The Rankings Rebel

Lloyd Thacker once was running a lonely campaign against U.S. News & World Report's college ratings. He's not alone anymore

by Alison Damast

Lloyd Thacker, founder and director of the nonprofit Education Conservancy, and the originator of the college rankings revolt

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Hanging above Lloyd Thacker's desk in his office in downtown Portland, Ore., is a framed check for the first order of his self-published book criticizing the concept of college rankings and the admissions mania that surrounds them. In an ironic twist, the check—made out for $45.40 for two books, plus shipping—is from U.S. News & World Report.

U.S. News, the publisher of what is perhaps the most closely watched of the college rankings, is the magazine that Thacker, a former high school guidance counselor and college admissions officer, has taken on as his primary target in his battle to change the way people think about colleges. And while Thacker and others have raised the issue before, the recent willingness of some liberal arts colleges to embrace his cause has made Thacker the point person for one of the most intense conversations to arise in higher education in recent years (see BusinessWeek.com, 05/07/07, "The College Rankings Revolt Heats Up,").

Thacker, who markets his ideas with the zest of a traveling salesman and the zeal of a missionary, is the founder and director of the Education Conservancy, a nonprofit which, according to its Web site, is "committed to improving college admission processes for students, colleges, and high schools." Thacker's small organization—it has one other staffer, an administrative assistant—this month scored its biggest coup yet: At this month's annual meeting of the Annapolis Group, a consortium of 125 leading liberal arts colleges, the vast majority of the 80 college presidents in attendance agreed to stop participating in surveys used to help compile the U.S. News rankings.

A One-Man Mission

The announcement was a sweet victory for Thacker, who recalled sitting nervously outside the meeting while the rankings issue was debated. His one-man mission to debunk the rankings has gone further than he ever thought it could go, he said. "It's amazing. What blows me away is why didn't someone else do this?" he said in a telephone interview. "There must be somebody else much more qualified than I am who could have captured this interest and delivered it with some kind of social clout."

Thacker's foray into the college admissions world was not something he originally envisioned back when he was a college student majoring in oceanography at the University of California at San Diego in the early 1970s.

Back then, Thacker spent his spare time working in a lab at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography, playing the guitar and harmonica in local clubs, and surfing on Malibu Beach. His interest in education was sparked when he got an internship with the dean's office and become involved in an effort to evaluate and challenge the existing curriculum. The effort was successful, and Thacker's interests gradually shifted from the study of sea creatures to effecting change in the classroom.

He took a job at the education opportunity program at UC-San Diego following graduation, helping to recruit minority students for the school. After receiving a master's degree in political science he returned to college admissions, working in the admissions office of the University of Southern California in the early 1980s, and later at Pacific University in Portland. His primary task was to come up with a marketing plan to attract more students to the school. It was a time when college rankings were just starting, and colleges began to realize they needed to market themselves in a more aggressive manner. "My concern began there. I was worried that marketing was going to be embraced wholeheartedly without due regard for the value of a liberal arts education," he said.