WASHINGTON, Aug. 19 (AScribe Newswire) -- On the eve of the release of the U.S. News & World Report rankings of colleges and universities, 15 liberal arts college presidents have issued statements about the validity and usefulness of the listings.
All of the presidents are members of the Annapolis Group, a consortium of America's leading liberal arts colleges.
"Rankings perpetuate a false impression that a good education can be numerically quantified, and they encourage colleges to aspire to higher rankings rather than a better plan of education," said Christopher B. Nelson, president of St. John's College in Annapolis, Md., and Santa Fe, N.M. "A college's distinctiveness is lost in this system."
St. John's does not participate in the U.S. News survey. "We object to a process that attempts to measure effectiveness in the classroom in the same way a sports magazine ranks professional baseball teams before the season starts," Nelson said.
Reed College in Portland, Ore., also declines to participate in the annual survey. "[R]ankings create powerful incentives to distort institutional behavior, manipulate data and diminish valuable differences among institutions," said Reed President Colin S. Diver.
The homogenization of higher education is also a concern for Hamilton College President Joan Hinde Stewart.
"With the implication that institutions of such diversity can be formulaically compared and ordered, rankings do a disservice to the richness and complexity of American higher education and a disservice to the 17- and 18-year-olds who are making one of the first really difficult decisions of their lives," Stewart said.
Several college presidents took specific exception to the inclusion of "reputation" as a factor used to calculate the rankings.
William G. Durden, president of Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pa., said, "ratings get based on inherited reputation, biases developed over the years and last year's rankings." Ronald R. Thomas, the president of the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Wash., pointed out what he called a "devilish cycle" in the rankings: "The best colleges in U.S. News are the colleges with the best reputations, and the colleges with the best reputations are the ones that U.S. News ranks best."
Kenyon College President S. Georgia Nugent added, "We expect our students to make reasoned judgments based on data appropriately analyzed, but U.S. News asks presidents for judgment based on no data, with no analytical rigor." She chose not to complete the reputational survey.
The absence of qualitative data bothered a number of presidents, including J. Timothy Cloyd of Hendrix College in Conway, Ark., and John Roush of Centre College in Danville, Ky.
"Including more qualitative criteria, such as the number of students who study abroad or who conduct original research, would help ranking systems measure a college's educational output or student achievement," said Cloyd. Added Roush, "Certain ranking methodologies measure resources that enable institutions to deliver quality education, but they are seriously incomplete. The student experience should be a key part of any assessment."
"Measuring the quality of an education requires judgment," said Nelson, the president of St. John's. "These rankings involve too much counting and too little judgment." Colgate University President Rebecca Chopp suggested that "[g]uidebooks and rankings can be useful tools when searching for a college, if used properly. An effective college search is an analysis of both fact and feel," she said.
G. Andrew Rembert, interim president of Washington & Jefferson College in Washington, Pa., expressed the sentiment of many of the presidents when discussing the rankings: "It's a place to start but not a place to finish. Rankings are incomplete at best."
In addition to the presidents already mentioned, Nelson Bingham of Earlham College in Richmond, Ind., Joanne V. Creighton of Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Mass., Norman Fainstein of Connecticut College in New London, Conn., John Strassburger of Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pa., and Philip A. Glotzbach of Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., also submitted comments. The full texts of all 15 college presidents' comments are available on the Annapolis Group's Web site at www.collegenews.org.
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Contact Information: Mike Debraggio, 315-859-4654 (office), 315-859-4298 (home), mdebragg@hamilton.edu
Keywords: College Rankings, U.S. News & World Report, America's Best Colleges
- Posted by the Annapolis Group
Media Contact: Mike Debraggio, 315-859-4654 (office), 315-859-4298 (home),
mdebragg@hamilton.edu
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