College Rankings should be for Education, not Prestige
At least 27 colleges have challenged the US News college rankings reports by refusing to fill out their surveys. I know that Reed had done this awhile ago, and maybe a few others had, but now it seems like a movement is underway. According to an InsideHigherEd article, two weeks ago, 12 college presidents called for their colleagues to stop filling out the institutional reputation part of the survey. Then a few days ago, 15 more colleges, particularly some historically black colleges, decided to do the same, arguing that the rankings have been inherently unfair to them.
Also, last month, 25 Canadian universities took a similar stand against Maclean’s, the Canadian equivalent of US News.
Think about the contrast between these colleges pulling out of the rankings as opposed to what my school, The University of Minnesota, is trying to do with its “strategic positioning” campaign - its goal is to climb the rankings to become “one of the top three public research universities in the world” (or galaxy, depending on which administrator you talk to). While the former colleges appeal to the “fairness” of the rankings and call for discussions about the values that schools should be judged by, the UofM and other big research universities are accepting the criteria of these rankings and trying to “strategically position” themselves in relation to them. One example of the contrast of educational visions is seen in how the UofM, as part of its “strategizing,” dissolved its program called General College, which had promoted educational access and equity by helping students who are underqualified for admissions make it through four years of college (see this article - where’s the equity in the strategic plan?) (also, one of our good friends, Gov, got his start in General College, and now he is getting a PhD in electrical engineering). By contrast with my school’s abandonment of the principle of equity in education (which had been part of its original Land Grant mission), the colleges that are rejecting the US News rankings are arguing for precisely the need to promote that principle. Here’s a gem of a quote from that article…
“One of Thacker’s main critiques of the rankings is that they discourage educationally and socially valuable policies, such as admitting and educating students who may have attended poor high schools. Black colleges see that as part of their mission, which is “educationally sound and important,” Thacker said, yet they are punished in the rankings for not being wealthier and for not placing more emphasis on SAT scores. “This is about making the admissions process about education.”
