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

Parents Forum
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<p>Searching for the word “why” in the document, the study doesn’t address why matriculation decisions are made as they are, which is the crucial issue regarding reliance on one-size-fits-all rankings.</p>

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<p>higherlead:</p>

<p>If my assumption about geographic bias is correct, then all the study shows is that kids in the NE have preferences for schools in the NE, i.e., would pick HYP over Stanford most of the time. As Homer Simpson would say: Doh! (Geographical bias is becomes obviously important when one looks at the west region. For example, Cal is only preferred a few spots more than Middlebury, bu I can assure you that few, if any, Cal and UCLA Regent scholars – top few % of the app pool – have ever heard fo Midd.)</p>

<p>But, the RP work does supports another study about the users of USNews rankings – in essence the study claimed that less than 10% of college-bound students even consider the rankings in thier choice of college, but of those that did, the students were primarily located in the NE…</p>

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<p>Link to the new “President’s Letter”:</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.educationconservancy.org/presidents_letter.html[/url]”>http://www.educationconservancy.org/presidents_letter.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>A short piece in the Chronicle mentions two meetings (one of which is to be held at an educational organization this summer and the other at an unnamed Ivy League institution in the fall) at which higher-education officials, including college presidents, will explore the creation of an alternative ranking strategy to the U.S. News and other rankings. </p>

<p><a href=“http://chronicle.com/news/index.php?id=2255[/url]”>http://chronicle.com/news/index.php?id=2255&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>Well, now we have a prediction of the success of this effort out there to check. </p>

<p>Thanks for the link.</p>

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<p>“in essence the study claimed that less than 10% of college-bound students even consider the rankings in thier choice of college, but of those that did, the students were primarily located in the NE…”</p>

<p>Probably true but it matters greatly which 10% of the college bouns population it is. If it is the 10% with the financial means and the test score and GPA and other qualifications the elite schools are competing over then it makes the rankings very, very important.</p>

<p>The market for private university education is located mostly in the NE as are most of the elite private colleges and universities. As you move West and South the number of schools and potential clients decreases. Tulane one of the better schools in the South and 1500 mi removed from New York city still draws as many students from the NE as it does from the South. They come from the NE because that is still where the money is at and the state unis are mediocre.</p>

<p>A revealed preference poll that was weighted heavily with West ost reference would doubtless show Stanford beating most the Ivies heavily.</p>

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<p>asteriskea, thanks for the updates! Since many colleges already refuse to fill out the reputational survey, and it’s considered tacky among (most of) the very selective colleges to trumpet your place in the rankings anyway, this action was mostly symbolic. </p>

<p>It’s disappointing that those who have signed on so far are schools that are mostly regional institutions. Ironically, these colleges have more to lose: they’re not as well known, and it’s in the second and third tier where links to the rankings and guidebooks become more common on admissions web pages. Many top 20 universities and LACs could take this pledge without altering their policies at all.</p>

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<p>“What exactly are their competitive problems? Schools should compete for top students”</p>

<p>Their competitive problem is that they cannot distinguish their product offering in a crowded marketplace. Too many small more liberal than thou liberal arts colleges in podunk towns with exorbitant sticker prices.</p>

<p>The critics of USNWR rankings who say you could arrive at list by sorting schools based on endowment per FTE student probably have a point but if these college presidents are complaining that the rankings are unfair because of the peer assessment questionaire or an over-dependence on SAT scores then they must all be hitting the crack pipe too hard. USNWR is not their problem. Their problem is their failure to differentiate their product.</p>

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<p>True, but then lets retitle the study: ‘Revealed Preferences of Rich (predominatly white?) Prep School kids from the NE’ and call it a day! Of course, then the study is not likely publishable. :)</p>

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<p>Article from Yahoo news: </p>

<p><a href=“http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070506/ap_on_re_us/college_rankings_protest[/url]”>http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070506/ap_on_re_us/college_rankings_protest&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>“Battle Lines on ‘U.S. News’”</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/05/07/usnews[/url]”>http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/05/07/usnews&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>and, to see the trees and the forest, let’s not forget:</p>

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<p><a href=“News | U.S. Department of Education”>News | U.S. Department of Education;

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<p>and hopefully we will be able to tell where the forest and/or the trees are with this:</p>

<p>“ETS Report Gives Colleges and Universities a Guide to Nation’s Most Widely Used Standardized Learning Outcomes Assessments”</p>

