CSM: College presidents plan 'U.S. News' rankings boycott

[asteriskea]

<p>Article in The Cavalier Daily opines that U Va should seize the moment and sign the President’s Letter now:</p>

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…If President Casteen were to sign the President’s Letter, the University would be by far the most prominent signatory so far. The University would be naturally poised to become a leader in the rankings reform movement. It might lead to a drop in U.S. News’s reputation assessment, but becoming the first elite university to join such an important campaign could not but improve our real-world reputation.</p>

<p>The move would produce tangible benefits for the University as well. U.S. News tends to undervalue public universities: They will inevitably score lower in categories such as class size, faculty-student ratio, and acceptance rate (which combine to be 10.5 percent of the score) simply because they are required by the government to admit larger numbers of students than private universities. If a public university were to severely decrease the number of students admitted (and, of course, raise tuition to make up the deficit), its ranking would significantly rise. It takes a truly perverse system to count such steps as progress…

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<p><a href=“http://www.cavalierdaily.com/CVArticle.asp?ID=30629&pid=1607[/url]”>http://www.cavalierdaily.com/CVArticle.asp?ID=30629&pid=1607&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;