Duke: 8, UNC: 27.
These were the final placements of the institutions in U.S. News and World Report's annual rankings of America's best colleges in 2007.
Although the magazine's college ranking is very popular among prospective students, many institutions have recently expressed their dissatisfaction with the publication's assessment.
As of July, 61 college and university presidents have signed the "Beyond Ranking" letter, a commitment to not participate in U.S. News' peer assessment and a refusal to use the rankings as an indication of the quaality of the institution. And although Duke has not joined the group, the University's senior admissions official said he sees the rankings as very flawed.
The peer assessment makes up 25 percent of the ranking, the largest single factor. Other criteria include retention (20 percent), faculty resources (20 percent), student selectivity (15 percent), financial resources (10 percent), graduation rate performance (5 percent) and alumni giving rate (5 percent).
"This is a test of the academy's character and ability of college presidents to demonstrate leadership beyond institutional self-interest," said Lloyd Thacker, founder of Education Conservancy, a non-profit organization committed to improving education relevance of college admission.
The letter was drafted in March with the help of Education Conservancy and 12 original signers.
"We believe these rankings are misleading and do not serve well the interest of prospective students in finding a college or university that is well suited to their education beyond high school," the letter reads.
Thacker said he was pleased with the number of signers, adding, however, that he hopes to see the participation from the top-ranked institutions in the country.
"No college president will say that the influence of the rankings is in line with their educational value," he said. "If we're in the business of training kids to align their values with their actions, why should we expect less of ourselves? Saying no to rankings is the right thing to do."
I'll be right behind you
"I think many colleges would be hesitant to be the first of their peer group to do that because if you don't participate you have absolutely no control over the information in there," said Christoph Guttentag, Duke's dean of admissions. "The problem with being highly ranked is that nobody wants to jeopardize that position."
Duke, he added, is not considering signing the letter or discontinuing its participation in the peer assessment survey, Guttentag said.
"The U.S. News rankings have been positive in that they provided a lot of information to a lot of student," he said. "The rankings, however, also contribute to a sense that student should go to the 'best' college rather than the best match, and I think that's unfortunate."
As a 25-year veteran of admissions, Guttentag said he does not like rankings of colleges for two reasons: They are overly reductive, and colleges do not have a say in how they are being evaluated.
"They appear to make distinctions that don't actually exist," he said. "There's an implication there that being ranked ninth is different from being ranked third; I don't think that's true."
He also noted that different factors have more weight in different people's decision.
"The notion [is] that U.S. News is making this decision for all of us, [that] none of us, college people and students and parents, have control over the criteria they use, the weighting they give to each criteria," Guttentag said.
He said he believes the move among higher education institutions to discontinue submitting the peer assessment survey is a healthy one.
"I'm hoping more schools will join," he said. "What we're seeing is institutions responding to this false objectification of quality, [and] there is an increasing number of institutions trying to figure out how to counter that."
You can't please everyone
The rankings published by U.S. News are designed to be used as one of the tools for families and students faced with college admission decisions, Cynthia Powell, the publication's public relations director, wrote in an e-mail.
"By their very essence, any rankings are bound to please some and upset others," Powell said. "The rankings are not published for college presidents."
She noted that the publication strives to make ranking tables as inclusive as possible-bringing together information on more than 1,400 institutions-because of the rankings' focus on "consumer journalism."
"As a result of its breadth, the guide has helped enhance the reputation and visibility of numerous colleges and universities that had not previously received significant recognition beyond their immediate geographic area," she said.
This is not the first time the publication has seen resistance from institutions, Powell said and added that it does not intend to change its current assessment criteria.
'They will make up a number'
In March, Sarah Lawrence College President Michele Myers wrote in an op-ed in The Washington Post that because the institution decided not to accept SAT scores from its prospective students, Robert Morse, director of data research at U.S. News, notified her that they will assume the average SAT score is one standard deviation below the average of the institution's peers.
"In other words, in the absence of real data, they will make up a number," she said.
Powell noted that information not provided directly from institutions is footnoted on the rankings chart.
Sarah Lawrence has since decided not to participate in the peer assessment portion of the rankings.
"Depending on someone else to rank schools without examining them for and in relation to yourself seems antithetical to what an educated person might do," Stephen Schierloh, Sarah Lawrence's acting dean of admissions, wrote in an e-mail. "Students are horrified to think that colleges might reduce someone's life and potential to a score-it seems equally ridiculous to distill an entire college or university, with all of its offerings, character and dimension, to a single number!"
Morse and Samuel Flanigan, deputy director of data research for the magazine, said there are other factors that are important to college applicants that are not included in the assessment in an article titled "How We Do Rankings."
"While we acknowledge that the ranking tables are an incomplete indicator of the quality of education and the degree of student learning on campuses, we also recognize that no better measure exists today," Powell said.
A different way
There is, however, an alternative approach.
Guttentag said he believes U.S. News and World Report can better serve its readers by providing the same information but putting it in a database that buyers can access.
"Let everybody decide for themselves which of the information they care about and how they weigh those pieces of information," he said. "So everybody can do their own ranking."
University and College Accountability Network, a consumer-information initiative of the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities and the Council of Independent Colleges, will provide information on individual colleges and universities in a common format online starting in September 2007.
"Through focus groups, students and parents told us the information they most need to make an informed college choice," the U-CAN website reads. "Their comments shaped the format and content of the consumer information template."
Do the rankings hurt Duke?
Guttentag said he has not noticed any correlation between Duke's placement in U.S. News' college rankings and the admission statistics the following year.
"I think that students pay attention to big groups, top 15, but not a whole lot about where someone is ranked," he said.
Guttentag added that students pay more attention to the academic programs that are available at the institutions among other factors.
"I would say to the degree students are worried about getting into the best college they can, they've exacerbated the competitiveness of students," he said.
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