|
The success of U.S. News’ annual college ranking issue, America’s
Best Colleges, says something about our society: that its views
about higher education are changing. Academics and students alike
are focusing more and more on higher education as a business transaction
rather than as a time and place to cultivate the mind. The structure
of society is also changing to favor this former concept of the
academy; rankings contribute to the decay. The consequence: not
only will today’s students potentially lose some ability to
make truly individual choices in an exciting and important phase
of their lives, but successively less ‘individualist’
generations will follow (see Student attitudes).
We students, however, haven’t yet passed
the point of no return. If they must exist, U.S. News’ rankings
may be put in their place: they will be casually read by a fairly
small proportion of motivated and intelligent students who know
well enough not to place too much emphasis on what some call a ‘beauty
contest.’ We can empower ourselves and others to treat college
as a non-quantifiable experience, at once acknowledging the values
and significant limitations of ranking.
Bruce Gottlieb addresses some of these limitations
in his 1999 article
“Cooking the school books: How US News cheats in picking its
best American colleges.” The motif guiding the article
is the question of Cal Tech’s meteoric rise from ninth in
1998 to first in U.S. News’ 1999 rankings; can an accurate
method of evaluating colleges really yield this sort of mobility?
Gottlieb suggests foul play: that U.S. News deliberately alters
its methodology yearly (effectively shuffling the rankings) in order
to preserve interest in the issue. The author he points out flaws
in the rankings that support his hunch. For instance, he points
out that despite Cal Tech’s rise in the standings, nothing
about the university had substantively changed during the intervening
year: “[o]nly two indicators showed small improvements: percentage
of accepted students in top 10 percent of their high school classes
went from 99 percent to 100 percent (big deal!) and Caltech’s
acceptance rate fell from 23 percent to 18 percent." The critic
questions how likely it is that a school could rise eight places
when no substantive changes seem to have taken place.
Gottlieb addresses another weakness of the
ranking system: its non-objective ranking criteria. While baseball,
for instance, provides an objective basis to begin any ranking of
baseball teams (wins), no such statistic exists for colleges. Instead,
the U.S. News rankers must themselves decide on the relative weight
of particular characteristics of a college. The final product wears
the guise of objectivity. So if America’s Best Colleges uses
arbitrary criteria, and if colleges shift rankings willy-nilly,
then students using the rankings risk relying on bogus information
for a decision that will have serious implications for personal
development and achievement.
A 1997 article
by Michael Crissey in the Chronicle of Higher Education took
a broad look at the college ranking debate, confirming also Gottlieb’s
objections with U.S. News’ methodology. The article makes
mention of one college president who criticizes two aspects of the
rankings: the ‘reputational’ section of the survey and
the ‘alumni giving’ calculation. These two sections,
he claims, “make up 30 per cent of a college’s ranking”
but fail to “reflect what is critical to learning” (emphasis
added). Other factors, such as “study-abroad programs, the
use of faculty members as mentors, and volunteer opportunities”
deserve more emphasis. Again, what becomes of the students who do
not see the statistical gymnastics behind the rankings? If prospective
college-goers meekly lend authority to the U.S. News report, students
will increasingly view the ‘best’ colleges as those
with high alumni giving rates and favorable (but falsified) teacher-student
ratios. (See Class size.)
The knee-jerk reaction to the inadequacy of
the U.S. News rankings, however, would be to call for the abolition
of rankings altogether. Such a measure is to be commended for its
steadfast support of the ‘non-quantifiable education’
camp; however, it would be both too rash and most likely needless.
This is to say that in some sense, the very philosophy of ranking
is fundamental to the continued functioning of our society.
Nicholas Lemann brought this point to bear
on the rankings in America’s Best Colleges 1999 issue. He
argued primarily that colleges’ fervent complaints about the
rankings reflects a strong self-interest that overlooks colleges’
own reliance on ranking systems—grades, for example. As the
headline says: “Universities use rankings, too,” and
the realities of our world demand them: “Big, modern institutions
require numbers, and universities rely on an array of them—student
test scores, departmental rankings, and government funding formulas”
. Lemann makes an argument about social structure: that the way
society is organized influences the information that we need, as
well as the way that we get it. The current result? Rankings.
Lemann makes a compelling point. For all of
the (valid) objections raised by Gottlieb, Crissey, and the hordes
of critics agreeing with them, it may simply be the case that large-scale
number-crunching is what our society calls for. Capitalist ethics
such as productivity and efficiency seem to be intrinsically at
odds with the academic virtues of contemplation and nuance. But
if ‘big, modern institutions’ throughout society require
numbers, it should come as no surprise that the academy may be losing
its immunity to them.
