What's in a number?
Too much, apparently, for the presidents of some of the country's best liberal arts colleges.
These presidents met as part of the Annapolis Group in Annapolis, Md., on June 19 to discuss dropping their respective colleges' names from the list of rankings in U.S. News and World Report's annual list of best colleges.
The report, well-known to high school students and their parents all over the country, ranks the nation's top national universities, liberal arts colleges and regional colleges within their respective categories.
While the publication defends its rankings -- which cover universities, liberal arts colleges and regional colleges - as a valuable source of information for parents and students, many in the Annapolis Group feel that the rankings actually detract from a student's ability to make a truly informed decision about a college's strengths and weaknesses.
"The rankings have been fairly irrelevant to us," said Judith Shapiro, president of Barnard College, in a June 22 interview with KUOW, a Seattle public radio station.
Barnard, which is currently ranked 26th on the list of liberal arts colleges, chose to drop the rankings because "they do not reflect the position of Barnard among its peer institutions," she said.
Meanwhile Andrew Binns, Penn's associate provost, recognized that dissatisfaction with the rankings among colleges is wide-ranging.
There is "great consternation [over the rankings] because these are such a publicized affair," he said. "The real question is whether or not [U.S. News and World Report] are doing it in a responsible way."
Binns isn't the only one questioning the accuracy of the rankings.
In a piece published by The Washington Post in March, Michele Tolela Myers, president of Sarah Lawrence College, accused the magazine of being unreliable.
After Sarah Lawrence dropped SAT requirements two years ago, it stopped sending SAT information to U.S. News and World Report. As Myers claims, this has resulted in the magazine producing numbers that "are made up."
In response, Myers has opted to drop Sarah Lawrence from the rankings altogether for the coming year.
Regardless of many of the decisions in Annapolis, not every president at the meeting committed to drop his or her respective college from the rankings. Anthony Marx, president of Amherst College, will still cooperate with the publication. Amherst is currently ranked second among the nation's top liberal arts colleges.
Penn, not represented at the meeting in Annapolis, will also continue to partake in the ranking system, despite reservations.
Binns believes the Annapolis group have a legitimate set of concerns, but he is open to the rankings as a valuable collection of information for parents and students. "These types of evaluations are one important tool in evaluating education across the board," said Binns.
However, he did say he views the college ranking system as "flawed," but that wasn't a reason in his mind to drop Penn from the rankings.
"We think it's a flawed activity," Binns said. "But we think we should we should work with them to make it better."
Binns would like to see the magazine rank schools in a different fashion, such as by placing schools in groups and not ranking within those groups.
For example, U.S. News might list the top 25 colleges in one group, but not make a comparison between those schools."
How does U.S. News "really know that Penn ranked higher or lower than Princeton or Yale?" he asked.
And just as Shapiro noted, Binns expressed that it would be foolish for a student to choose a college based solely on its rank. Rather, Binns students should choose colleges bason on how well they suit their particular interests.
"The real goal is get the best students, get the best faculty and put them together in the most productive ways in top of the line facilities or buildings," he argued, rather than being concerned with "how high we might jump" in the rankings.
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