College presidents plan 'U.S. News' rankings boycott

Deriding the ratings system as a 'beauty contest,' dozens of schools have refused to fill out surveys from the newsweekly.

from the April 12, 2007 edition

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Several college presidents suggested that they personally could evaluate only five to 10 schools – a far cry from the hundreds on the list. "We know each other through reputation, but that's different than having the kind of intimate knowledge you should have when you are making a ranking," says Robert Weisbuch, president of Drew University in Madison, N.J., who plans to sign the letter.

The intent of the administrator survey is to capture the opinions of those who are experts inside the industry, says Brian Kelly, executive editor of U.S. News. The survey asks them to rank only those schools with which they are familiar. If that number is only five, says Mr. Kelly, "well, gee, maybe you need to know some more about your competitors."

Last year, 70 percent of the reputational surveys were returned, according to the magazine. If large numbers of schools stopped complying, Kelly says the magazine could query department chairmen, high school guidance counselors, and other knowledgeable sources.

"The reason the rankings are popular is that there is a great hunger among consumers to have some tangible data to use. Some universities are unwilling to give people the information they want," says Kelly, whose organization claims to use 50,000 pieces of data to derive the rankings. "It's not enough to say that this is an unquantifiable, nuanced world, particularly when you are charging people [in some cases] $50,000 a year."

Students are desperate for honest, third-party comparisons, agrees Steven Goodman, a college admissions consultant in Washington. "In a perfect world, there would be no need for any rankings because universities would be completely forthcoming about their strengths and weaknesses."

College presidents emphasize that they do provide information to the public through the US Department of Education and their own websites.

But some expressed reservations about what happens when no data are available in particular categories.

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