Some Colleges to Drop out of US News Rankings

Some Colleges to Drop Out of U.S. News Rankings -...

June 20, 2007 Some Colleges to Drop Out of U.S. News Rankings By ALAN FINDER

ANNAPOLIS, Md., June 19 — The presidents of dozens of liberal arts colleges have decided to stop participating in the annual college rankings by U.S. News and World Report.

The decision was announced Tuesday at the end of an annual meeting of the Annapolis Group, a loose association of liberal arts colleges. After two days of private meetings here, the organization released a statement that said a majority of the 80 presidents attending had “expressed their intent not to participate in the annual U.S. News survey.”

The commitment, which some college presidents said was made by a large majority of participants, represents the most significant challenge yet to the rankings, adding colleges like Barnard, Sarah Lawrence and Kenyon to a growing rebellion against the magazine, participants said.

U.S. News says it provides a valuable service to parents and students in its yearly evaluations, which are based on factors that include graduation and retention rates, assessments by competitors, selectivity and faculty resources. Critics say the ranking system lacks rigor and has had a harmful effect on educational priorities, encouraging colleges to do things like soliciting more applicants and then rejecting them, to move up the list.

“We really want to reclaim the high ground on this discussion,” said Katherine Will, the president of Gettysburg College and the incoming president of the Annapolis Group. “We should be defining the conversation, not a magazine that uses us for its business plan.” The association did not take a formal vote and each college will make its own decision, Dr. Will said.

The members of the Annapolis Group also decided to develop their own system of comparing institutions. The group intends to work with other higher education organizations to come up with a common format with comparable data.

“They will do what they will do,” Michele Tolela Myers, president of Sarah Lawrence College, said of U.S. News and World Report. “We will do what we will do. And we want to do it in a principled way.”

Brian Kelly, the editor of U.S. News, said the magazine applauded any effort to come up with new data. “If they come up with some new data, fine,” Mr. Kelly said. He was also conciliatory toward the presidents who said they would no longer cooperate with the magazine. “If a few presidents don’t want to participate, we understand,” he said.

Mr. Kelly said more than 50 percent of the presidents, provosts and admission deans who were sent the annual survey of colleges’ reputations continued to fill it out. “We think the vast majority of presidents and academics are still supporting the survey,” he said.

He left no doubt that the magazine would continue to produce its annual rankings. “We take our critics seriously, but we also think our ranking is valuable,” he said.

The decision by the Annapolis Group comes on the heels of an effort this spring by a dozen college presidents, several of whom belong to the association, urging colleges to pledge not to participate in a critical section of the U.S. News rankings — a survey in which its asks presidents and other senior academic officers to rate the reputations of other colleges and universities. That survey is weighed more heavily in the magazine’s rankings than any other factor.

Many presidents who favor no longer participating in the U.S. News rankings said they expected the magazine to be able to continue to produce

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its annual rankings because much of the data on things like admission and graduation rates are publicly available. Colleges report most of that data to the federal Department of Education.

But many presidents said it was time to disengage from the magazine. “Frankly, it had bubbled up to the point of, why should we do this work for them?” said Judith P. Shapiro, the president of Barnard College. “It is a way of saying, this is not our project.”

Other college presidents who attended the meeting were more cautious. Anthony Marx, the president of Amherst, which is ranked second among liberal arts colleges, said he was not ready to stop cooperating with U.S. News and wanted to continue to discuss the issue.

Lloyd Thacker, the executive director of the Education Conservancy, a nonprofit group that is campaigning to reduce the impact of rankings on college choice, was invited to talk with the presidents at the meeting. Mr. Thacker said he was heartened by the decisions, adding, “I think it gave permission to those presidents who were sitting on the fence to act in the public interest.”

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June 20 More Momentum Against ‘U.S. News’

In the wake of meetings this week of the Annapolis Group — an organization of liberal arts colleges — critics of the U.S. News & World Report college rankings are expecting a significant increase in the number of institutions where presidents pledge not to participate in the “reputational” portion of the rankings or to use scores in their own promotional materials.

A majority of the approximately 80 presidents at the meeting said that they did not intend to participate in the U.S. News reputational rankings in the future. Some of those presidents may have previously endorsed the movement, so the exact increase is uncertain as Annapolis Group leaders said that the expected individual presidents to announce their decisions.

