Christopher B. Nelson, president of St. John’s College, in Annapolis, Md., says there is “real evil” in U.S. News & World Report’s annual ranking of colleges. So he was pleased last week when he and his colleagues at other private colleges resolved to do something about it.
At the annual meeting of the Annapolis Group, which represents 124 liberal-arts colleges, members agreed to develop a Web-based information system that would provide families with “easily accessible, comprehensive, and quantifiable data” on participating colleges. The organization said it planned to work closely with the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities and other education groups that have begun creating such a tool to provide prospective students with better information about colleges.
Following its two-day meeting, in Annapolis, the group also announced that a majority of about 80 presidents who attended the event said they would not participate in U.S. News & World Report’s annual rankings. (The group does not set binding policies for member institutions, which will continue to decide what, if any, information they share with the magazine.)
As announcements go, the Annapolis Group’s written statement describing its plans was not dramatic. It did not call U.S. News evil, or anything else. But it did signal a “convergence” of strong opinions among presidents, according to Katherine Haley Will, the Annapolis Group’s chairwoman and president of Gettysburg College.
“It was really palpable, the dissatisfaction not with U.S. News as a magazine but with how they’re claiming the conversation about who’s better,” said Ms. Will. “We’re the ones who ought to reclaim that. This isn’t a system we feel comfortable with anymore.”
The meeting heartened presidents who have long criticized U.S. News, and compelled others to see the rankings in a new light. Frances Lucas, president of Millsaps College, in Mississippi, said she previously had paid little attention to the rankings debate because her own institution was rated highly in U.S. News. But after learning more about the magazine’s methodology and discussing the issue with colleagues at last week’s meeting, she concluded that the rankings were based too heavily on measurements determined by institutional wealth.
“The worst tragedy is that leaders like me have been persuaded, oftentimes by external constituencies, predominantly trustees, to manage toward winning in the rankings,” Ms. Lucas said. “I don’t know of a college president that has managed to win who doesn’t regret it in this way: that we have taken valuable dollars and focused way too much on attracting academically meritorious students instead of the poor ones, and that’s just wrong.”
Ms. Lucas said she planned to stop completing the magazine’s reputational survey, which asks academic leaders to rate hundreds of colleges, and that she would talk to Millsaps trustees about the possibility of removing all mentions of U.S. News rankings from the college’s promotional materials.
The heated discussions of rankings in Annapolis echoed the tone of a recent letter by 12 college presidents that excoriated U.S. News for providing misleading data that “degrade the educational worth ... of the college search process.” The letter — which has circulated among hundreds of college presidents and now has 36 signatures — urges officials to boycott the reputational survey and stop touting their rankings.
Lloyd Thacker, the man behind the letter and founder of the Education Conservancy, hailed the Annapolis Group’s actions as a victory for students. “It’s an encouraging sign that college presidents are willing to do the right thing,” Mr. Thacker said, “that they’re going to step up and help this country think its way out from under the influence of the rankings ... and exercise some educational authority.”
In a June 8 letter to Annapolis Group presidents obtained by The Chronicle, Brian Kelly, editor of U.S. News, warned them that bowing out of the reputational survey could have “unintended effects.”
“The rankings have brought attention to some smaller and lesser-known schools, some real hidden gems,” Mr. Kelly wrote. “However, if fewer peer surveys are completed and returned, the number of respondents rating such small, lesser-known schools could drop below a statistically significant threshold, placing these schools into an unranked category.”
Many liberal-arts-college presidents have concluded that there are worse places to be.
Elizabeth F. Farrell contributed to this article.
http://chronicle.com Section: Students Volume 53, Issue 43, Page A30
