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college rankings exposed
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For example, when Yale fell from first place to third place a few years
ago, university officials predicted a 5 percent drop in applications. Col-
leges and universities in the middle and bottom of the rankings suffer an
even worse fate--a perennial public relations battle to rise above their
apparent mediocrity and attract enough applicants to fill classroom seats.
Elite institutions existed long before U.S. News started its rankings,
of course. But rankings do more than clarify the educational pecking
order. Instead, they have fundamentally changed how students, par-
ents--even educators--think about higher education. Mesmerized by
numbers, there is little interest in the richness and diversity of American
higher education than with the relative reputation of each institution.
Now there is a simple sorting of the "best" colleges from (by implica-
tion) the average and the bad.
What does this mean for students? Rankings send a clear message
that it is no longer enough just to go to college. Rather, it is increas-
ingly important to go to a "good" school--a top-ranked school--where
students will, it is assumed,
graduate with the advantages
that come with a brand-name
diploma. For the most ambi-
tious students, especially, there
is tremendous pressure to get
into the handful of schools
that vie for the number one slot. The competition to get into Harvard,
Yale, and Princeton, for example, is so great that these elite institutions
now reject between 85 and 90 percent of applications. In fact, Harvard
turns away more high school valedictorians than it accepts.
College and university educators struggle to deal with this new force.
Most feel compelled to provide the data requested by U.S. News and other
ranking guides. Top scoring schools, meanwhile, cannot resist boasting about
their success to prospective students and alumni. But behind the scenes,
"I am extremely skeptical that
the quality of a university--any
more than the quality of a
magazine--can be measured
statistically."