At the same time, the Annapolis Group formally endorsed the idea of working with the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities and the Council of Independent Colleges to create “an alternative common format that presents information about their colleges for students and their families to use in the college search process.” The idea is to create online information with “easily accessible, comprehensive and quantifiable data.”

The endorsement of this alternative approach is important to many of the presidents considering the idea of distancing themselves and their institutions from U.S. News. Many who find the U.S. News rankings dubious have said that they didn’t like the idea of colleges moving away from the magazine without providing another source of information for prospective students and their families. Some have said that without some alternative in the wings, they didn’t feel they could sign on to the campaign against U.S. News.

The effort to create a new online comparison is not starting from scratch. NAICU has been working for months on creating a voluntary Web site that would mix comparable data with places for colleges to provide some additional information about themselves. The idea is not to rank colleges, but to provide basic information on costs, the availability of aid, graduation rates, academic programs and so forth — information that is currently easy for many students and families to get from U.S. News.

The private college group is hoping to begin its site in some form as early as this fall. Its effort was not a response to U.S. News, but to the Spellings Commission, which has called for more “transparency” of information about what students can expect in colleges.

Presidents at the Annapolis Group meeting — the largest turnout ever, because of the topic — said that they view the magazine’s rankings as encouraging the wrong behaviors by colleges, while sharing information can encourage the right values.

“The presidents agree that prospective students must have accurate information about colleges, and there is no

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single measure of educational excellence,” said Anthony Marx, president of Amherst College, via e-mail. “We would like to see the rankings improved, and we should provide our own more detailed information. I hope that any rankings or templates of data will drive us to compete on the quality of education, access and citizenship, not just how many students we reject or how much money we spend.”

U.S. News, which has in the past questioned the motives of colleges involved in the boycott movement, was considerably mellower on Tuesday. Brian Kelly, the top editor, issued a statement that said: “We at U.S. News appreciate the continued support of college and university presidents — including the Annapolis Group members — in the rankings process. We applaud any initiative in the higher education community — whether an academic institution, a government agency or news organization such as ourselves — to improve and expand accountability measures that help consumers make important decisions.”

He went on to say that the magazine welcomed ideas about “refining and improving” the rankings so that they could provide “consumers with factual, accurate, easy-to-navigate information that will help them with a hugely important life choice.”

The movement to boycott U.S. News has grown amid anger at how the magazine has treated some colleges, most notably Sarah Lawrence College, whose president revealed that the magazine said it would use its own data to create an SAT average for the college, even though Sarah Lawrence no longer collects SAT scores. But of late, the magazine seems to be stressing its openness. Robert Morse, who runs the rankings and has long appeared at college meetings to explain and defend them, recently started a blog to provide more information about the methodology and philosophy behind them.

U.S. News rankings have angered colleges for years — at least when they aren’t boasting about their scores. The current movement against the rankings kicked off in May, with the release of a letter by 12 college presidents, urging their colleges to stop participating in the “reputational” survey — in which presidents rank colleges based on what information they have (or out of complete ignorance) — and to stop citing U.S. News rankings in their promotional material. The letter was coordinated by Lloyd Thacker, founder of the Education Conservancy, which works to make the admissions process more focused on education as opposed to competition and prestige.

Chris Nelson, president of St. John’s College in Annapolis, and outgoing chair of the Annapolis Group, said Tuesday that he was pleased with the intense interest shown by presidents and deans in tackling the rankings. Nelson was one of the original 12 presidents who signed.

He said that presidents are energized about the issue because they realize “the lack of any evidence that the information collected has anything” to do with educational quality.

MaryAnn Baenninger, president of the College of Saint Benedict, said she emerged from the meeting in Annapolis believing she should not participate with U.S. News in the future. “I firmly believe that this is not the best way to provide information.”

Thacker said in an interview that he believed that the movement against the rankings had “a real sense of forward motion” and that he felt that many presidents arrived at the meeting “interested and willing to consider the idea, but not committed,” and that he believed many of them left much more inclined to move away from the rankings.

Frances Lucas of Millsaps College is one of those presidents. She said Tuesday that she felt she needed to discuss the issue with her board, but that she would recommend a move away from U.S. News. Lucas acknowledged that the magazine can in some ways help a college like hers — well respected by those who know it, with plenty of good statistics about its performance, but not huge national name recognition. “We’ve gotten some visibility that has helped us,” she said, adding that her board members cared about the rankings.

