By Emily GlazerThe Daily Northwestern
A dozen university presidents have pledged to boycott the peer assessment section of the U.S. News & World Report college rankings survey, but Northwestern President Henry Bienen said those universities are “entitled to do what they want” and that he has no plans to join them.
The presidents, mostly from small, liberal arts colleges, sent a letter last week urging other schools to follow their lead. They said they will no longer fill out the peer assessment component of the survey, in which administrators rate peer schools’ academic programs.
This section counts for 25 percent of a college’s total ranking and is the biggest component in the survey. Other components include retention, faculty resources and student selectivity.
The presidents – of such schools as Drew University in New Jersey and Lafayette College in Pennsylvania – said they will refuse to use the rankings in their schools’ promotions and asked other schools to do the same.
The U.S. News rankings are published at the end of each summer, and they are among the most popular annual rankings of American universities. NU was ranked as the 14th “best national college” in the 2007 rankings and was ranked even better in the past.
Cindy Powell, public relations director for U.S. News, said the “best national” category consists of 248 U.S. universities – 86 private and 162 public.
Powell said more than 4,000 universities were sent the peer assessments, and 58 percent of them responded.
A 58 percent response rate is “phenomenal” because it is double what any other survey expects, she said.
The peer assessment portion asks presidents, provosts and deans of admissions to rate peer schools’ academic programs on a scale from 1, deemed “marginal,” to 5, which is “distinguished.”
Powell also stressed the option for an evaluator to check a “don’t know” box if the evaluator does not feel comfortable rating another school.
Bienen said he did not hold any stock in the U.S. News rankings, regardless of NU’s place in them.
He was asked to rate a number of colleges.
“Half of them I’ve never heard of,” he said.
Although Bienen said he preferred not to have the peer assessment section at all, he is confident in ranking universities of a similar caliber. But when necessary, he checks the “don’t know” box, he said.
Powell said 56 percent of the time, a university chooses to rate a college without using the “don’t know” option. From this statistic, U.S. News is able to draw two conclusions.
“One is that university officials are indeed pretty confident that they do know the reputation of universities in that category,” she said. But since almost as many people use the “don’t know” box, Powell said U.S. News is “confident that the people in general are not being shy about checking the ‘don’t know’ category.”
The protesting college presidents called the rankings “misleading” and said they “do not serve well the interests of prospective students.”
Alan Cubbage, vice president for university relations, said one college that has consistently refused to participate in peer assessments is Reed College in Oregon. The college was not one of the 12 that wrote the letter.
“It’s a function of small liberal arts colleges,” he said of protesting the rankings.
Powell said she suspects the 12 colleges won’t create “a huge dip” this year.
“We keep front and center what the rankings are and why we do them,” she said. “It’s consumer journalism at its best.”
Reach Emily Glazer at [email protected].
