U.S. News & World Report releases its annual college rankings Friday in the face of the loudest and best-organized criticism from educators the magazine has ever encountered.
But for all the complaints that the rankings warp college admissions and distract colleges from educating students, U.S. News still has the upper hand. Colleges are having a hard time quitting the magazine’s annual beauty contest.
Sixty-two colleges have enlisted in an anti-rankings campaign led by education activist Lloyd Thacker. But a quick Web search shows that even some of those schools haven’t fulfilled a pledge to stop using their rankings to advertise themselves. And none of the highest-ranked schools have formally signed on.
Interviews by The Associated Press with top officials at about a dozen elite colleges confirm a fault line in the rankings debate that’s more than coincidence: It irks educators everywhere to see colleges ranked like basketball teams. But it irks educators at the top-ranked colleges a lot less.
“The list isn’t perfect, but it isn’t totally evil either,” said David Oxtoby, president of Pomona College in California, the No. 7 liberal-arts college on last year’s list. The popular rankings are a way for students and parents to get information, he said, and most know better than to take a college’s specific placement too seriously.
The debate has been raging since the magazine began ranking colleges in the 1980s. But the focus this year is on Thacker, a longtime admissions counselor who has made it his mission to restore educational values to what he calls an over-commercialized college selection process. Thacker has been circulating a letter calling on colleges to boycott a portion of the rankings, to swear off using them for self-promotion, and to develop an alternative – something he also is pursuing.
He has received lots of attention and encouragement from the top schools. But so far no liberal-arts colleges ranked higher than No. 30 on last year’s list have signed the letter, nor have any of the top 100 universities.
At some of the highest-ranked colleges, officials declined to comment. Some that did said they are sympathetic to Thacker’s case (many already refrain from advertising their rankings, at least in their own publications). And some are cooperating, at least partially. Yale will host a major gathering next month for Thacker’s effort to develop a rankings alternative. Lee Stetson, dean of admissions at the University of Pennsylvania, said he expects his university and its Ivy League peers to eventually work with Thacker in some form.
But they also say the rankings are a fact of life – and not an entirely bad one.
“I’m more concerned about students who aren’t paying any attention to their college search than I am about students who are paying too much,” said Stephen Farmer, director of admissions at the University of North Carolina.
Thacker calls his campaign “a test of character” for college presidents. He insists many are eager to sign on but face pressure from their boards of trustees, whose members often come from the business world.
The ranking system is “numerical, it’s a balance-sheet kind of bottom-line analysis that they’re really familiar with,” he said.
Some universities, such as Baylor, have made rising in the U.S. News rankings an explicit goal; Arizona State has even made it a financial incentive in the president’s contract.
Privately, some admissions deans who dislike the magazine’s influence say the rankings have powerful supporters on campus. Said one: “The biggest issue in the rankings isn’t admissions, it’s probably fundraising.”
