What Secretary Spellings Thinks of the College Rankings

Rankings

US News ranks colleges to sell magazines, period. If their methodology truly evaluates the quality of colleges and the education being provided, why are we spending millions of dollars on accreditation commissions?

Once you factor in that colleges manipulate data elements in an attempt to improve their rating, the reliability and validity of the rankings has to be questioned.

Accreditation "Veiled?" Hardly

I think it is wrong to make a blanket assertion that even campuses don't understand the "secretive" process of accreditation. This article suggest that parents and students will make uninformed choices as a result of the haze that makes accreditation confusing even to those in the academy.

Any institution that has been through reaccrediation can verify that is a rigorous, open and challenging process to prepare for a review. Those on a campus's accreditation review team are provided extensive education and training by the accrediting agency that leaves no doubt as to what they will be assessing: relevance and real value to their students, to their service area and to society. The review process is so demanding that it generally takes attending two annual conferences to ensure a demand area isn't overlooked. Team members are particularly attuned to ensuring they don't omit by accident something the accrediting agency finds important. The omission is likely to occur through oversight because of the avalanche of accrediting agency demanded information that can bury the team.

Information about the accreditation review process is widely shared on any campus since it takes more than two years of hard work and institutional reflection to prove you've met the exacting review areas. This includes the writing of an extensive publication that probes into everything the institution accomplished over the past decade (with extensive evidence to prove it, gathered from colleges, departments, faculty, staff, alumni, community leaders and others through evidentiary documents, surveys and institutional metrics). The campus must outline its vision for the future and describe how it is going to accomplish this through an articulated strategic planning process; and it must provide an honest appraisal of any failures in achieving previous objectives, or meeting an accrediting agency requirement. Failing to acknowledge or to comprehend a problem, or failure to act on an issue identified in a previous review, is a sure way to attract an intensive, in-depth return review by the accrediting team. Institutions shudder at that possibility.

Accreditation review is ubiquitous. I suspect that those on a campus who claim they aren't aware of the process are chosing to ignore it, at their peril and that of their institution.

I'd suggest that a detractor of the process attend the extensive training conferences that are conducted annually for institutions that are coming up for accreditation or review. Attending should dispel any notions by an open-minded participant that this is a "veiled" process. Then volunteer to be a community participant on your nearest campus's review team; they'll welcome the help and you'll learn an awful lot about the place.

Finally, a successful reaccreditation generates substantial documentation, including the institutional review book, that any campus would want to fully disclose to parents and students because it is such a powerful recruiting tool.

Big Business, Big Money

It really shouldn't be a surprise that Morse would take the endorsement of the current Administration -- big business, big PROFIT -- it is all what it's really about. Disingenuous claims of providing a "service" to college goers -- its ALL about the MONEY. The costs to the institutions to provide the information, the amount of which grows from USN&WR and the many other "services", play a role in the increased costs of higher education for the American public. If USN&WR would share some of the profits with the colleges, it would be a somewhat different story, but they take the money all the way to the bank. Some "noble" calling.

What Spellings Thinks....

"Morse Code" in this instance is as anachronistic as the telegraph. Morse knows full well that his data tell us nothing about educational quality differences in terms of what and how well students learn

(yes, he is right that the academy is at fault for not gathering and sharing such data). He knows that the rankings are totally invalid on educational grounds but continues to cynically fill the vacuum created by the irresponsible academy that he apparently feels justifies irresponsibility on his part.

To quote Spellings as support for what his magazine does is the new morse code of propaganda but does nothing to make what he is selling any more responsible than the quality of toys we import from China. That the market can be fooled most of the time does not ethically justify the product he is peddling.

Buying a DVD Player Isn't Easy Either

Have you tried buying a DVD player recently? Upconverters vs HD-DVD vs BlueRay vs DVD-R vs DVD+R, etc. Rankings do have a role in clarifying some of the differences.

With allies like this...

Has the USN&WR college ranking issue become the "swimsuit issue" because it provides transparency (remember that it gets its data from the schools, so who's transparent, the magazine or the college?), or is it because consumers just like to have an easy way to make an important decision and pick a college the same way they buy a DVD player? Have they been seduced into thinking that there's more name-brand prestige and more to boast about if their son or daughter attends the 27th ranked college rather than #28?

Spellings has made empty rhetoric and one-size-fits-none solutions the legacy of the Bush Administration's bully pulpit education policy. Does USN&WR really want her endorsement?