers, utilizing best-business practices to delivery the highest quality educational product; have focused on just these student populations.

Craig, at 7:45 pm EST on November 5, 2007

As a parent of a college student, the real value of the U.S. News college ranking issue is not the number of the ranking but the other information that’s easily available. Most colleges have terrible web sites that are hard to navigate but U.S. News has an easy to navigate site and all the colleges are in the same format so it’s easy to find out the information you need. Information on the student club activities are which are of no interest to the university but very interesting to the prospective student are easy to find. Also, graduation rate, average debt on graduation etc are very interesting to the prospective student. This is combined with an ability to compare colleges side by side makes it a valuable tool. I believe that the first derivative is also very valuable; why did my university go up or down 11 places. Why did my number one competitor go up and we didn’t. It’s important to the trustees and the alumni with check books and the colleges don’t like that.As a final note a system that’s required to meet public perception that Yale, Harvard and Princeton are in the top 5 is bound to have some real logical problems.

Stephen Wells, at 7:40 am EDT on June 25, 2007

The rankings, like any indicator, are not perfect, but they do not deserve to be demonized as they are. Of course in any ranking system EVERYONE other than number one will think they should have come out higher, not matter how well they do, and this sour grapes pretty well explains the anti-rankings activity. To supress or throw a wrench into the works of the rankings does a disservice to those seeking information and comes across as childish to boot.

Ken, at 9:30 am EDT on June 25, 2007

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

The fact remains that what 90% parents and prospective students care about the most is which college/university will give their son or daughter the best chance of obtaining lucrative employment upon graduation. Parents are seldom concerned with which institution will make their kids the best critical, logical and analytical thinker, or which school will make their kids the best citizen, and they are definitely not concerned about which school will impart upon their kids the most knowledge.

Basically the good, the bad and the ugly of this process is that the parents want to send their kids to the highest ranked schools (notice I did not say BEST)in hopes of increasing the earning potential of their children. Employers then go to these schools looking to hire the best and brightest because they know from market research that the most affluent and well educated parents always send their children to the highest ranked schools. College and Universities realize that placement rates are even more important than graduation rates (because that is what parents and students are telling them) and in turn want to attract these employers, so in order to increase their rankings, they begin to shift and design their curriculum and university structures to meet the standards by which they are reviewed in rankings like those done by the U.S. News & World Report. And because it has proven almost impossible to measure what constitutes quality learning from one institution, but because rankings sell newspapers and magazines, these news groups do their best to make an educated guess as to what these measures maybe.

In short this process is cyclical and although we can debate who should take the blunt of the blame for this inadequate measure of learning and quality education (news organizations, parents, employers or universities) each group feeds off one another.

However, with this said it is my belief that if parents are saying they are not getting the information they need from institutions of higher educations themselves and in turn are having to turn to the media to get it, then maybe institutions of higher education need to take the lead on telling parents, employers and the media what constitutes quality learning versus it being the other way around.

Since this is not occurring, the question that then must be raised is why are educational institutions and educators letting outside entities determine what constitutes quality learning?

Kevin Leonard, Sr.Programing Coordinator at Michigan State University, at 10:10 am EDT on June 25, 2007

Rankings debate

Let me say I hate U.S. News’ rankings. They provide little to no information about education quality.

On the other hand, colleges have the remarkable ability to not demonstrate what their students are learning, almost as if they are hiding it. Is is that hard to articulate what your students are learning and to put it on the web? No, of course it isn’t — any 5th grader can do it, but a college professor just can’t figure it out. Expect rankings to be around for a very long time.

PS, at 10:10 am EDT on June 25, 2007