Morse Code: Inside the College Rankings

What Secretary Spellings Thinks of the College Rankings

January 9, 2008 RSS Feed Print

Comment (6)
Tweet

U.S. News and U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings share an important goal. We both believe that there should be considerably more transparency at colleges and universities so prospective students and their parents can be informed about the costly and very important decision of which college to attend. In fact, U.S. News has been a leader in the drive for increased accountability among higher education institutions, and our rankings have been one of the factors that have pushed schools to publish more evaluative and consumer-friendly information about themselves.

Spelling cited the success of the U.S. News America's Best Colleges rankings in a December 2007 speech to a group of higher education accrediting officials as evidence of the public desire for meaningful information on how to choose and pay for college. She said:

[I]f you ever doubt the need or appetite for your mission, consider the U.S. News college rankings. It's been called the 'swimsuit edition' of postsecondary reporting. Within 72 hours of its release, the U.S. News website was viewed 10 million times. There's a reason why this magazine is so popular. As I said before, families know that selecting and paying for college is one of the most important and costly decisions they will ever make. They need and deserve the best information to guide them. And they should be able to get it from the people who make our higher education system the envy of the world.

Spellings is also making a push to make the relatively secretive higher education accreditation process much more understandable. She said in the same speech that accreditation remains veiled and confusing even for many within the higher education community. My department and the Congress have heard from many who have little knowledge of how they're being judged. If institutions are placed on probation, they may not know what's required to return to good standing. Further, the great variation in how accreditors understand and interpret their role may have the unintended consequence of limiting options for students—particularly in these dynamic times. As institutions add new locations, launch distance education programs, develop new degrees, and undergo changes in ownership, the lack of consistent standards can impede their ability to meet marketplace demands.... Students and institutions need and deserve more openness, transparency, and consistency.

Tags:: Margaret Spellings,; education,; rankings

« Previous Post Next Post »

Reader Comments Read all comments (6)

Add Your Thoughts Comment Name State Email

Please enter the two words below into the text field underneath the image.

Your comment will be posted immediately, unless it is spam or contains profanity. For more information, please see our Comments FAQ.

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.

Get Real of CA 2:28PM January 14, 2008

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.

Been There, Done That of WI 6:33PM January 11, 2008

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.

Regular guy of NY 2:53PM January 11, 2008