Bob Morse is a wonk, a number-cruncher who works in a messy office at a struggling publishing company in Georgetown.
He’s also one of the most powerful wonks in the country, wielding the kind of power that elicits enmity and causes angst.
U.S. News college rankings are denounced but not ignored
Bill O'Leary/WASHINGTON POST - Bob Morse runs U.S. News and World Report’s Best Colleges guide.
The rise and fall of elite colleges in the U.S. News rankings
Your 2011 school survival guide
Morse runs U.S. News & World Report’s annual Best Colleges guide, the oldest and best-known publication to rank America’s premier colleges.
The annual release of the rankings, set for Sept. 13 this year, is a marquee event in higher education. Some call it the academic equivalent of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue.
Colleges broadcast U.S. News rankings on Web sites and in news releases, tout them in recruiting pamphlets, alumni magazines and “Dear Colleague” letters, and emblazon them on T-shirts and billboards. Institutions build strategic plans around the rankings and reward presidents when a school ascends.
“U.S. News doesn’t advertise the rankings,” Morse said in a recent interview at the publication’s headquarters. “The schools advertise for us.”
Morse, 63, has endured for two decades as chief arbiter of higher education’s elite.
No one can stake a credible claim to academic aristocracy without a berth on the first page of a U.S. News list. He is to colleges what Robert Parker is to wine.
College presidents dismiss the rankings. They line up behind conference microphones to denounce Morse and his methods.
Privately, college administrators fret about rankings and ponder how to move up. Presidents and deans telephone U.S. News several times a week to ask “why they rank the way they do,” Morse said. He usually takes the calls himself.
At industry meetings, Morse answers his critics in a halting monotone. He speaks with a mild stutter.
“His manner is disarming and, in its own way, very effective,” said Ted Fiske, a fellow traveler in the college-guide business, who rates colleges but does not rank them. “It just sort of takes the air out of the room.”
The rankings have changed the way colleges do business. Critics see their influence every time an institution presses alumni for nominal donations, coaxes noncommittal students to apply or raises the SAT score required for admission.
Twenty-eight years after the release of the first U.S. News lists, Morse and his publication dominate the college-ranking business they spawned. Last year’s publication drew more than 10 million Internet hits on launch day.
In a conference room one recent afternoon, Morse heard reports from a group of overworked editors and producers, many in their 20s and wearing comfortable shoes.
“We have a lot to get through. We’re two weeks away from launch,” said Anita Narayan, deputy education editor. Conversation drifted from the “countdown clock” on the U.S. News Web site to potential media coverage to a shift in categories that will place the U.S. Air Force Academy among liberal arts schools for the first time.
The rankings typically make up more than half of the Web traffic at U.S. News, a onetime news magazine that retreated from weekly to biweekly to monthly and finally ceased print publication altogether this year. Morse presides over a staff of six.
- Spam
- Obscene
- Duplicate
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