 |
|
|
This Op-ed ran in USA Today on
Monday, September 10, 2001.
RANKING LACKS CREDIBILITY
By Joanne V. Creighton
It is a sorry commentary
on educational leadership if colleges manipulate data about their
institutions in an effort to try to move up in rankings manufactured
every year by U.S. News & World Report, although the jury is still
out about how widespread these practices are. What is clear is
the deeply flawed nature of the rankings themselves.
Put simply, U.S. News' numbers fail to add up. Recently, a former
director of data research at U.S. News joined the increasingly
vocal critics of the wrongheaded methodology and commercial motives
of the U.S. News rankings. An internal study commissioned by the
magazine in 1997 found, according to The Washington Monthly, that
"the weights used to combine various measures into an overall
rating lack any defensible empirical or theoretical basis." Further,
U.S. News focuses almost exclusively on input measures —
including institutional wealth, faculty salaries and acceptance
rates — and almost entirely ignores the key question in evaluating
a college: how well it teaches its students.
Leaders in higher education must continue to speak out against
a ranking system that we know lacks credibility and validity.
Not only should we refuse to give lip service to this specious
and oversimplified labeling of our institutions, we should resist
labeling our students with numbers, too. There are insidious parallels
between the bogus ranking of colleges and universities by U.S.
News and the ranking of students by their SAT scores.
Last year, Mount Holyoke College made submission of the SAT score
optional for applicants because it fails to measure many skills
and talents — including intellectual curiosity, motivation
and leadership — that we value. Our decision was hailed by
many, but a few skeptics suggested that it must be an effort to
boost our average SAT score and thus our ranking among leading
colleges.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Indeed, we have de-emphasized
the SAT because we seek a truer assessment of a student's potential.
So, too, do college rankings deserve such de-emphasis, if not
outright contempt.
In short, the number is up for both the SAT and U.S. News' ranking
game.
|
|
|
