Rating the Rankings

My good friend Joel, a professor at Johns Hopkins, sent me the link to the Baltimore Sun (.com) on Sunday, announcing that St. John's was boycotting college ranking. The subhead: Annapolis school, 11 others scorn peer survey of U. S. News. I barely had time to respond to this because the very next day a Boston Globe headline read Wheelock raises cry on college rankings. Subhead: Calls magazines list subjective and unfair.

Bravo St. John's. Bravo Wheelock. And bravo to the ten other schools that have signed a letter sent out to other institutions urging them to boycott the rankings and not use them in their publicity materials. Some of the other schools have reputations strong enough to benefit from being ranked on the list—this is not sour grapes. It is an act of integrity and values in the face of what may be a runaway train of excesses. What are those excesses? Well, as the departed, defamed Dean of Admissions of MIT of last month's news cycle was suggesting there is too much pressure on high school students to get into the "right" schools and too much pressure on parents to pay for them. These parents and students, in addition to their guidance counselors and admissions consultants, are pouring over lists and guide books and rankings to help determine which are the "right" schools. Chief among these is the US News and World Report. What Editor Mel Elfin started as a way to sell magzines decades ago and perhaps as an interesting feature as turned into a Bible that literally puts peoples' jobs on the lines. Committees exist on college campuses devoted solely to figuring out how to manipulate the data necessary to move up on the ratings. And those in the know know the data is hinky; that is, it does not begin to measure what your son or daughter will learn. For example, the selectivity rating can be affected not by how much smarter the students are but by how many more applicants submit their materials. The more who apply and are not accepted, the lower the percentage of accepted students and the more the selective the school. So more marketing and time is expended to attract more students—who many never have a chance of actually being accepted—to increase the number of applicants. Excess.
Imagine the money that is spent on attracting students who shouldn't be applying in the first place and think about the public trust. It doesn't jive.

Useful information, such as which schools have better resources in one discipline or another, is well, useful. But what does it mean when a college is 56th best liberal arts college in the country as opposed to 66th or 75th or 35th? What does it means for the students or for their futures? In real terms, it probably means very, very litle. But I can tell you that on those campuses, if the president is so inclined, it can mean a day of hysteria when the rating come out. I have been on such campuses where schools are going down on the list. Memos go out from the Provost and say, simultaneously, the following: rating don't matter but unfortunately they do and we're going to fix this injustice. These 12 schools have said ratings don't matter. Period. Think of the time they'll save by not worrying about their scores or filling out the forms. Imagine that same time being put into teaching, research, and service. They may actually become better schools.

C'mon Harvard. C'mon Yale. C'mon Amherst. C'mon Wellesley. You've got nothing to lose. Everyone knows you're always 1, 2, or 3..