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Rating the Rankings

Another school year begins, and with it the questions: How do I stack up? Where do I fit in? What does he or she think of me? And it’s not only the 3,183 new freshman faces asking. With the release of yet another onslaught of college rankings, ranging from the traditional U.S. News and World Report to the “irreverent” standings of Radar Magazine, concerns expressed by the Cornell community indicate that the University, itself, is asking similar questions.

A little self-reflection is never a bad thing, and inquiry is a founding principle of the quest for wisdom. Yet such annual college rankings, in their myriad forms, often inspire, along with inferiority complexes, self-doubt.

And such concerns are not unfounded.

Rating the rankings: U.S. News and World Report recently released its annual ranking of American universities and colleges.Cornell has assumed a number of traits, whether it be “wrapping itself in Ivy,” having “Ivy envy,” being “The Rodney Dangerfield of the Ivy League” or just “the farm school.” The title of “Easiest Ivy to Get Into, but Hardest to Get Out of” is all too hackneyed, and while Jon Stewart may have been kidding when he mouthed “safety school” after introducing an ILR professor, Radar Magazine recently gave Cornell the unprecedented, yet coveted title of “Runner Up” to the “Most Overrated” college (Harvard was the winner).

U.S. News and World Report’s annual list of “America’s Best Colleges” rather than providing unofficial titles, ranks colleges numerically. Cornell came in at 14, down from 12 last year, and a far cry from its Top Ten ranking (#10) in 2000, or its whopping number six in 1998, when it jumped to from fourteenth in 1997.

For Forbes’ rankings, Cornell didn’t even make the top 100, coming in at 121.

Concerns about a standings slump may not be unfounded, but such yearly fluctuations, and discrepancies between various lists, indicate that the methodology used to create them may be. Let’s exercise the intellect we have gained from this priceless (read: $36,504, according to U.S. News) educational experience and redirect our skepticism towards the statistics.

I Don’t Give a Damn About My Reputation

The administration has taken a tough stance on ranking, most notably through the voice of former provost Biddy Martin. Martin blatantly expressed her dislike of U.S. News’ annual rankings in March in the State of the University Address, calling it one of her least favorite subjects while discussing Cornell’s role in higher education.

“Rankings are based on wealth and manipulating data,” Martin said. “We can worry about our ranking or we can be who we are and take advantage of what makes Cornell unique.”

At the time of her talk, Cornell was ranked 12 by US News. Martin pointed out that of the top 15 schools, Cornell had the smallest per student endowment, raising the question of whether wealth influences ranks. She used Penn, whose steady rise relative to Cornell’s stagnation despite no measureable improvements in quality of education, as an example of the weak assessment.

In order to show the audience the triviality of the rankings, Biddy projected that Cornell would need an additional 35,000 alumni to donate, 44,000 high schoolers to apply and 250 faculty members for the business and law schools to be hired.

Doris Davis, associate provost for admissions and enrollment, also expressed that institutional wealth per student is a main factor in rank. She referred to the titles of runner-up to most overrated and 121st collegeas “unfounded” and such rankings as inaccurate. Davis also assured there have been no policy or procedural adjustments as a result of the rankings releases.

On her personal perception of the rankings, Davis stated, “The rankings are a marketing tool that has earned US News & World Report a large sales base. It is their single most profitable edition each year. An investment in a college/university education should not be based entirely or primarily on a ranking.”

Selling Out

Radar Magazine’s argument that the only institution that benefits from the rankings is U.S. News itself holds true when looking at the profit and publicity the issue generates.

U.S. News and World Report’s annual list of “America’s Best Colleges” is the better known of the ever-growing number of annual college rankings. As the third ranking newsmagazine in the country (behind Time and Newsweek) USNWR has a circulation of over 2 million. It has been conducting college rankings since 1983, and has collected data from over 1,400 colleges for America’s Best Colleges 2009, according to its website. For the best colleges issue, U.S. News’ sales more than double.

One of the criticisms posed to such surveys, Davis said, is that they market colleges as brands rather than institutions of higher education.

