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Gaming the Rankings? Not on Our Campus!

May 19, 2011, 6:17 pm

By Eric Hoover

The punching bag of college admissions keeps taking hits. According to survey results released Thursday by the National Association for College Admission Counseling, or NACAC, a majority of admissions professionals believe that U.S. News & World Report‘s annual ranking of colleges relies on flawed methodology, bears an inaccurate title (“Best Colleges”), and confuses students and parents.

Although such findings aren’t surprising, the survey reveals the complexity of the rankings debate. Most respondents (87 percent) “agree” or “somewhat agree” that the rankings “encourage counterproductive behavior” among colleges, yet a majority of admissions officers say they tout their institution’s ranking in marketing campaigns, at least “in a limited fashion.” Curiously, 56 percent of admissions officers agree or somewhat agree that rankings help them recruit students, while 44 percent disagree or somewhat disagree.

One intriguing finding: More than 90 percent of admissions officers say that college rankings encourage colleges to embrace competitive strategies for maintaining or improving their spot, yet only 46 percent say that rankings drive decisions at their own colleges. ”Respondents’ beliefs that institutions are ‘gaming’ the rankings generally seems to apply to other colleges,” the report says, “whereas they are less likely to perceive their own institution as manipulating the process.”

In other words, the belief that there’s a monster out there is twice as prevalent as the belief that a monster lurks beneath one’s own bed. Perhaps that finding is more revealing of human nature than of the rankings and their effects.

Robert J. Morse, director of data research for U.S. News, says he welcomes the survey’s findings, barbs and all. As he’s often noted, opinions of the rankings are one thing; actions are another. ”Colleges are saying, ‘We don’t like the rankings, but we’re going to use them as a means to validate our quality and to attract students,’” he says.

The survey was conducted to inform the work of a NACAC committee whose members meet occasionally with U.S. News officials to discuss the rankings and their impact on higher education. David A. Hawkins, NACAC’s director of public policy and research, describes the survey as an attempt to distinguish between “what’s real and what’s perceived.” Do college officials underestimate the power of rankings, or do high school counselors overstate them? Or both?

Mr. Hawkins hopes that the survey’s findings will bring more clarity to the rankings debate, even if they don’t prompt U.S. News to make any changes to its guide. “If they are receptive, that would be great,” he says, “but I don’t know that I’m holding my breath.”

Surely, that’s wise. After all, a majority the survey’s respondents may believe that “Best Colleges” is an inaccurate representation of the rankings, but some things are here to stay. “We’re not going to change the name of our product,” Mr. Morse says.

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  • thatisright

    In general, most community colleges I’m aware of do not require professors to publish. They expect participation in conferences and “professional development”. In fact, from my observations, most community colleges frown upon publications unless the pub is in a low-impact generic journal. Why you might ask? Because administrators and long-time faculty usually question how anybody can be serious about teaching students (the key objective of any community college) and simultaneously investing time in publishing stellar research in high-impact journals, if they’re even savvy enough to recognize a high-impact publication. I’ve also observed similar trends at some 4-year schools with full professors sometimes displaying only a few publications or less (sometimes from 10-20 years ago).

  • justbe

    Tenure??? Alas, not in our state!
    The premise is, however, interesting. Research can enrich the discipline and is surely needed. But perhaps there professors for whom not of great interest. Growth in knowledge and perspective is essential. Developing teaching skills is equally essential, which includes understanding the students. In our community of learning/teaching much of our “research” revolves around our faculty study groups which wrestle with both content and craft in order to serve our students and our community with the best education we can provide. Formal research is needed and welcome, but let’s recognize that this is not necessarily the gift of all gifted teachers.
    And let’s keep working to make path to the responsibilities of tenure available to all who teach.

  • barbarashell

    Having been associated with community colleges in four states, I can say that these insitutions are more closely aligned with public schools,, i.e., faculty are automatically tenured, generally after 3-5 years. There is no requirement for publication and research, and since these states require 15 hours a semester for full time employment it would seem that the only way for an instructor to accomplish a research project [for publication?] would be release time. I have never known a faculty member being denied tenure for failing to publish. Again, drawing on experience, some states have promotion steps, e.g., assistant professor, professor – but many do not, an instructor is an instructor. These promotions required some evidence of contributing to “service to the college and the community” but did not, once again, require research or publication. IMHO: community college instructors, for the most part, have not had sufficient instruction in conducting research and most are too damn busy in the classroom to concern themselves with writing an article!

