Can Dish It Out But Can’t Take It
The presidents of dozens of liberal arts colleges have decided to stop participating in the annual college rankings by U.S. News and World Report.
From the NY Times. I commented earlier on the contradiction between how college presidents think students should be judged — they believe it is fine to judge all students according to one standard that usually has little to do with their strengths and goals — and how they wish to be their colleges to be judged.
“Frankly, it had bubbled up to the point of, why should we do this work for them?” said Judith P. Shapiro, the president of Barnard College.
Yes, exactly: Why help prospective students? Lest there be any doubt for whom colleges exist.
June 22nd, 2007 at 5:34 am
Seth,
I’m sure I’m biased because Barnard is an affiliate of Columbia (where I work), but I don’t think you’re being fair. When referring to “them,” Shapiro was talking about U.S. News, not prospective students.
Speaking to your larger point, I agree that just about all organizations (including universities, businesses, governments, and, for that matter, magazines such as U.S. News) work for their own interest as well as the groups that they serve. With that in mind, and following the Backseat Driver principle, I suspect that it would be useful for college presidents to listen to your advice.
June 22nd, 2007 at 6:24 am
Yes, by “them” Shapiro meant the magazine. But the magazine was helping prospective students.
Mayor Bloomberg give a talk at Google in which he referred to the bureaucracy of the New York City public school system as serving itself, not students. As you say, other organizations act the same way. I suspect organizations we have to deal with — such as governments and schools — are worse in this regard.
June 22nd, 2007 at 6:50 am
Barnard is a private school so I imagine it’s more responsive than governments and public schools.
Regarding your first point, maybe U.S. News is helping prospective students, maybe not. Presumably the people buying the magazine think it helps them, but then again the people paying to go to Barnard presumably thinks Barnard helps them. Just as you’re skeptical about Barnard providing what it claims (and what people pay for), maybe you should apply similar skepticism to U.S. News rankings, which have come under a lot of criticism in recent years.
June 22nd, 2007 at 7:19 am
The problems with how college students are taught relate to my ideas about human evolution; that is one reason I discuss them. My evolutionary ideas suggest why things have gone wrong and how to fix them. The other reason is that I am familiar with colleges — at least, compared to magazines. As I once blogged, I think it is better to offer advice about stuff you are familiar with.
No one is forced to buy U.S. News and World Report. But students are pretty much forced to go to college to get jobs above a certain level of prestige.
June 23rd, 2007 at 9:48 am
Interesting discussion -
My read of this is that schools are not saying they don’t want to be graded; they are saying they don’t want to be graded by US News & World Report. One, because no one thinks they have expertise in such evaluation. Two, because unlike student grades that are based on real assessment of course work related to a published syllabus, these college rankings are based on poorly executed surveys of self-interested parties and “objective” measures (like size of research budget) which have not been proven to be associated with quality of education.
What is wrong-headed about the school’s response is that they want to replace the US News ranking with a self-reported ranking. Instead, they should find a third party, preferably a non-profit research organization that has expertise in statistical methods, to execute an open ranking, with rules agreed upon by all schools.
October 25th, 2007 at 8:29 pm
Yes, that’s a good idea.