Some Colleges to Drop out of US News Rankings
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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 1 of 2 6/20/2007 8:49 AM Some Colleges to Drop Out of U.S. News Rankings -... 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.” Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company Privacy Policy Search Corrections RSS First Look Help Contact Us Work for Us Site Map 2 of 2 6/20/2007 8:49 AM Jobs, News and Views for All of Higher Education - Inside Higher Ed :... http://www.insidehighered.com/layout/set/print/news/2007/06/20/usnews Advertisement 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 1 of 3 6/20/2007 9:39 AM Jobs, News and Views for All of Higher Education - Inside Higher Ed :... http://www.insidehighered.com/layout/set/print/news/2007/06/20/usnews 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.