THE PENDULUM

The legitimacy of the U.S. News & World Report's annual college rankings has recently been questioned by a leading online source for higher education information.

According to an Inside Higher Ed review of methods used by U.S. News to collect ranking data, the survey is subject to problems stemming from apathetic respondents to dishonest ratings of neighboring universities. Such doubts about the credibility of the U.S. News rankings have the potential of being very disquieting for universities and colleges honored at the top of such lists.
Such debate about the validity of college ratings is not new, said Director of University Relations Dan Anderson, which is why rankings should never be used as the sole source to judge an institution.

"College rankings have been controversial ever since the first one came out in the '80s, and they should be used by parents and students as broad brush outlines," he said. "We don't believe the families use college rankings to make their college decisions, but determine what kind of groups of schools they should consider when looking at college."

The U.S. News report quality was recently called into question after a Clemson official revealed that her bosses consistently gave low scores to other universities on the peer assessment portion of the survey to increase their own rankings.

Anderson said he does not believe this type of gaming strategy used to skew rankings is often employed by college administrators and the Clemson case is an unfortunate exception rather than the rule.

"Most college administrators fill out the survey with integrity," he said.

Anderson said the problem many face is the lists of hundreds of schools they are asked to assess. He said in that case, administrators can check "I don't know."

The U.S. News survey employs several differently weighted assessment criteria by which overall rankings are determined. The peer assessment portion relies on the ratings of high-ranking college officials around the country to rate the academic quality of hundreds of undergraduate programs at other institutions and is worth 25 percent of the university's ranking.

Major inconsistencies found in Inside Higher Ed's report included school senior officials who gave the highest ranking of "distinguished" only to themselves and others who ranked institutions like Harvard, Yale and other Ivy Leagues as "adequate" while giving their own university top marks. Those who provided such questionable answers, such as the survey submitted by officials at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, claimed they were only trying to respond as neutrally as possible to poorly-worded questions.

Elon was named the top "School to Watch" in the 2009 U.S. News & World Report "America's Best Colleges" guide and was ranked No. 2 among 118 Southern master's-level universities in the same issue. A billboard touting the information can be seen on I-85 North.

Anderson said honors such as the top "School to Watch" are not meant to be scientific since they are a measure of what top administrators across the country think of other institutions.

"I think the fact that those people across the country would mention Elon more frequently than any other school is a recognition of Elon's excellence in these areas," Anderson said.

Organizations that have criticized the survey in the past, such as Education Conservancy, claim the peer assessment survey puts too much importance on rankings subject to bias and inaccuracy due to respondents' lack of knowledge or personal school affiliations.

"It would be hard-pressed for any college president on a public stage to say they know more about more than 10 colleges. It's not their job," Lloyd Thacker, founder of the Education Conservancy, told Inside Higher Ed. "The rankings in and of themselves do a great disservice to education."

Anderson said administrators are under no illusions that rankings are the ultimate authority on a college's value to prospective students.

The rankings guide is meant to assist families wanting to narrow their college search, he said, but the final decision to apply is based on innumerable factors such as a school's majors, size and extracurricular programs.

"College rankings are a tool for families, not an accurate measurement of academic or institutional qualities," he said. "College choice is based on many factors much more personal to you."