In the wake of U.S. News & World Report’s annual rankings of “America’s Best Colleges,” it’s become almost a ritual to read in newspaper op-ed pages a small voice of dissent: College rankings are bunk. They hurt education. There’s got to be a better way.
It’s that time of year again, except that this time around, the voice is louder. Long-established college associations and a nascent national organization are either building or planning five free, Web-based college-information platforms that may diminish the U.S. News lists’ influence among high school counselors, students, and parents.
The differ in how much and what kind of information they aim to provide, but they all have one thing in common: No rankings.
“Products can be ranked, but education can’t—it’s a process,” argued Lloyd Thacker, a former high school counselor and the executive director of the Portland, Ore.-based Education Conservancy. “The biggest problem with U.S. News’ rankings is that they are ranking—making fine-point distinctions that are not supported by any scientific research.”
That’s not to say that the sudden rush among college associations to gather information in a reader-friendly, online format stems only from officials’ dissatisfaction with the magazine’s ranking system. Most of the four other projects now under way were launched with U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings’ Commission on the Future of Higher Education in mind, if not in direct response to it.
The commission’s report, issued last year, recommended that more colleges disclose students’ test scores, graduation rates, and other information in a consumer-friendly form as a condition of accreditation.
“There has been concern in the higher education community that Congress would feel compelled to impose reporting standards,” said Tony Pals, a spokesman for the Washington-based National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, or NAICU, an organization of private higher education institutions. “Rather than let the government determine what those variables should be, what you’re seeing is associations working to provide that information.”
NAICU plans to launch Sept. 26 its University and College Accountability Network, an online platform with information on 500 of its 900-plus members—including Harvard, Princeton, and Yale universities, all longtime inhabitants of the upper reaches of U.S. News’ list.
A Crowded Field
Other Washington-based college associations launching like-minded efforts include the Association of American Universities, which represents 60 U.S. and two Canadian research universities, as well as a joint effort by the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, representing more than 430 public colleges and universities, and the 216-member National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges, which represents public research universities, land-grant institutions, and state-university systems.
The Annapolis Group, a network of 121 independent liberal-arts colleges whose presidents meet each year in Annapolis, Md., is also in the early stages of building a college-information Web site.
“We’re all taking slightly different approaches,” said Mr. Pals. While NAICU takes no position on ranking colleges as U.S. News does, he added, it chose not to rank colleges, because focus groups of high school students and their parents didn’t mention rankings among the data they most wanted to see.
“If we had been hearing from our focus groups that what they were looking for was already in U.S. News’ rankings, there would’ve been no purpose in doing this,” he said.
David E. Shulenburger, the vice president of academic affairs at the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges, said that the Voluntary System of Accountability, its joint project with the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, is not intended to steal thunder from NAICU, or from any of the other information Web sites now on the drawing board.
“I think at this point we’ve got a little intellectual competition as to what benefits students the most,” he said. And that, he added, is not a bad thing.
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