<p>Princeton, N.J. (May 4, 2007) —</p>

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<p><a href=“http://www.ets.org/portal/site/ets/menuitem.c988ba0e5dd572bada20bc47c3921509/?vgnextoid=8ed2902bb6552110VgnVCM10000022f95190RCRD&vgnextchannel=dd2d253b164f4010VgnVCM10000022f95190RCRD[/url]”>http://www.ets.org/portal/site/ets/menuitem.c988ba0e5dd572bada20bc47c3921509/?vgnextoid=8ed2902bb6552110VgnVCM10000022f95190RCRD&vgnextchannel=dd2d253b164f4010VgnVCM10000022f95190RCRD&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>bluebayou, have you actually read the whole study? Take a closer look at where the sampled students come from (bearing in mind that different regions of the United States have different populations) and if you still think the study is badly regionally biased, write to the authors and suggest what they could do about that.</p>

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<p>asteriskea,</p>

<p>reading further in the link article:

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<p>With respect to “hamper[ing] informed decision making by … students and their families, and the future employers of college graduates,” wouldn’t it make sense for ETS to drop the eduspeak and use language that was more understandable? Starting at the top, what the heck is “A Culture of Evidence”? Why not just say, “How can we tell if colleges and universities getting the job done?” I’m not talking about dumbing the report down, but striving for clarity with respect to the report’s intended audience.</p>

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<p>token:</p>

<p>yes, I’ve read thoroughly the link you posted, and even read more detail about thier study when it was available online. However, I have no reason to write to the authors – they’re well-credentialed, bright people, and know their data inside and out. Methodologically, I believe the study accopmlishes what it purports to do, i.e., mathematically modeling preferences of college choices by kids who are accepted at highly selective colleges. It just so happens that a lot of the high schools and private schools that feed kids to these highly selective colleges are also in the NE (or midatlantic, e.g., Thomas Jefferson). It’s kinda like taking a detailed Presidential poll of primarily SE states and concluding that Edwards and undeclared Thompson are the two ‘preferred’ candidates.</p>

<p>re: population – Los Angeles county has 27 million residents, but yet only one private prep school with what I would call a ‘national’ reputation, and which feeds kids to NE schools. (Not to diss other great prep schools in SoCal, but its just my opinion.)</p>

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<p>“In order to find students who were appropriate candidates for the survey, we worked with counselors from 510 high schools around the United States.” </p>

<p>Of course the authors say, and I would like to see it done also, that they think it would be possible to gather data from a much broader population of students. But I think you are overestimating the degree to which the study oversampled students in the northeast United States, which is a very high population region of the country.</p>

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<p>Tokenadult, where would more students like to go to school, NYU or Williams?
UCLA or Williams? UCLA or Furman?</p>

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<p>Standrews: absolutely agree with you because clarity with respect to the intended audience will be key to the success of whatever new assessment model or models that emerge by 2008 - and that certainly does include an overhaul of the USNWR rankings. We all want to be “savvy consumers” and have ready access to reliable and clear information. Whether the way of the future is through the Collegiate Learning Assessment (which the Spellings commission lauded as a prime example of how colleges could and should measure and evaluate information about both entering freshmen and college graduates) or to link to data from the websites such as COOL. It has been said before that many lesser-known colleges believe they have more to gain with these types of evaluations and many plan to post results of the evaluative tests on their websites in order to provide easy access to this information for prospective students and parents. So, although the USNWR folks like to repeat that “none of this is really new” a lot of what is going on is new and it is worth considering that one of the significant outcomes of all of this might indeed be to make USNWR stronger and better.</p>

<p>The following is from page 2 of an article in Business Week “The College Rankings Revolt Heats Up”:</p>

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<p><a href=“Businessweek - Bloomberg”>Businessweek - Bloomberg;

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<p>Peter Sacks urges colleges not to settle with half-measures when it comes to the need to pay much more attention to issues of class, and to breaking down class barriers:</p>

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[quote]
…there’s little chance that the most elite universities would entertain moves to place less emphasis on prestige-oriented measures of academic quality by opting out of the U.S. News & World Report survey, or revamping admissions systems. Efforts of that nature would foster real and potentially radical change, particularly if institutions like Harvard were to lead the way. But I’m not holding my breath. Such institutions have so much invested in the status-quo, and whose institutional endowments are rewarded so greatly from that status quo, that they have very little incentive to change.</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/05/09/sacks[/url]”>http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/05/09/sacks&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>Peter Sacks should put up by showing which colleges are doing better than Harvard.</p>

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<p>Alexander C. McCormick, of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, has “a special interest in the question of who gets compared to whom” and USNWR’s highly questionable use of the Carnegie classifications to make those comparisons. Surprisingly, he says, this fundamental aspect of the rankings has gone, until now, relatively unquestioned:</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/03/12/usnews[/url]”>http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/03/12/usnews&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;