| Ranking system
targets quality
By Neil Block
Collegian Freelancer
Many familiar
with college ranking guides may know that Hillsdale College
has always been at odds with U.S. News and World Report's annual
college guide, in which Hillsdale most recently ranked 97th
in the second tier of liberal arts institutions.
Normally, Hillsdale scores well
in college rankings due to the student body's relatively high
scholarship in test scores and class ranking. Through 2000,
Hillsdale's U.S. News ranking varied among the first- and fourth-ranked
school in the Midwest. Beginning
in 2001, the college moved up from the regional ranking into
the second tier of national schools, among such names as Amherst,
Williams and Swarthmore.
But U.S. News, in its compilation
of statistics about each school, includes a category named "academic
reputation" - that is, peer administrators from around
the country give each school a ranking from one to five, with
five being the best. That score accounts for 25 percent of each
school's final ranking.
The peer assessment score lowers
Hillsdale's ranking in the magazine because administrators from
other institutions generally give low rankings to the college
because of its conservative, classical liberal arts approach,
which is a minority in institutions of higher education.
In response to the emphasis on
subjective statistics in determining school quality, The Atlantic
Monthly published a series of articles this month regarding
college rankings debunking the notion that a high selectivity
ranking does not always mean a school offers the best education;
and conversely, a low ranking does not necessarily mean a school's
education is sub-par.
Included in The Atlantic's issue
is the magazine's own college ranking guide - the top 50 schools
calculated using admission rates, SAT scores and class ranking
of incoming freshmen. Its top five ranked schools are MIT, Princeton,
CalTech, Yale and Harvard, while U.S. News' are Harvard, Princeton
(tied for first), Yale, MIT (tied for second), CalTech, Duke
and Stanford (tied for fifth).
"Selectivity really says
nothing about the quality [of a school]," Don Peck, director
of The Atlantic's editorial-research staff, said. "We
created a ranking not to glorify it but rather point out the
problem."
In fact, Peck writes in The Atlantic,
most highly selective schools could still be as academically
competitive if they admitted half their pool of rejected applicants.
Ranking guides such as U.S. News'
are popular, not necessarily because of the selectivity data
they offer, but are "more of a verification tool than a
discovery tool," Hillsdale Director of Admissions Jeffrey
Lantis said.
Lantis said most of the data sets
ranking guides use to compare colleges are not the problem.
"I don't think any of the
categories are bad things to consider, except for the peer ranking,"
he said.
"The biggest disservice is
they don't provide enough information to parents and students
about institutional fit - where your interests match."
Peck says The Atlantic's guide
is a one-time occurrence.
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