The Obligations of US News

There is a love hate relationship with the US News Rankings on colleges and universities among college types. On the one hand the rankings are sought after - even for some of those colleges and universities that disdain them. When the rankings first began to come out I would notice when I went on campuses where they were derided that I would see the college ranking edition prominently placed on a coffee table in the administration building. But any serious student of colleges understands that a good part of the annual rankings are made up of dubious data and a lot of nonsense. But on the other hand there is a lot of concern, legitimate concern, that the US News rankings fail to accurately capture the qualities of colleges and that parts of the survey, especially the reputational rankings (a glorified gossip sheet) are quite inaccurate.

In recent weeks a story has been developing that a couple of places, like Sarah Lawrence, have expressed concern that the staff of US News had the intention of reporting inaccurate data. That came to an even higher level when the president of Sarah Lawrence wrote an Op-ed for the Washington Post. The president commented "U.S. News benefits from our appetite for shortcuts, sound bites and top-10 lists. The magazine has parlayed the appearance of unbiased measurements into a profitable bottom line." Sarah Lawrence, IMHO for sound educational reasons, decided to eliminate the use of standardized tests in admissions decisions. But according to the president, US News' research director said they would impute the data and made the absurd assumption that those places that do not use SATs will admit less qualified students.

A report in Inside Higher Education this morning suggested that the fight on the rankings is going a bit further. A group of small colleges are beginning to think about a coordinated response to the US News system which would have them refuse to participate in the annual survey which helps to create the issue (and ultimately to sell more copies of their magazine).

From my view, the role of these colleges is a good one and let's hope they stick to their guns. US News has been almost brazen in the way they operate this venture. The data freeze might be just the kind of ranking that US News could understand.