The University of Colorado at Boulder is no longer one of the country’s top party schools, Colorado School of Mines students are the most unhappy, and the University of Denver is one of the least diverse campuses around, according to a survey released Monday.
The School of Mines also fared badly for quality of food and dorms, according to the Princeton Review.
A bright note came in the rankings of the U.S. Air Force Academy near Colorado Springs, which was first in low marijuana use and in having accessible professors and had two rankings in the top five for low alcohol use.
This year’s rankings will be in the 2006 edition of the “The Best 361 Colleges,” on sale at bookstores today, but representatives of the schools – even ones with positive results – pointed out the book is an unscientific poll.
“The fact that it receives such high visibility, we’re happy to be out of the list,” CU-Boulder spokeswoman Pauline Hale said. “Whether we go up or down in the ranking, we continue to be skeptical of this unscientific poll.”
The Princeton Review survey, which has no connection to Princeton University, sends out surveys to students on 361 campuses and received responses from 110,000 students.
“I’m surprised that administrators would dismiss the rankings,” said book author Robert Franek. “Many of the students used the book when they were searching for schools and report honestly.”
Most of the questions in the survey are based on students’ opinions, and there is no set sample size, so the book cannot calculate a margin of error.
This is the first time since 2001 that CU-Boulder did not make the top 20 for party schools. It received the top ranking in 2003. This year, that dubious honor went to the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Boulder student Matt Vanvoorhees, a senior from Nashville, Tenn., said the Princeton rankings come as welcome news.
“It helps clean up the image of the school,” he said. “I’m out there looking for jobs, and this is not the image that I want to have.”
Megan Newton, a junior from Greeley, said she hopes this will direct the criticism away from CU.
“Taxpayers don’t want to support a school in that kind of standing,” she said.
Other schools also disputed the validity of the survey. DU spokesman Warren Smith said the school works hard at diversity programs, though he concedes only about 16 percent of students last year were ethnic minorities. The survey said DU was the No. 1 school with little race and class interaction.
“The University of Denver is committed to diversity and maintains a full slate of programs designed to encourage interaction among people of different backgrounds,” Smith said.
The School of Mines was No. 1 in the least-happy-student category, No. 2 in low quality of food and No. 7 in the “dorms are dungeons” category.
“Our concern is that the public is misled by the retail book’s lack of scientific sampling, which results in false conclusions,” Mines vice president Harold Cheuvront said in a written statement.
Staff writer Arthur Kane can be reached at 303-820-1626 or akane@denverpost.com.