Yet, Cornell has taken advantage of marketing opportunities that rankings have posed.

Just last year, Newsweek rated Cornell the “Hottest Ivy,” citing everything from its problem solving and scholarly debate to Renaissance-man President Skorton as a cardiologist, jazz musician, computer scientist and first-generation college student.

While it remains unclear what definition of “hottest” this description fits — Cornell has also been voted by College Prowler to have the most unattractive females of all the Ivys — Cornell expressed appreciation for the positive attention by “We’re the Hottest” pins to students.

The usefulness of the Newsweek’s “hot” list lies not in this catchy motto but in the accompanying disclaimer:

“Like shoes, cars, Web sites and stars tracked by paparazzi, good colleges go in and out of fashion. Whether they’re mentioned more often, or less often, in any given year has little to do with their inherent qualities,” its website stated. “Our new list of the nation’s hottest colleges should be seen in this light as subjective and temporary — but in a good way.”

The Numbers Game

A different set of numbers indicate that “subjective” and “temporary” are how the rankings should be assessed.

In 1999, Cornell ILR Professor and Director of Cornell’s Higher Education Institute Ronald G. Ehrenberg, also a trustee, conducted a study that found rankings are correlated with the quality of applicants, acceptance rate and success of a university, a self-perpetuating relationship that keeps the same schools high on the charts.

People pay attention to the rankings, but they mean very little regarding to the quality of an institution.

“At the margin the rankings influence the application and acceptance of offer decisions of some students so in that sense they are important,” said Ehrenberg.

He cited the unique needs of every student, using his son, a trumpet player who found opportunities to play at Cornell that he would not have had at Yale, as an anecdotal example of how mechanical formulas cannot provide accurate rankings for all students. He addresses this formula in his book Tuition Rising.

He added, “But from surveys that the University has done of admitted students we know that the major things that matter are potential students’ perceptions of the quality of the academic experience they will have here and the opportunities that Cornell will help provide for them for graduate and professional education and for employment after they graduate.”

In answer to discrepancies and fluctuations in ranking he concluded, “The rankings formula may change over time … the underlying quality of the university does not.”

“Cornell’s ranking has fluctuated from 12 to 14 since 2004, and during this time applications to Cornell have increased by 56 percent,” said Davis. “We should not look at the ranking in a single year as indicative of anything; in fact, we should not look at the overall rankings at particularly indicative.”

In an article posted on usnews.com in August titled “How We Make Sure the Rankings are Right” Robert Morse, director of data research for U.S. News, indicated a five-step process. The first step describes the use of “ranking data questions” contained in the “statistical questionnaires” sent to colleges. In other words, much of their data is best on surveys.

Additionally, the site states, “The U.S. News rankings system rests on two pillars. It relies on quantitative measures that education experts have proposed as reliable indicators of academic quality, and it’s based on our nonpartisan view of what matters in education.”

Herein lies the accusation that such rankings manipulate formulas and data to achieve the results they want.

Under the Radar

Evan Mulvihill ’09, worked at Radar this summer and witnessed first-hand the process involved in the rankings formulation.

As stated by Radar, the annual college survey (the first was August 2007) is, “an exhaustive, semi scientific guide to the most substandard schools in America, incorporating statistics on academics, graduation rates, and student life from a diverse array of sources, including the Princeton Review, U.S. News and World Report, and the U.S. Department of Education.”

The explanation concludes, “Finally, we tallied up the numbers — and found them a little dry. So we made up some categories of our own.”

“For Radar, we were obviously putting a humorous, irreverent bent on the current state of college rankings; that’s not to say that a whole lot of research didn’t go into it,” said Mulvihill.

“A lot is lost in the ranking process, and at some point someone is making a subjective decision about what criteria to weigh more heavily and what criteria to push to the wayside. If your judgment process isn’t in line with that process, then you’re going to end up with a bad fit. So make your own ranking system,” he said.

To contrast with this more positive student perspective, Ehrenberg expressed resignation at an inevitably continuing debate.

“I talk about [the rankings], I write about them,” he said. “I wish they did not exist, but they will always be there.”

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