College Rankings Perpetuate Risky Notions
Monday, August 27th, 2007
I suspect it shouldn’t surprise anyone that college rankings remain on the radar screen. Over the last week, I spoke with nearly 20 journalists about some element of the ranking process and its impact on families. The truth is that the more air time we give rankings, the more they seem to be validated.
Frankly, it’s not surprising that college rankings should be such hot sellers given the way so many families clamor for the “best” colleges. A growing number of folks, myself included, are concerned that this clamor is leading to behaviors that are counter-productive and unhealthy among colleges and consumers alike. Some are even lobbying for the unlikely commitment of educational leaders to withdraw from their involvement in the ranking process. I say unlikely because educational leaders and their institutions simply have too much at stake to pull out–a perspective I will explore further in the September 19 “Straight Talk About College Admission.”
In the meantime, the following is a letter to the editor that I submitted to a number of dailies last week. I would be interested in your reactions.
College Rankings Perpetuate Risky Notions
By Peter Van Buskirk
Another round of college rankings has hit the newsstands amidst growing concerns that they lie at the core of the frenzy that swirls around the college-going process. Has anything changed? Is this issue a better “mousetrap” than those that preceded it? Has the frenzy lessened? The answer is a resounding “no” to all of the above.
While much of the consternation and posturing about the rankings comes from campus leaders, it turns out that few are reticent when it comes to heralding the rankings as validation of their respective places among higher education’s best–whatever that means! Perhaps just as troubling is the media’s penchant for celebrating the results of “top-ranked” institutions at the expense of more thorough journalistic assessments of the ranking process and its troubling impact on students, families and our society.
It’s time to call this scam on the college-going public for what it is. In doing so, it is difficult to fault US News & World Report. Frankly, attempting to quantify the mythical pecking order of colleges for a consumer society begging for labels is a smart business move. “It’s the “sex that sells.” The problem is that colleges can’t seem to help themselves from feeding the results into their public relations machines and, curiously enough, the media find the phenomena newsworthy! It makes you wonder who is being served!
If there is an injustice perpetrated by rankings of any sort, it is perpetuation of the very risky notion that one place is quantifiably better than another. I say risky because many families believe, or want to believe, in the pecking order and they’ll do whatever it takes to get their young prodigies into the “best” colleges possible. As a result, we are seeing the emergence of a generation of young people programmed for college at the expense of lives well lived.
The irony is that success in any college search must begin with and remain centered on the student. And this is where the ranking phenomenon fails young people as they try to make substantive distinctions between colleges. Rather than creating a dynamic that supports a student-centered process, it reinforces an obsession with the destination. While purporting to reveal the “best colleges,” rankings fail to recognize what is best for the individual student.
