Source:
Christian Science MonitorOAKLAND, CALIF. - A revolt is brewing among college presidents against the influential college rankings put out each year by U.S. News & World Report.
Dozens of schools have recently refused to fill out surveys used to calculate ranks, and efforts are now afoot for a collective boycott.
Colleges have complained in the past about the rankings. But recent events have rallied opposition, including the tying of presidential pay to ranking at Arizona State University and accusations by the president of Sarah Lawrence College that the magazine threatened to use hocus-pocus data to stand in for average SAT scores at the school.
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Several college presidents suggested that they personally could evaluate only five to 10 schools – a far cry from the hundreds on the list. "We know each other through reputation, but that's different than having the kind of intimate knowledge you should have when you are making a ranking," says Robert Weisbuch, president of Drew University in Madison, N.J., who plans to sign the letter.
Read more:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20070412/ts_csm/arank_1
About damn time. US News is famously corrupt in favor of the Ivy League - same schools on top every year, due entirely to the 25% "reputation" weighting, which is 40% at the graduate/professional level. Slamming schools on what is pretty much an uninformed survey is beyond stupid.
One year Cal Tech actually made #1 - and they forced out the person that was running the rankings that year. Now Harvard and Yale are back in their rightful places and no one is upset. *rolls eyes*
The ABA (American Bar Association, re: law schools) in particular has been ruthlessly critical of the reputation component of the rankings, as well as the idea in general.