In Defense of College Rankings

School Ranking Methods Fall Short

The following was a proposed Letter to the Editor of U. S. News & World Report, dated 1/01/08, which they did not publish. Why not?

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Last month U. S. News & World Report continued its trend of rating our institutions of learning—by now ranking High Schools. Obviously, our nation benefits by having the brightest and most motivated young people become as well educated as they can be. But I have discovered a most disturbing and widespread flaw in academic cultures—to wit: The latter have become bastions of unrealized perfection, more bent on protecting status quo ideas, than in serving the best interests of the trusting students who are just entering the mills of higher education.

Naively, I suspect, your magazine continues to rank schools by using statistical analysis that only “might” indicate excellence in education. The missing factor that is more important than all of the others combined is: The correctness and the quality of the texts and reference books, and the willingness of teachers and school administrators to see to it the what gets “taught” is as current as possible. To accomplish such, teachers need to be willing students themselves. But I have found that teachers get placed on pedestals as these icons-of-knowledge who, unbeknownst to most, are generally unwilling to revise what they teach…

I realized the above failures in education as the result of my trying to get a number of universities to acknowledge, and to get reference book publishers to correct, a three hundred year flaw in the simple looking definition of… the acceleration due to gravity, ‘g’. The errant definition: g = 32.2 feet per second^2. The correct definition: …32.174 feet per second EACH second. That not-so-subtle-looking difference affects academia tremendously, because it is part of my three-pronged disproof of Einstein’s theories of relativity. When universities aren’t objective about something of such importance, then it isn’t hard to generalize that they aren’t current on much of the ever thickening texts and reference books...

Happily, I am outside of the hierarchy of those in the now teetering Ivory Towers. But our governments still trust universities to be “the final word” on what gets taught. People, like me, with important new information, must go hat-in-hand to get acknowledgement from those in academia—who haven’t been insightful enough to realize, and to correct misinformation that they have been teaching for decades, or perhaps centuries.

So, when U. S. News & World Report evaluates High Schools, largely based on the percentage of students committed to going to college, I ask: To learn what? By your annual rankings of universities, you are encouraging those to continue to make-the-grade in your eyes. The public trusts that your rankings are significant. But unless, and until, “a willingness to revise texts and teaching” is part of your criteria, your rankings do more harm than good. — John A. Armistead

Improving College Ranking Methods

As U. S. News & World Report collects data for next year’s issue proclaiming America’s best colleges and universities, state leaders and Chambers of Commerce are busy trying to put the best spin of why new businesses or industries should select their particular state into which to expand or relocate. Getting one or more of a state’s colleges or universities to place high on the list can be a lever for growth, and new jobs. So, the economic effects of this magazine’s rankings can be huge.

Sadly, quality of education is only inferred by statistics based on such things as class sizes and expenditures per student. In actuality, quality relates more to the excellence of the texts and reference materials, and to how open-minded the teachers are to new developments. But because “new developments” usually mean that what got taught “yesterday” was at least partially wrong, teachers are most reluctant to acknowledge new things—any new things. Yet the public trusts that education is current and truthful…

To begin to correct the embarrassing resentment of new developments by our nation’s colleges and universities, I recommend that another category of evaluation be included next year: Excellence in Revising Texts and Teaching. Any school doing the latter, well, should feel pride, not embarrassment. “For without change, there can be no progress!”