Skip to content
Link copied to clipboard

Misguided in countless ways

By Dodge Johnson Last week, U.S. News and World Report released its annual rankings of American colleges and universities, which are always an occasion for manufactured anticipation and hoopla. I confess that I wish the rankings would go away - not that this is about to happen anytime soon.

By Dodge Johnson

Last week, U.S. News and World Report released its annual rankings of American colleges and universities, which are always an occasion for manufactured anticipation and hoopla. I confess that I wish the rankings would go away - not that this is about to happen anytime soon.

Rankings are alluring. They simplify. They imply that to find the college that's right for you, all you need to do is aim for the top - meaning the highest-ranked colleges - rather than address the central and more nuanced question: Which school best matches your needs, your plans, and your personality?

Aside from this basic misdirection, the rankings have other shortcomings, two of which stand out. First, colleges improve or deteriorate slowly for the most part. Yet the rankings change every year. Why? Because U.S. News changes the formula every year.

I understand why that is: No change means no sale; if the rankings remain the same, there's no need to buy the magazine. But that business imperative has nothing to do with the actual quality of the universities.

Second, aside from the "reputational survey" - in which college presidents and important others are invited to rank large numbers of colleges (though how would they know?) - the rankings are based on empirical data. And the data that count most are largely related to admissions rather than to the experiences of students after they arrive.

Twenty-seven years as an independent educational consultant have convinced me that some colleges do a superb job, and others do a terrible job, but many more are somewhere in between. However, I can't rank them to the extent of assigning each a specific place among the 1,700 or so colleges in the country - this one is No. 31, and that one is No. 131 or 1,131.

Spewing numbers

I ran into the same problem as a young English teacher. I could decide whether students' papers were excellent, pretty good, so-so, poor, or wretched. And I could assign grades of A through F, understanding that, like any umpire, I was expected to make and defend close calls.

But when I was asked to use a numerical scale of 0 to 100, how could I explain why a given paper deserved a 76 rather than a 77? To do that, I had to whip up a point system: one point off for each misspelled word, two points off for every comma splice, etc. The formula didn't tell me much about quality of thinking or expression. But it was a marvel at spewing out precise numbers - and it cut down on the whining.

Here's another way to look at the trouble with college rankings: Delaware County Community College attracts students of a stunning range of ages and backgrounds. They speak many languages but often are not very fluent in English. Many work full time. Many are single parents. A fair number never finished high school but have earned a GED. And many have to scrape to come up with any money at all, let alone tuition and essentials for classes. In other words, college is an uphill struggle for many Delco students, but the college does a remarkable job of putting them on track, turning them into professionals, or readying them for transfer to four-year schools.

Should Delco be ranked above or below Penn, Michigan, or Harvey Mudd? The answer depends less on data than on what the person doing the ranking values. And that's what a college search should be about - not blindly relying on a bunch of numbers run through a centrifuge, elegantly presented, and heavily touted, but deciding what's important to you and then looking for colleges that provide it.

Angst and fear

In the end, the notion of ranking colleges based on numerical data is absurd. Suppose we decided to rank churches. What data should we use: Height of steeple? Depth of pew cushions? Percentage of worshipers who tithe, of Boxsters in the parking lot, or of churchyard graves dating to before 1850? Any of these could be plugged into a formula that changes every year and then sold as a product. But would the result point me to good places to worship? And should I look for a new church every year?

None of the shortcomings of college rankings would matter if they were a harmless distraction. But they are not.

They have revolutionized the way trustees and the public judge colleges' effectiveness. They encourage students to make prestige the centerpiece of their college search, instead of figuring out what they truly want for themselves. And they are the engine of multibillion-dollar enterprises that have transformed applying to highly ranked schools from a "best match" process that should nourish and affirm young adults into a trophy hunt marked by angst and fear of failure.