Wednesday, November 13, 1996
EDUCATION:
Institutions make changes based on listings, critics sayBy
Tiffany Lauter
Daily Bruin Contributor
Every September, U.S. News and World Report hits the racks with
its special issue ranking America’s Best Colleges.
The ranking, based on a survey sent to some 4,200 college
presidents, deans and admission directors, is organized around
certain criteria, including faculty, financial resources, average
SAT and ACT scores, academic reputation and support from alumni.
And despite the popularity of the magazine’s issue, some people
feel the rankings are not indicative of the quality of education
that most of the colleges really offer.
"A college education cannot and should not be quantified like a
household applicant," said Nick Thompson, co-founder of Forget U.S.
News Coalition, a nationwide organization of students opposing the
U.S. News system of college grading.
"Rankings are arbitrary, bordering on irresponsible, subjective
and often misleading, but are taken as dogma by many prospective
college applicants, employers and parents," Thompson added.
Thompson, a Stanford student, noticed for the past two years
that substantial changes were taking place at Stanford, possibly
influenced by the U.S. News rankings. He fears that these changes
were not necessarily made in the best interest of the students.
The most prominent of the changes, Thompson said, was a new
program called the Stanford Fund. The program pays college students
$25 an hour to solicit donations from alumni. This new fund is not
so much to raise more money, he said, since Stanford raises more
money than most colleges, but to increase the percentage of alumni
who donate money, since this is one of the criteria the colleges
are classified upon.
Students who work for the fund are told that Stanford ranks 26th
in the alumni donation category and by raising the percentage of
alumni who give, that the college would be able to return to No. 1
overall.
In a letter addressed to Thompson, which has been reprinted on
the Internet, Mel Elfin, the guide’s executive editor and developer
of the ranking system, addressed the issues presented by FUNC. He
believes that parents and students should have available
information to help them make an informed decision when selecting a
college, especially since an education is such a large
investment.
Elfin stated, as a disclaimer, that the first paragraph of the
introduction to this year’s rankings reads "the editors of U.S.
News strongly considers rankings as only one of the many criteria
students should consider in choosing a college."
Elfin says he has never heard of anyone selecting a college
strictly from U.S. News rankings, that it is a collective decision
based on what is important to the student, impression received on
campus visits and advice received from others, among other things.
The yearly rankings are simply a tool for prospective students to
use in order examine the comparative merits of the universities
they are considering, he said.
But members of FUNC are not convinced that the magazine’s
purpose is simply to aid the decision process of students and their
parents.
"We (FUNC) realize that they make money, it’s their No.
1-selling edition, and that’s why they do it," said Charles Klein,
FUNC member and student at Rice University.
"We would like to see them provide the same information, just in
an alphabetized list," Klein said.
Debbie Davis, president of the University of California
Students’ Association, a state lobby interest group to which each
UC student government interacts with, agreed.
"We would either like for U.S. News to eliminate the rankings or
more accurately portray the specifics of each university," Davis
said.
In addition, Elfin claims that The Stanford Fund is not a
revolutionary concept, and that many colleges pay students to
solicit contributions from alumni.
"I am certain, the fund-raising objectives at Stanford, the
primary goal is to increase resources available for education, not
to influence institutional standings in the survey," Elfin
said.
To date, student governments at Smith, Berkeley, Michigan,
Pittsburgh, Rice, Stanford, Pennsylvania and Albion have passed
resolutions condemning the rankings.
UCLA’s ranking dropped several notches to 31st in this year’s
report.