Rank This

Experts debate college rating systems.

By Keith White, University of Virginia

It’s become an annual rite of late summer: In upper-middle class communities across the country, the U.S. News and World Report college issue flies off the shelves at Barnes & Nobles. Sixteen year-olds and their parents obsessively comb over the rankings: Did the school of choice go up or down this year? Almost everyone professes not to care about the rankings, which far outstrip the sales of any normal issue of U.S. News, usually a distant third fiddle to Time and Newsweek in the newsmagazine category. But what do these rankings mean, and do they have a positive or negative effect on higher education in America?

Today Education Sector, a Washington, D.C. education policy think-tank, sponsored a panel on college rankings. The six-member panel was moderated by Paul Glastris, The Washington Monthly’s editor in chief. The panel was meant to showcase a recent report by Education Sector’s Kevin Carey on reforming U.S. News and World Report’s well known college ranking system.

But instead of constructive discussion, the discussion fell victim to the institutional and ideological divides of its participants. All the panelists agreed that America’s higher education system is imperiled. But when it came to moving forward, the panel devolved into one big blame game.

U.S. News’ Brian Kelly chiefly focused on defending his magazine’s ranking scheme.

Pointing to the “absolute, crying demand on the part of parents and students,” Kelly painted his magazine as a public servant, struggling against the institutional resistance of America’s top schools to release data on student learning.

Responding to accusations that the rankings only measure inputs, like SAT scores and teacher-student ratio, Kelly argued “We do try to take some account of quality,” pointing out that the report does “have some output measures,” such as the alumni giving ratio, which US News claims, on no particular evidence, is an accurate assessment of student satisfaction with their education.

“You glorify very few institutions and ignore the rest,” refuted Patricia McGuire, President of Trinity University in Washington, D.C.—a school that focuses on providing higher education to financially disadvantaged students. The U.S. News College Ranking has “no integrity at all” and “is just irrelevant,” McGuire exclaimed.

In response to Kelly’s claim that the ever-expanding U.S. News rankings are just something the magazine “fell into” publishing, David Shulenburger, vice president of the National Association of State Universities and Land Grant Colleges, joked, “[U.S. News] fell into rankings like Krispy Kreme fell into doughnuts,” alluding to the considerable revenue U.S. News generates from their annual college guide.

Carey struggled to act as de facto moderator, while Glastris—a former U.S. News editor himself—plugged his own magazine’s alternative college ranking system, which emphasizes the contributions that universities and their graduates make to society rather than just educational quality.

Carey argued that while by no means perfect, U.S. News should get credit for awakening the public to the need for accountability in higher education. The task before experts now, Carey said, is “to get the information out that we all can agree is meaningful.”

Regrettably, the panel failed to heed Carey’s advice. Instead the panelists became consumed by the question of whether ranking systems benefited schools. McGuire argued that rankings are only important to America’s elite institutions, ignoring the needs of most students and administrators. “You’re always discussing Harvard, Yale, Amherst,” McGuire complained.

“Rankings create a false impression of what is important in the consumer’s mind,” McGuire contended. Instead of worrying about a ranking system, colleges should follow her institution’s example and publicly report the data they already collect.

Representing private-sector rankings systems, Kelly and Glastris spoke to their merits of providing consumers with multiple assessments.

Charles Miller, chairman of the Higher Education Commission, agreed with Kelly and Glastris that rankings can help both students and parents. But, Miller argued, it’s “got to come from the academy if it’s going to be done in the right way.”

But given the resistance from current top-tier schools, which only stand to lose under any potential new ranking system, an academy-approved ranking system seems out of reach.

The event ultimately did more to demonstrate the dissonance surrounding the problem of neutral assessments in higher education than work toward any sensible solutions.

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