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Imagine a college student sent you this job application:
My academic performance is too complex to be summarized by a grade. So even though I was given grades in college, I am not going to show you those grades. Yes, I could have gone to another school, but honestly I don’t think any school’s grades could do me justice. I have saved all of my schoolwork for you to examine, and instead of judging me on my grades, I think you should study my schoolwork and interview me in depth to truly appreciate all I have to offer.
I doubt this pitch would go over very well. But amazingly a number of colleges are now making a similar pitch to their students. A recent Washington Post OpEd, "A College Can’t Be Reduced To a Number in a Magazine," elaborates:
A majority of the 80 college presidents … expressed their intention not to participate in U.S. News & World Report‘s annual college ranking survey. … These academic leaders … believe the choice about which college or university to attend is vital — and too important to leave to an inherently flawed rankings methodology. …
The Annapolis Group has agreed to work with other higher-education organizations to develop a Web-based resource that will present accessible, comprehensive and quantifiable data to help guide students as they select a college. The information will include important data such as average class size and majors, as well as some reporting of student-learning measures. We have no intention, however, to produce a ranking of our institutions. … Myriad complex variables can’t be reduced to a single number.
We urge students to compare schools on a variety of factors …. They should visit campuses and go on what feels like a good match rather than relying on filtered or secondhand information. We must encourage students to look inside their hearts and trust their instincts when it comes to choosing a college, not whether parents or friends think a university is cool or prestigious.
Oddly enough, most of these schools will insist on scoring their students with a GPA, reducing their myriad complex performances to a single number.
Schools That Don’t Want To Be Graded
I would like to know how influential the rankings are for kids picking colleges, scholars picking graduate schools, and faculty looking for work. I bet they are more important for alums. At any rate, I don't see a point in whining over rankings. They are zero-sum. Got a bad ranking? Just admit it up front and say "but let me show you what's great about this school."
I spent my college years at UC Irvine, just as it was beginning to develop into the juggernaut it most unmistakenly is now. In the words of George W. Bush "Go Anteaters.... Fight... Anteater". It most certainly wasn't rankings that attracted me in 1988. I had acceptances from a number of schools that would have looked great on the old resume. But UCI went the extra mile to get me to go there. I swear, if we'd had cell phones and pagers in 1988, it would have been worse than having Pete Carroll and Les Miles fight over a letter of intent.
The US News ranking system is flawed. This might be a good way to protest it, if those colleges can band together and list what they want changed (or want in a new ranking system).
The best result would be to provide a number of separate metrics or rankings within groups of schools (public/private, small/large, etc.) instead of a single scale. Then as a college student, I could look at the factors most interesting to me.
I graduated from a school that was small enough to get individual teacher attention yet with affordable tuition because student aid wouldn't cover the gap between what my parents could afford and what the Univ of California cost. I've later spent some time on the UC campus and am happy with the choice I made for undergrad, even though it might not have been a good idea based on the US News ranking alone.