Lucas said that as she has thought about it more, and heard the discussion in Annapolis, she became convinced that

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the U.S. News rankings were doing damage to individual institutions and higher education as a whole. Because U.S. News rewards colleges that attract students with high SAT scores and colleges that reject lots of applicants, colleges are “trying to purchase the academically meritorious students,” offering merit scholarships to students who might not need the aid.

“I don’t know a single college president” who gives merit aid who wouldn’t shift more money to low-income students “if rankings weren’t in play,” Lucas said.

Thacker said he went into the Annapolis meeting with 37 college presidents who had signed the letter against the rankings. While the initial group was dominated by liberal arts colleges like those in the Annapolis Group, he has since gained support from public universities as well, such as Augusta State and San Francisco State Universities and the University of Wisconsin-Superior. Thacker said that he expected to pick up an additional 30-40 backers fairly quickly now. In addition, he has been asked to resend the original letter to hundreds of presidents, updating them on the progress since the initial letter.

Lucas said that Millsaps is already taking one important step. Until recently, one of the college’s specific goals in its strategic plan was to be included in the top 50 liberal arts colleges list compiled by U.S. News. While Lucas stressed that the college’s ambitions remain high, she said that the board recently agreed not to measure success by the rankings. “That’s a victory for students,” she said.

— Scott Jaschik

The original story and user comments can be viewed online at http://insidehighered.com/news/2007/06/20/usnews.

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Some colleges may opt out of rankings Advertisement By Mary Beth Marklein, USA TODAY

They didn't call for an all-out boycott, but presidents of dozens of liberal arts colleges signaled their intent Tuesday to stop cooperating with U.S. News & World Report's college rankings.

What that means exactly is not spelled out. Because most college presidents must answer to trustees, faculty and other constituents, "the decision to participate or withdraw from the U.S. News rankings rests with the individual institutions," says a statement released Tuesday by the Annapolis Group, whose members include 121 liberal arts colleges.

Even so, "the majority" of the 80 presidents who attended the group's annual meeting in Annapolis, Md., "expressed their intent not to participate in the annual … ranking exercise."

The group also said it would work with other organizations to develop a Web-based alternative to rankings that would provide parents and students with meaningful ways to compare schools. Among those with whom it said it is already in contact are the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities and the Council of Independent Colleges, both Washington, D.C.-based associations for private colleges and universities.

College presidents have been complaining for years that the rankings are flawed, but momentum has been building in recent years as more critics step forward to challenge the value of the magazine's annual feature. Complaints generally center on concern that rankings unfairly boil an institution down to a single number that obscures its uniqueness and that the rankings process encourages colleges to waste valuable resources as they try to game the system.

Last month, 12 college presidents circulated a letter urging hundreds of their colleagues to refuse to use the rankings to promote their institutions and to refuse to fill out a U.S. News survey in which they're asked to evaluate peers. At least 22 more presidents have signed on since then.

Among Annapolis Group members, who represent many of the liberal arts colleges that show up in U.S. News' top-ranked schools, the issue began to bubble up this spring during an informal e-mail discussion about the reputational survey.

"We're just kind of fed up with this attempt to quantify everything," says Chris Nelson, president of St. John's College in Annapolis and a former chair of the Annapolis Group.

Nelson has not responded to U.S. News requests for information for years. But other college presidents say they can't act unilaterally.

"The pressure on the president comes from the board of trustees, which devour rankings, metrics and numbers with a passion," says Frances Lucas, president of Millsaps College in Jackson, Miss. Though she has filled out the peer-evaluation survey before, she says, she won't do so next year.

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No binding vote was taken Tuesday. But "it did surprise me a bit that there was so much consensus among the group (about) rankings and our obligation to provide good information (to families during the search process). It was palpable," says Kate Will, chair of the group and president of Gettysburg (Pa.) College.

U.S. News editor Brian Kelly says he applauds the group's plan to make more data accessible online. He also says he is pleased that no one called for a collective boycott.

"The fact that they're not doing anything as a body, that's reassuring," Kelly says. "We're not concerned about the viability of the rankings."

But anti-rankings advocate Lloyd Thacker of Portland, Ore., a former college admissions officer, says the magazine has reason to worry.

"This wasn't a win for U.S. News. This was a loss," Thacker says.

"It's finally beginning to hit. We may have reached a tipping point."

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