  • chandrak

    All faculty members should have an opportunity to do research and publication. It applies to all higher education institutions including community colleges.

  • zofiajo

    It looks like the situation differs widely across the country. I’m at a CUNY community college, and yes, we are expected to publish. My experience here is that community college instructors have PhDs, just like their 4-year college colleagues, and coming out of the same research institutions, know how to do research but have little or no teacher training. But people want to live in NYC and there’s a glut of PhDs happy to have a full-time job– and are often happy enough at a community college, despite the increased workload and increased challenge of open admission.

  • enrollmentguy

    I’ve argued for years that we have USNWR rankings because those of us in higher education have failed to deliver other, more meaningful and insightful measures of our value and quality.  In the words of Walt Kelly’s immortal philosopher Pogo “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

  • richardtaborgreene

     What product is ten times as expensive as twenty years ago but the content has not improved in any way that anyone has measured?   

  • davidsheridan

    In addition to the “counterproductive behavior” USN&WR rankings enourage among colleges (which is very real), I worry even more about the same that’s encouraged among students and parents.  We don’t need a survey to know that lots of students will make application and enrollment decisions based not on any careful research or self-assessment but based instead on a quick look-up list in a magazine that writes about everything but higher education 51 weeks out of the year.  And Mom and Dad can look down their noses at the rival parents whose kid only got into school #58, while their Ashley or Tyler was admitted to both #39 and #47.

    But this genie is never going back in the bottle.  For USN&WR, it’s their swimsuit issue.  For those who want shortcuts to important decisions and are addicted to perceived prestige, it’s all they need.

  • 22086371

    Healthcare??!! 

  • Ferdinand

     The problem is not only that students and parents use the rankings for decision-making; the problem is that colleges keep using the rankings as marketing tools, validating something that everybody knows is flawed. This is a compilation of some articles on this subject: http://mylearningnetwork.com/?p=206

  • disembedded

    This survey only had a response rate of 27.4 percent of surveys sent out, and the response rate was less than half that to surveys sent to colleges. Would be interesting to know the list of colleges that did respond.

  • nykki

    I agree strongly that we should have better wayw to measure the value and quality of the education we are paying so heavily for than rankings that dont really do justice.  Unfortunately there are many people who will still follow those lists simply because they exist.

  • http://twitter.com/CoyneoftheRealm James C.Coyne

    Concludes fraud was “intentional” and “designed to deceive.”

  • panacea

    Playing the race card is not going to win Mr. Das friends.

  • HistoryGirl

    This happens more than any of us want to admit. Das is one who has been caught but most researchers I know have ‘cooked’ data to some degree-not just in terms of differences in analysis, but in was that support conclusions the researcher wishes to make. There is too darn little over site of this wither within the academy or outside of it – especially when researchers are using (and bringing in) substantive external funding.

  • svenbali

    Really, manoflamanch? You can generalize this easily? And 8 likes?! I am surprised that no one has spoken out at this outrageous posting.

    How many cases of fraud vs. number of researchers are there by national origin?

  • katisumas

    I am no longer surprised after the blatantly racist posts of the last few days and all the “likes” appended to them.  Did you read the fellow who claimed  blacks were less intelligent than whites and  the darker they were  the less intelligent? 

    I am afraid white supremacists have moved into the mainstream and  Manoflamancha generalizing from 2 (two!) instances and not even bothering with comparative data is a sorry exemple….

  • bell2200

    HistoryGirl, it seems you’re hanging out with the wrong crowd if “most researchers [you] know have ‘cooked’ data to some degree-not just in terms of differences in analysis, but in was that support conclusions the researcher wishes to make.”  Most researchers I know would never “cook” data.  As humans, we are all subject to unwitting bias.  “Cooking” or altering objective data is another matter entirely and doing so, no matter how small the degree, is fraud.  It may occur more often than we realize but, in my decades of experience, it is most definitely NOT something in which most scientists engage.

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