The College Rankings Revolt Heats Up

Twelve liberal-arts school presidents are pressing others to boycott the peer-assessment section of U.S. News & World Report's annual appraisal

by Alison Damast

A dozen college presidents are setting the stage for what they hope will become a wide-scale rebellion against the annual college rankings compiled by U.S. News & World Report. In a letter dated May 5, the presidents are urging their colleagues at an estimated 1,000 liberal-arts schools to refuse to participate in a portion of the survey in which they're asked to rate other schools. The letter calls the survey "misleading" and says it does little to serve prospective students.

The pushback by the college presidents—aimed at a survey that's closely monitored by the academic community, as well as prospective students and their parents—is one example of a growing sense of unease with the role rankings play in higher education. Several other magazines which rank business schools, including BusinessWeek, have also been criticized for exerting undue influence on educational priorities (see BusinessWeek.com, 8/5/05, "A Rank Offense to B-Schools?").

The section of the U.S. News survey the presidents are objecting to is known as the "peer-assessment" portion. This section—which comprises 25% of the score used to devise the rankings—asks college presidents, provosts, and deans to evaluate other peer schools' performance and strengths. It's a task that makes some academic leaders uncomfortable.

Man on a Mission

"I looked at that part of the survey and said, 'How can I do this with integrity?'" says Ellen McCulloch-Lovell, president of Marlboro College in Vermont and one of the presidents who signed the letter. "I couldn't fill it out in good conscience."

The letter is the brainchild of Lloyd Thacker, founder of the Education Conservancy, a nonprofit education-advocacy organization in Portland, Ore. Thacker, a former high school guidance counselor and college admissions office veteran, wrote a book three years ago titled College Unranked, and has been on a mission ever since to debunk popular rankings complied by publications such as U.S. News, he says (see BusinessWeek.com, 4/18/07, "Debate Room: Throw the Book at College Rankings").

He came up with the idea for the letter at a January meeting of the Council of Independent Colleges, where he was giving a talk called "Ranksteering: Driving Under the Influence." During the conference, he spoke with several university presidents about participating in a campaign that would encourage other liberal-arts college presidents to boycott the peer-assessment section of the U.S. News survey. The idea gained momentum, and he was able to get 12 of the 18 college presidents he contacted to sign the letter.

"I'm trying to build a movement, and I picked those schools and those college presidents who I thought would demonstrate a little more courage and engage in what I call some benevolent collusion," Thacker says.

"Nothing New"

Brian Kelley, the editor of the ranking at U.S. News & World Report, says that while they have been paying close attention to Thacker's campaign, he doesn't think it will have any serious impact on the value of the rankings. Only 12 of the 1,500 schools they evaluate have signed onto this campaign so far, he says.

"This is really nothing new. There are folks who have had objections to the rankings for a number of years," Kelley says. "We understand their concerns, but we think that there's a lot more people who appreciate the value of the rankings, so we don't think this will affect the surveys."

The U.S. News rankings of liberal-arts colleges are conducted using a variety of data and other indicators, which include peer assessment, retention figures, faculty resources, student electivity, financial resources, graduation-rate performance, and alumni giving rate. The peer-assessment section's 25% weighting makes it the most important statistical component of the survey.