Entries for October 2007

It's generally thought that a diverse student body enhances the education of every pupil, and U.S. News provides a way to find schools that are most ethnically mixed. A diverse campus means that you have a high probability of meeting, going to classes, participating in activities, and living with students from a different racial or ethnic background from your own. A school is truly diverse if there are many different ethnic groups enrolled on campus and those groups have close to the same percentage of students enrolled. So, if a school has one ethnic group that makes up a large percentage of its student body, it's not very diverse, even though there may be other ethnic groups on campus.

We've just started the data collection for the upcoming 2009 edition of America's Best Graduate Schools, which will be published at the end of March 2008. The statistical survey data collection for business, law, engineering, medicine, and education programs began on Oct. 17, 2007, on our password-secured website. The deadline to complete the statistical surveys is Nov. 16, 2007.

I recently returned from the 2007 Southern Association for Institutional Research Conference in Little Rock, Ark.

I go to these conferences in the States and around the world to give talks on the U.S. News rankings, find out the latest trends at universities, determine what new higher education data U.S. News should try to collect, and get feedback. This was a meeting of institutional researchers, individuals at colleges and universities who collect and analyze college data for campus decision making and planning. Many of them also fill out the U.S. News surveys. I gave two presentations: “America’s Best Colleges Rankings: What Just Happened and What's Ahead” and “America's Best Graduate Schools Rankings: How They're Done and What's New.”

Measuring educational outcomes, developing comparable assessments, and bringing accountability to colleges and universities are currently among the hottest topics discussed by higher-education experts. One part of the conversation is to what degree the National Survey of Student Engagement results should be used. NSSE is an assessment tool that more or less measures student satisfaction at individual colleges.

The hottest issue at National Association for College Admission Counseling's (NACAC) 2007 annual conference last week was the debate whether some aspects of the college admission process are unfair to many students. The high school counselors who attended had numerous issues with the SAT and ACT, particularly that these tests are given too much importance in admissions decisions. Counselors generally resented the fact that for students to "succeed" on the SAT, one had to "teach to test." Many counselors suggested that all colleges should be "test optional."

U.S. News and our chief critic, Lloyd Thacker of the Education Conservancy, apparently now agree on at least one thing that is very important: The U.S. News college rankings aren't what high school students are focusing on or worried about when they are going through the college application process.