At last week’s Board of Visitors meeting, the Academic and Student Life Committee discussed the significance of the University’s rankings in publications like the U.S. News & World Report, where the University recently dropped one spot, now ranking the third best American public university instead of the second.
There are many reasons to be skeptical of college ranking systems, which at least in part involve quantitatively comparing qualitative data. Colin Diver, a former president of Reed College, has written about the school’s decision to decline participating in the U.S. News rankings process, noting that rankings promote homogeneity and strictly prestigious or monetary goals, and that schools can easily manipulate the data they give when self-reporting information. And while many school administrators deplore these flaws in ranking systems, they still comply with them, because, as Diver quotes one of his colleagues saying, “The rankings are merely intolerable; unilateral disarmament is suicide.”
Essentially, schools are trapped in this system (though Reed, Diver argues, has thrived through its withdrawal from the U.S. News process). And at our University, which, in all likelihood, won’t withdraw itself from rankings any time soon, we have to navigate the desire to raise rankings and simultaneously not let them guide important decisions.
At last week’s meeting, Carl Zeithaml, dean of the McIntire School of Commerce, and Bob Pianta, dean of the Curry School of Education, expressed this same sentiment — that the incentive to raise rankings does not and should not dictate their schools’ educational missions. They spoke to the committee because the University’s rankings could impact their schools, which pull their undergraduate populations from within the University’s pool of students. The quality of the undergraduate population therefore determines the quality of these schools’ student bodies.
Unfortunately, last week’s meeting demonstrated another disconnect between the Board of Visitors’ mission and that of our educators. In the McIntire school, students who matriculate to nonprofit or governmental organizations may hurt rankings due to their lower salaries — something that concerned Bobbie Kilberg, a Board member and the co-chair of the committee, among other Board members. But starting salaries constitute merely one data point among many that can determine the success of a particular school and its graduates; as Zeithaml said, “Our job is to get students in the jobs that they’re really passionate about.”
In order to drive rankings up, the Board and those who report to it should focus less on student outcomes and more on the proper allocation of resources — whether those are monetary resources for research, faculty, new programs or technology. There are many factors that contribute to where a university may fall in the rankings, and we should not sacrifice student desires simply to better our standing.
Our University may have to “play the game” as much as any other university, but we can find ways to do so while still maintaining a commitment to students’ passions and interests instead of funneling them into higher paying jobs. Rankings are a reality of our higher education system, and they are not inherently bad; there are certainly ways to compare the quality and usefulness of a degree from different institutions. But rankings should not be the be-all, end-all, either. Thus far, the University appears to have navigated this slippery issue well. Board members should remember that our drop in the rankings is not necessarily reflective of the quality of our institution — at least by the measures we care about the most.
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