Currents

New Priorities for College Rankings Proposed

Volume 7 / Issue 3 / Spring 2007

Several movements are underway to re-evaluate the way colleges and universities are ranked. For many years, the standard has been the U.S. News & World Report annual “America’s Best Colleges” report. However,  this ranking is often criticized for relying too much on such factors as acceptance yields, reputation among peer institutions, and alumni-donation rates. Critics maintain these factors do not have much bearing on the quality of education students receive.

Education Sector, a nonprofit think tank, has proposed a new ranking system that they claim creates better matches between students and colleges; engenders diversity on campuses; keeps rising tuition costs at bay; and brings needed attention to two-year colleges. New data sources that are now available make this method for looking at colleges and universities possible, but whether it will be embraced is yet to be seen.

The new rankings evaluate institutions on the following criteria

• Teaching—assessed  using the National Survey of Student Engagement (20%  of ranking)
• Learning—assessed using the Collegiate Learning Assessment (30% of ranking)
• Retention and Graduation—assessed by ranking the school’s actual retention and graduation rates with their statistically predicted graduation rates (20% of ranking)
• Success in Life after College—assessed by graduates pursuit and success of further education; job placement; earnings compared to typical salaries in one’s field; and alumni surveys such as the Collegiate Results Survey (30% of ranking)

The Education Sector’s report “College Rankings Reformed: The Case for a New Order in Higher Education” can be accessed online.

The Commission on the Future of Higher Education’s report " Accountability/Consumer Information," proposes creating a user-friendly online search engine that uses data already compiled by the U.S. Department of Education. This no cost system wouldn’t rank colleges but would allow individuals to create their own lists of schools based on their choice of criteria and weights assigned to each variable. Additionally, various pre-defined ranking systems would be designed with clear criteria that users also could access.

In fact, the National Center for Education Statistics, which would house the new college information center, already maintains the College Opportunities On Line web site. However, its data source the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System only tracks basic components of schools (size, location, majors, tuition). To include more sophisticated data about students’ family income, real college costs, or more informative information about graduation rates (transfer and part-time students or those who return from dropping out), information from additional government or other sources would need to be linked. The ideal college classification system “would allow for the creation of many types of rankings of institutions and programs for a wide variety of needs,” and would “increase the flow of information to consumers and increase their ability to choose wisely and to hold postsecondary institutions accountable for their performance.

Perhaps no ranking system will ever perfect, but they seem destined to remain popular because they provide families with a quick and quantitative way to differentiate between colleges.
—Bobbie Collins-Perry