The issue, then, is not the existence of U.S.
News’ college rankings; it is the question of how these rankings
are to be used. As students become increasingly detached from the
world with which they interact (as, in this case, students can look
up and consider, on the basis of numbers, a university that they
have never seen), what is to keep the numbers from using us?
The answer, some say, is in self-reliance. Shirley
Levin, in the oft-cited article “Ignore
College Ranking—Become an Educated Consumer,” emphasizes
the impossibility of objectively defining what is ‘best’
in a college. “How can one school really be best for every
type of student?” she demands. “When people go looking
for a house or a car they don’t just look for the best but
rather for the one that best fits their needs.” Levin legitimately
argues that what is ‘best’ is relative. Some colleges
are known for their political activism (see Student
activism); others provide racial, ethnic, and religious diversity
that cannot be found everywhere; others offer unique forms of ambience.
College provides a unique time and place for us students to develop
as adults; shouldn’t we conduct the selection of our environment
with a high degree of personal evaluation?
As Levin concludes, that evaluation is key.
To her, the best way to combat the insubstantiality of rankings
such as those of U.S. News is to proactively educate oneself about
college by researching college websites (paying attention to such
pertinent issues as financial aid and scholarships) and, if possible,
visiting the schools to attain an improved sense of what they’re
like. The prospective college-goer hereby promotes a more rewarding
college experience based on “substantive and relevant factors”
that aren’t established by journalists at a news magazine
known for little else than its college-ranking issue.
Isaac Black makes a similar argument in “College
Rankings? Another Perspective!” He concedes that the question
of rankings surfaces in many of his consultations with students.
The author, however, is not frightened or made indignant by this
preponderance of inquiries; rather, he acknowledges that “for
good or bad, there is an intellectual and emotional need that is
real, exists, and I see it constantly when I interact with students
and their families." Since America’s obsession with rankings
is a phenomenon that “is not going away,” as an adviser
Black tries his best to weigh a multiplicity of factors: the student’s
needs, personal knowledge of schools, and even the rankings, among
others.
Levin and Black differ from some insofar as
they believe that the rankings are widely consulted. Glenn Kersten
adds an interesting dimension to the argument in “Grading
on the Curve: College Ratings and Rankings.” Kersten provides
the same overview of the flaws in methodology and limitations of
quantification that Levin, Black, and others have; however, he complicates
the debate by noting just how few prospective college students actually
use the rankings. One cited statistic is particularly striking:
a Higher
Education Research Institute survey of 251, 232 freshmen found
that “only 8.6 percent considered colleges’ rankings
in national magazines to be ‘very important’ when selecting
a college.”
Kersten acknowledges most of the other criticisms of college rankings,
and his praise of the practice is scarce, but his statistic can
be a bit jarring after having read so many ardent objections to
their formulation and use. 8.6 percent?? If such a small fraction
of collegegoers seriously considers college rankings, what is all
the fuss about?
The fuss is not unjustified. The bottom line:
some people are using rankings today to help make an important decision
about how they want to grow up. Colleges and universities increasingly
cater to these rankings by fudging numbers and prioritizing the
wrong things (e.g. alumni giving). The academy’s interest
is increasingly tied to the rankings; one ex-editor of America’s
Best Colleges testifies that at least one foundation weighs an institution’s
college ranking when considering grant applications . The situation
looks as though it is in the process of organizing itself around
the interests of profiteers. In such a system, student individuality
and judgment holds comparatively little sway.
Nevertheless, most social change (as the restructuring
of education around the dollar) happens slowly; U.S. News’
ill-advised rankings will not dominate college admissions next Fall
or even the following Fall. The point of all of this is to use one’s
own judgment. Rankings like America’s Best Colleges achieve
their influence by setting the agenda in ways that they hope will
keep customers coming back. Their influence is incredibly limited
(8.6 percent!) as long as individuals don’t let their own
decisions play second fiddle.
Many among us will consider continuing our education
after attaining a bachelor’s degree. U.S. News’ rankings
of graduate programs will invite us to have a seat and let the magazine
set the agenda. They will invite us to momentarily shun the very
type of holistic thinking that would earn admission into those schools.
(See Critical pedagogy.)
I recommend that we trust ourselves first. Know
yourself; listen to others; then consider peeking at America’s
Best Colleges. But when you’re done, make sure to stuff the
magazine where it belongs: underneath your textbooks.
Further Reading:
http://thecenter.ufl.edu/Gater0702.pdf
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2000/norc.html
http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v10n16/
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/21stC/issue-1.1/vying.htm
http://www.collegenews.org/x2732.xml
|