Last week, Cornellians everywhere received their friendly annual reminder from U.S. News & World Report that all but one of the Ivy League universities officially rank higher than our fair alma mater (and we all know Brown University hardly counts anyway). Cornell ranked twelfth overall this year, trailing its Ivy competitors Dartmouth and Columbia, which remained tied at ninth place again. The frequently controversial rankings brought mixed feelings to campus. Initial excitement over Cornell’s miniscule jump from thirteenth to twelfth place quickly gave way to feelings of despair as students realized that, yes, all the other Ivies can still brag about their higher numbers (well, except Brown).
As the “historical” columnist for The Sun, I rarely write about the more contentious topics of current events. I gladly leave the politics, Redbud trees, politics, sex tips and politics to the other far more qualified columnists. After all, The Sun has government majors debating government, Mexicans discoursing on Mexico, university presidents discussing presidential matters . . . and sophomores delivering college relationship advice. I, however, am not a history major. Instead, I study some strange combination of communication, applied economics & management and information science, leaving myself open to disparaging comments targeted at the much-maligned and oft-stereotyped Aggies, Comm. majors, AEM majors and engineers. Nevertheless, my real interests focus more on Cornell history, Cornell trivia and my impending unemployment precisely because of these interests. With that said, today’s column focuses on Cornell’s historical representation in collegiate rankings. Departing from my usual neutrality, there may even be an opinion or two, but, hey, this is the Opinion section, isn’t it?
U.S. News and World Report began destroying the self-esteem of fragile college graduates in 1983 with its “Best Colleges” feature. In the list’s first year, Cornell was actually ranked eighth overall, and fourth among the Ivies. But the future didn’t look good for the Big Red, as 1985 brought a dismal ranking of eighteenth. Since then, we’ve mostly bounced around between fifteenth and tenth. From 1997 to 1998, Cornell jumped dramatically from fourteenth to sixth, achieving its highest ranking ever. However, such large variations in the rankings from year to year are not uncommon, largely due to the continually changing methodology used by U.S. News.
The truth of the matter is that the rankings are pretty much arbitrary. Many critics have voiced suspicions that the folks over at U.S. News sit at their desks, tweaking formulas until they achieve the results they want. In 1999, the Cornell Higher Education Research Institute published a study on the rankings with interesting results. The primary conclusions that emerged were that people actually pay attention to the rankings, but that rankings mean very little with regards to quality of an institution. Unfortunately, Cornell’s drop from sixth to eleventh place in the rankings that year perhaps led many to suspect that Cornellians had a “sore loser” attitude.
The evidence that people pay attention to the rankings is clear; a drop in rank means that the next year’s acceptance rate increases and the average SAT score of entering students decreases. Sadly, this is despite the fact that changes in rankings are unlikely to indicate any change in the quality of an institution. Because U.S. News edits its methodology each year, the results are unreliable, inaccurate and can’t really be compared between years. For example, between 1989 and 1990, Bryn Mawr plummeted from fifth to twenty-third among liberal arts schools, almost entirely because of a change in methodology. If the formula is that sensitive to changes, it seems like a rather poor basis of comparison.
A look at the methodology used in the rankings shows the truth behind the numbers. According to the U.S. News web site, the seven primary categories are peer assessment, retention, faculty resources, student selectivity, financial resources, graduation rate and alumni giving rate. The most vague and biased of the categories, peer assessment, holds the largest weight, accounting for 25 percent of the ranking. Since the peer assessment value is based on an entirely subjective survey of “top academics,” this category gives U.S. News plenty of room for random tweaking and modification.
The other categories do little to measure how much students are actually learning. Just because a school accepts bright students doesn’t mean that the students learn more. Schools with lower graduation rates tend to drop in the rankings, yet these schools often adhere to more rigorous academic standards. If 50 percent of your students graduate with high honors (*cough* Harvard *cough*), this is likely a reflection of grade inflation, not quality of education.
As long as schools are so arbitrarily ranked, high school students may continue to base their college application decisions on the wrong factors. A single number tells very little about the quality of the next four years of your life. Although it’s been shown that the rankings do matter to potential applicants, perhaps Cornell should focus less on trying to fit the inappropriate criteria that U.S. News has selected as important. The rank-improving goals of Cornell’s Image Committee may be admirable, but stating to The New York Times last semester that Cornell’s problem is a lack of “cool hats” and “cool hoodies” probably isn’t going to earn us many points under peer assessment (see the April 22, 2006 New York Times article).
Simply put, college rankings don’t mean much. It’s like comparing apples to oranges. Or apples to linoleum. Oranges to muskrats. There are so many variables not taken into account that it’s foolish to give much value to how well a college does each year or whether it increases or decreases in rank. Don’t feel insulted if Cornell ranks a few notches below other schools. Do the rankings take into account the fact that New Haven is ugly? Or that Princeton is in New Jersey? Or that Brown’s school colors are … well … brown? I didn’t think so.
Corey Earle is a senior in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. He can be contacted at cre8@cornell.edu [1]. Walking Backwards appears alternate Wednesdays.
Links:
[1] mailto:cre8@cornell.edu