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And that’s precisely how it should be. But the college ranking system, most onerously represented by U.S. News and World Report’s annual sizing up of hundreds of American colleges and universities, suggests that a group of editors can standardize what is happening in wildly different environments with wildly different students and professors. It’s not about what suits a student’s learning, goals, personality, interests or budget. It’s about comparing fundamentally different experiences in a way that misinforms thousands of families each year. Dangerous stuff, in my opinion. And stupid. Here’s primarily what the U.S. News folks tell you: How large a school’s endowment is, how strong its reputation and how much its incoming freshmen have already achieved. In fact, the methodology gives weight to factors like professors’ salaries (7 percent of the final ranking), even though at many places, high-paid professors aren’t teaching undergrads; they’re researching, pulling in big bucks from grant-givers and drawing media attention for the university. Generally, the more emphasis on research, the less the institution emphasizes teaching. The SAT/ACT scores of incoming freshmen make up another 7.5 percent of the final ranking. My favorite education writer, Loren Pope (author of Looking Beyond the Ivy League and Colleges That Change Lives, among others), writes in Colleges That Change Lives that evaluating a college based on the SAT scores or high school ranks of its incoming students is like evaluating a hospital based on how well its patients are when they arrive. It’s an apt comparison: We should evaluate colleges based on the learning that is happening while students are there, not based on how well its freshmen did on standardized tests they probably took at least 15 months prior to their first day of college. Another problem: Colleges and universities report the information in the U.S. News ranking. I don’t know if there’s any fudging of numbers, but I know (after working in the admission office of a great little liberal arts college in Iowa for two years) that most colleges sweat the annual report. Will we be in the top tier? The second tier? What if we slip from the top 25 to—heaven forbid it!—the number 26 slot? If I could talk to every parent trying to guide a student through the college search process, I would say, “Don’t rely too heavily on data generated by institutions that have much to gain or lose by those very numbers, especially if there is no independent verification of those numbers.” I remember being at a college fair a few years ago in a swanky suburb of Chicago. The college I represented had slipped a few spots in the U.S. News ranking that spring, and a father came up to me and said, “What happened?” I stared at him blankly. “You know, with your ranking?” he elaborated. I groaned inwardly. Seriously? I told him to look around the room. More than 250 colleges were represented. “Do you think that there’s any meaningful way to compare these schools?” He shrugged. “What does your son want to do?” His son stood scowling beside his dad. “I want to be an engineer. Or maybe an architect.” “What else?” I asked. “That’s it.” The son said. “Nope, that’s not it,” I said. “Do you want to take studio art classes? Do you want to sit one-on-one with your professor after calculus class? Do you want to play Ultimate Frisbee? Do you want to live in a city? Do you want to join a ski team?” The son kind of grinned at me. “If you can figure out a way to quantify all of the experiences that happen at a college campus, I’ll respond to questions about rankings. Until then, I’m going to encourage you to focus on finding a good fit for your son, instead of worrying about what a group of editors are doing in an attempt to sell magazines,” I told them. My college career was great because my college suited me. It ranked number one in my book. And for each college-bound student, there is a number-one school. The rest of them don’t really matter. For an excellent response to (and an eye-opening glimpse into) the annual U.S. News guide, check out ( www.latime.com/news/opinion/la-oe-mcguire14may14,0,1946635.story ) this open letter from Patricia McGuire, president of Trinity University in Washington, D.C. 0 comments - Add a comment |
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