Part two in a four-part series
Just as Penn students are graded on multiple exams, papers and participation, universities are also judged on a variety of factors.
U.S. News & World Report puts out an annual ranking of the nation's universities and colleges in an effort to guide prospective students and their parents through the process of choosing which schools to consider.
In turn, those rankings can be used by current students, employers, alumni, the international academic community and - perhaps most importantly - prospective students themselves to assess just how good universities, including Penn, are comparatively.
The criteria used by U.S. News & World Report are as follows: peer assessment, faculty resources, graduation rates, retention, selectivity, financial resources and alumni giving.
And though the magazine says all of its criteria are valid, educational experts have criticisms for each one.
PEER ASSESSMENT
The peer assessment portion, accounting for 25 percent, is the most heavily weighted component of the ranking.
Each year, presidents, provosts and deans of admissions are given a list of peer universities and asked to rank the quality of the institutions on a scale of 1 (marginal) to 5 (distinguished), with an option for "don't know" if they are unfamiliar with the institution.
This summer, the Annapolis Group, a consortium of 125 liberal-arts colleges, heavily criticized the peer assessment reviews and decided to refuse to fill out the surveys.
"It's very hard - almost unreasonable - to expect leaders around the college to know the weaknesses and strengths of hundreds of colleges," said Tom Blum, a spokesman for Sarah Lawrence College, a member of the Annapolis Group. "You'll end up with a subjective measure of reputation or quality."
And the peer assessment portion of the rankings may offer an avenue to manipulate the process.
"Many college presidents who are asked to fill that out feel their ability to assess institutions is very limited," said William Hamm, the president of the Foundation for Independent Higher Education.
"If you want to dump your competitors, that's the place to do it," he said.
All in all, many agree that the peer assessment rankings may not be the best way for an applicant to gauge an institution's quality.
Nadine Warner of AdmissionsConsultants, a college consulting firm noted that basing one's opinion of a college on someone else's "is doing yourself a disservice."
FACULTY RESOURCES
Faculty resources constitute 20 percent of the total weight, and it's measured in six components.
Class size is measured two ways: by the proportion of classes with less than 20 students, and the proportion of classes with more than 50 students.
Faculty salary, proportion of faculty with the highest degrees in their respective fields, student-faculty ratio and number of full-time faculty comprise the other four factors.
Critics are quick to point out that institutional wealth and availability of faculty do not reflect the quality of education.
"It's not wise for students to say, if this school pays faculty more than the other school, the school will give me a better education," Warner said. "I think it's so important to take the ranking with a grain of a salt."
Other experts feel the data is flawed. For example, if a professor teaches one undergraduate course, he is still considered in the student-faculty ratio - some say the proportion of classes taught by full-time professors would be a better measure.
Student selectivity
The student selectivity section of the rankings -- which includes SAT and ACT scores, the number of freshmen in the top 10 percent of their high-school classes and the university's acceptance rate - is part of the reason some universities have opted out of the rankings in recent years.
Selectivity counts for 15 percent of the school's total ranking.
Two years ago, Sarah Lawrence College, a liberal-arts university in New York, stopped using SAT or ACT scores as part of their admissions process.
U.S. News told the college they would use an SAT score one standard deviation below the average for liberal arts colleges in order to determine the school's selectivity ranking.
"The results would have probably pushed us significantly down the rankings," Blum said.
Instead, the college decided over the summer to stop being a part of the ranking all together.
For 2007, Sarah Lawrence ranked 45th among national liberal-arts colleges; in the current issue, it is listed in the "unranked" section.
The selectivity rank may also cause universities to take certain measures to increase their rank, Hamm said.
For example, a university may encourage a student to apply even though they stand no chance of gaining admittance to the school, Hamm said. By increasing the applicant pool, a school automatically becomes more selective.
"What concerns me more than anything else about U.S. News & World Report and other surveys is the extent to which they encourage institutions to do things they wouldn't otherwise do to improve their rankings," Hamm said.
Additionally, the selectivity rank reinforces the notion that the "the more selective school will give me a better education," Warner said.
FINANCIAL RESOURCES
The financial-resources portion of the rankings takes into consideration how much money a university spends on each student for instruction, research, student services and related educational expenditures.
Experts say that while this may be a valid measure of how many services a university can offer, it says nothing of the value of those services.
Financial resources "probably does relate to the capability of the institution to offer excellent programs, but again, it overlooks the whole question of character," Hamm said. "There are some really, really wonderful institutions out there who simply do not have a lot of money, . but some of these places just ooze character."
And only looking at financial resources for a given year completely overlooks the money a school may have put into the university in the past, Marthers said.
An art school may have a billion-dollar art collection, for example, but that is not considered a financial resource for ranking purposes, he said.
"U.S. News puts too much emphasis on how much money you put in the bank," said Paul Marthers, dean of admissions of Reed College, another member of the Annapolis Group.
GRADUATION RATES
Graduation rate performance accounts for only five percent of the total score.
U.S. News predicts the graduation rate for the class that entered in 2000. If the actual graduation rate exceeds the predicted one, the college has "overperformed."
The relatively large amount of weight placed on other factors compared to this one leads some experts to question how exactly U.S. News determines the proportions.
"There's no real social science behind how these rankings are determined," Blum said. "From a statistical point, it's not grounded at all in true methodology. They're making assumptions all the way through."
ALUMNI GIVING
Though alumni giving counts for only five percent of a school's overall ranking in U.S. News & World Report, it may be one of the more concrete criteria, experts say.
The magazine uses the average number of living alumni who gave some donation to their university as a measure of overall student satisfaction with the school.
Alumni giving is a "useful criterion," Hamm said, though it is given minimal value in the rankings.
But others say that this criterion may also lead universities to manipulate the system.
"I know college presidents that send letters to alumni and say, 'Increase the value of your degree by increasing the dollar,'" donations, said Lloyd Thacker of the Education Conservancy.
ALUMNI GIVING
Though alumni giving counts for only five percent of a school's overall ranking in U.S. News & World Report, it may be one of the more concrete criteria, experts say.
The magazine uses the average number of living alumni who gave some donation to their university as a measure of overall student satisfaction with the school.
Alumni giving is a "useful criterion," Hamm said, though it is given minimal value in the rankings.
But others say that this criterion may also lead universities to manipulate the system.
"I know college presidents that send letters to alumni and say, 'Increase the value of your degree by increasing the dollar,'" donations, said Lloyd Thacker of the Education Conservancy.
Despite the criticism from experts in higher education on each of the criteria that are used by U.S. News & World Report for the rankings, the magazine stands by its system.
Editor Brian Kelly has said in video interviews for other media outlets that critics are "really off base," and that the magazine considers all of the criteria used for the ranking useful and valid.
Still, many believe alternatives are necessary.
To provide college applicants with a different set of information than is given in the U.S. News rankings, the Association of American Universities is currently compiling a database with information including graduation rates, time to degree and careers pursued after graduation.
"We do think that it is important that prospective students and their families be able to obtain useful information about colleges and universities," said AAU spokesman Barry Toiv.
And the criterions used for current ranking systems just aren't doing the job, he said.
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