U.S. News's College Rankings Face Competition and Criticism

By Valerie Strauss
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, August 17, 2007

It was 1983, and lists -- of books, movies, anything -- were the rage. U.S. News & World Report, a struggling news magazine, decided to capitalize on the trend and ask college presidents to rate rival institutions.

Now, the magazine's annual list ranking the nation's four-year colleges and universities has become the center of a lucrative and controversial market of guides aimed at helping students determine where to apply.

U.S. News will release the 2008 rankings online today and in the magazine Monday. But this year's list comes amid a growing backlash. Critics, some of whom produce their own college guides, have questioned the magazine's methodology. At least 63 college leaders have signed a letter agreeing not to fill out the reputation survey, which now accounts for 25 percent of the rankings. More are expected to join in the boycott.

Over nearly 25 years, U.S. News has seen its rankings gain unprecedented influence among schools; some have changed policy and awarded bonuses to presidents and administrators who spearhead a leap in rankings, according to educators. But as the magazine's influence has grown, so has the competition.

Princeton Review has a guide. So does Fiske. And Kaplan, which is owned by The Washington Post Co., does, too.

There also are efforts to find new ways to present information on colleges and universities without ranking them. The National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities will introduce the University and College Accountability Network online next month with profiles of hundreds of schools.

It is not, association spokesman Tony Pals said, a direct challenge to the rankings but a response to a plea by families for better information.

Others are not shy about challenging the magazine.

"The existing rankings fall incredibly short of providing a comprehensive picture of the quality of a university or college," said Tori Haring-Smith, president of Washington and Jefferson College, whose Pennsylvania school has fallen in ranking as it grew in size and became more selective.

Robert Franek, a vice president at Princeton Review and lead author of its annual survey, "The Best 366 Colleges," released a letter this week asking schools not to compare it with U.S. News. "There is the danger of lumping them together," he said in an interview. "I just want to be very clear."

So how different are the various guides?

There are lists, surveys and testimonials that shower families with statistics on freshman SAT scores, retention rates, average class size and more. U.S. News Editor Brian Kelly said his magazine presents the only college rankings based on a scientific formula -- which is proprietary -- and that the magazine shouldn't be blamed if colleges make too much of the rankings and students misuse them.

He dismissed the Princeton Review's approach, which is based on interviews with 120,000 students: "Princeton Review just calls up bartenders and says, 'How many people are in your bar?' "

Franek had little nice to say about Kelly's product: "I place no credibility on hierarchical rankings. There is no way you can say 'This school is 1,and this school is 401.' It doesn't resonate anymore. It's useless."

Edward B. Fiske of the "Fiske Guide to Colleges" said he believes his approach has more credibility because it avoids gimmicks and quickly reacts to trends.

Fiske includes student interviews, though not as many as Franek's book, and other information he collects as he travels the country. He said he decides which colleges to include based on a variety of information -- some subjective -- that changes year to year.

The Princeton Review includes 62 lists, not about academics but other elements of school life, including which schools are most accepting of gays. He said a survey of 6,000 people showed that only 9 percent said they would choose a school because it was considered to have the best academics, while 53 percent said they were looking for "the best fit."

The U.S. News rankings are different in approach and result.

Annually, the magazine ranks more than 1,900 schools based on massive amounts of data collected from the schools and other sources, placing them in different categories and tiers by mission and in some cases region. (Many schools complain that it takes several days to assemble the information to meet the magazine's format, even though much of the information is available from the Department of Education.)

The editors say they use quantitative measures said to be reliable indicators of academic quality, and rely on their own view of what is important to report, such as student retention, faculty resources and alumni giving.

Kelly said the editors tweak their formula every year, offering improvements and responding to critics. The 2008 rankings, for example, have reclassified more than 200 schools in different categories and for the first time included military service academies.

Critics call the changes a ploy to warrant new sales.

They also say that U.S. News puts large public schools at a disadvantage by including the amount of endowment per student.

The belief that the higher the dollar number available per student inherently means a better education is, said George Mason University President Alan Merten, "just not true."

It is no wonder, critics say, that small elite colleges virtually always come out on top.

In the rankings released today, Princeton University topped the list of best national universities, followed by Harvard and Yale universities -- retaining their positions from 2007.

Not everyone is ready to scrap the rankings. Deborah Balogh, provost and vice president for academic affairs at the University of Indianapolis, thinks they are useful to students and to the schools, allowing them to see how they "stack up on several specific measures." She said that she believes reluctance to participate "may be construed by the public as defensiveness about being evaluated and held accountable."

Even those who don't submit information to the guides can see some merit in them.

St. John's College President Christopher Nelson said he has chosen to ignore them altogether and provides no data. Still, he said, the guides are valuable because they provide narratives as well as data about many schools that a student might never have known.

But he said he believes only a small group of the most competitive students actually care a lot about the rankings.

"I think parents worry about it," Nelson said. "I haven't seen it with young people. When you talk to students in high school, the overwhelming thing that students say matters to them is a question of fit. 'When I go on that campus, does it look like I belong there?' "