The coronavirus has underscored inequities in American society, including among college students. When campuses first began emptying in early March, low-income and first-generation students were more likely to have lost critical sources of food and shelter. When courses moved online, a strong Wi-Fi connection and quiet place to focus were harder to come by.
Now, in the next phase of the pandemic, new inequities are poised to arise, this time among who gets into college, and who completes their degrees. So argues H. Holden Thorp in the latest issue of the journal Science, of which he’s editor in chief. He has two ideas for leveling the playing field: Suspend both the U.S. News & World Report college rankings, and the use of standardized tests in admissions.
“This is not a time for undergraduate institutions to be using precious resources to chase these numbers,” he wrote. “Rather, they need to support struggling students and other members of the academic community so that education can resume this fall in a manner that is fair for all.” Many colleges have already gone test-optional in response to the pandemic.
When the Final Four is played in front of a crowd, that’ll mean we’re coming close to the end of this.
Thorp draws from his past experiences as chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, then provost of Washington University in St. Louis. Though rankings and admissions would seem to have little to do with science, he expects his readers, many of them faculty members at universities, will be thinking these topics over also.
The Chronicle spoke with Thorp about how rankings hurt vulnerable students, and his ideas for a better system. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
What are you worried about, when it comes to the future of higher education postcoronavirus? What are you calling for?
I’m very worried that the inequities that exist in higher ed are going to be amplified by Covid-19. Two places where these inequities are quite apparent is in the reliance on standardized-test scores, which we know are highly influenced by family income, and the rankings that U.S. News does, and the selectivity that they induce for institutions. So I’m recommending that we pause both of those things for now, and then, when this is over, see if there’s a way to come up with a more progressive way of doing both.
Because test scores are closely associated with family income, it’s more obvious why they might hurt less privileged students. But how do the U.S. News rankings harm them?
There are a lot of things in the formula that come from selectivity. Not directly — they’ve done some work to try to make it less direct, but it’s still the case that your school being hard to get into influences your ranking.
The other thing is graduation rates. The graduation rates are important in the formula, and now people are dealing with so many complications that, if we force schools to be evaluated based on their graduation rates right now, they might make some decisions that aren’t necessarily the best ones for the students.
As colleges and universities have struggled to devise policies to respond to the quickly evolving situation, here are links to The Chronicle’s key coverage of how this worldwide health crisis is affecting campuses.
We want students to complete their education, but right now, our notion of what logical progression to a degree is may need to change dramatically. We know that students with more resources tend to do better with online instruction. Now that a lot will be virtual, it might make sense for some students to slow down, to be able to go to more classes in person, but if the graduation rates are being tallied in the way that they were, schools are going to be in a position to try to force students to stay enrolled.
I know U.S. News has tried to respond to some criticisms against it by making changes in its ranking formula. What do you think of those?
Yeah, they keep trying to alter the formula to reward schools for doing more for low-income students. I think they’re just nibbling around the edges as long as they’re making test scores and graduation rates such an important part of the formula.
What can colleges do about the harms of the U.S. News rankings? Can they just opt out?
That gets discussed more frequently than people might realize. I think it’s very hard for the universities to unilaterally disarm. The best thing would be for U.S. News to do the right thing and say, “We’re just not going to do this until this is over.”
[Reached for comment, Robert Morse, chief data strategist for U.S. News & World Report, sent along the following statement, via a spokeswoman:
“The data in the upcoming 2021 edition of Best Colleges was not impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic. For nearly four decades, U.S. News has published Best Colleges each year for the benefit of prospective students and their parents, and we plan to do so again this fall.
The team at U.S. News most definitely understands that these are and will be very challenging times for college students, faculty, and staff because of the significant and unprecedented disruptions caused by Covid-19. We’re currently reviewing our strategies for future U.S. News education rankings where Covid-19 may have had an impact.”]
Why is it hard for colleges to individually opt out?
If you’re in a competitive environment for students and your competitors are using the U.S. News rankings as a form of marketing, then, if you forgo that, you’re giving up the advantages that come with being there and your competitors are not doing that.
Could all of the schools come together and do it? That’s a nice dream.
You don’t want this system to come back after the coronavirus pandemic is over. You want a new, more progressive system. What does a more equitable ranking look like?
Now, when there are big moves in rankings by schools, there’s all of this discussion and a lot of back and forth with U.S. News. People get really upset.
If you paused and restarted it, it would be easier to make a big change to the formula that looks more at what universities do for students across a wide range of incomes and identities. With a pause, people would recognize it as something new.
How did rankings affect you when you were chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill?
During the time I was chancellor of UNC, UNC’s ranking didn’t move significantly. I think for the public flagships that have a lot of demand, like UNC, they’re less important because you have a high percentage of in-state students who want to attend. So what incentive did we have to make changes that would have a predictable effect on our ranking?
To be fair, if Carolina dropped significantly, there’d be a huge outcry with the politicians, and we‘d probably have to figure out how to rectify it, but that didn’t happen.
Alumni also often pay close attention —
Oh, yeah, way more than they should. What happens is, their friends that went to other schools that are ranked higher give them a hard time. It makes them mad, and so they call up the alumni association director and say, “Go tell the chancellor that he needs to do a better job on the rankings.” It’s a silly waste of time.
You say we should halt rankings until all this is over. What does it mean for the effects of Covid-19 to be over?
That’s a complicated question. We’re not going to have an abrupt transition out of this, because even if we get the vaccine, it’s probably only going to be 60 or 70 percent effective, and we have to worry that not everyone will take the vaccine, or, if it has to be done in two doses, that they’ll only take one dose.
There’s no chance we’re going to vaccinate a lot of people during the latter half of 2020, to the extent that operating college normally in January is going to be possible. If you are thinking, “Oh, I’ll just do the fall online because this is all going to be a whole lot easier in January,” that’s magical thinking. It’ll give you more time to see what measures may work well and to get your campus set up, but I don’t think biomedicine is going to radically change the landscape on this any time during the year 2020. We’re going to be mitigating the virus in August, in January of ’21, and probably in August of ’21. So colleges are going to have to gradually adapt to living with the virus.
We’ll know this is over when we’re all going to large events indoors with confidence. When the Final Four is played in front of a crowd, that’ll mean we’re coming close to the end of this.
Do you think colleges can safely open in the fall?
If you’re asking me, can they safely reopen as though it were the fall of 2019, then no, but can they begin the process of reopening and adapting? Yes. I think they’ll end up with a very complicated, messy combination of virtual and in-person, and that will probably evolve over the course of the semesters to come as we work our way through this.
We’ve seen some worries that college presidents are being too optimistic about reopening in the fall, in an effort to drum up enrollment. What do you think of that?
I wouldn’t say I’m overly cynical about that. I think they’re doing the best they can with the variables they have in front of them.
