Once again this year, U.S. News and World Report has issued a ranking of America's colleges and universities that is founded on questionable criteria and clearly biased against public institutions. The time has come to call their bluff.
Only three public universities made the list this year (up from two the previous year.) Not one of these schools made it into the top 20 spots on the list. The University of Michigan (24) was joined by the University of Virginia (21) and the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (25). Missing from the list were the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Wisconsin, Madison. The reasons for this blatant exclusion can be traced back to the flawed methodology of the survey. While each of these schools ranked in the top 20 of a category called "academic reputation", they were all hurt by other factors including student-faculty ratio, freshman retention rate, graduation rates, and the percentage of alumni who donated money to their schools.
Consider this last measure as representative of what is wrong with the U.S. News process. The University of Michigan was not in the top 100 schools in the country in the percentage of alumni who donated in the previous year. This ranking comes despite the fact that the U-M has just recently completed a mind-boggling $1 billion alumni drive over a year ahead of the five year schedule that fund-raisers were planning.
Alumni donations are not a legitimate factor in evaluating a college anyhow. The Gourman Report, an independent college ranking survey conducted by a former professor from the University of California system, recognizes the importance of considering alumni. Instead of considering the money that alumni give the school though, The Gourman Report ranks the success of alumni. This factor is derived by the number of students placed in positions in industry or graduate education in the field that the student graduated in. The University of Michigan is ranked third overall in the most recent Gourman Report.
The obvious bias towards private liberal arts schools by U.S. News would be much less troubling if it were not for the fact that millions of high school students, parents, and counselors look to the results of the survey to decide which school is "the best." U.S. News has decided what they consider to be a good school. Those schools that do not fit their model are made to seem less important.
All schools and all students are not created equally. Big schools have advantages and disadvantages that small schools do not. It is not the role of U.S. News or any other international media source to decide which approach to education is more appropriate. That consideration is for the student alone to decide. MR