School ratings: pernicious, pathetic, prejudiced–and persistent

School ratings: pernicious, pathetic, prejudiced–and persistent

Posted on January 10th, 2022 by Scott Warnock

(For those two or three fans I have out there, apologies for the hiatus. I took a little time off from writing as I transitioned into a new job at Drexel.)

I’d say college rankings, specifically U.S. News and World Report rankings, are back, except they’ve never gone away. These cussed things persist in the face of all reason, supported, no, in fact, developed, by what are ostensibly (and, in many cases, otherwise) smart people.

As the Chronicle of Higher Education reported recently, colleges still “obsess” over the rankings, and this obsession manifests itself concretely through the strategic plans of these institutions. Translation: Universities plan and do very specific things mainly (if not solely) to satisfy the rankings. Check for yourself.

U.S. News, on its site, which I will not share here as a small, pathetic gesture of my resistance, frustratingly says this: “Schools are ranked according to their performance across a set of widely accepted indicators of excellence.” “Are ranked”–a delightful use of passive voice. “Widely accepted”–by who?

As an example of the problems with the concept of “widely accepted,” consider that even though colleges and universities are increasingly recognizing the problems with standardized test scores, there’s old, conservative U.S. News still using such scores as a 5% chunk of its ranking algorithm. To be fair, it seems to be budging toward a more informed use of such scores, but it’s not there yet.

It is going to take a more powerful public rejection than we have yet experienced to get these rankings out of our lives. I was once on a committee to review a colleague, and I was explicitly told to find reviewers from “better” institutions. It was clear that the “better” institutions from which I was to seek reviewers were to be chosen by a journey through U.S. News rankings.

Not only are the rankings biased, but because they seem so official, they allow us to make a cognitive leap and fix our perception of schools. I always feel terrible when I hear a value judgment of a whole school slip from someone’s lips. “A good school?” “A bad school?” What about all the people there teaching and studenting, all the people whose lives are invested in these places?

When I talk to high school students, I just keep telling them to find a place that works for them and then go for it. At almost any institution, they will find solid faculty, interesting friends, and an alumni network to help at the next level. Rather than helping students find a place that’s a good fit, the rankings may just better reflect the kinds of schools people like to advertise on vanity sweatshirts.

Save the trouble. You can buy the sweatshirt and ignore the absurdity of these judgments, as Gawker’s Brandy Jensen suggests in her short, wicked piece “Kindly Stop Telling Me Which College You Attended.”

School ratings obviously persist because people use them and refer to them. I wish I could close by saying that if we would just collectively stop picking colleges based on ratings, they would disappear in a hurry, but that’s naive, and things are likely getting worse: U.S. News recently released “its first-ever rankings of public elementary and middle schools in the United States, according to The Hechinger Report.

It’s not bad enough that people pick pre-k “good” schools so their kids don’t have to be around other, ahem, those other kids, but now they’re going to get a magazine to put a stamp on it.

We have a lot of work to do.

Author Bio
Latest Posts

Scott Warnock

Scott Warnock is a writer and teacher who lives in South Jersey. He is a professor of English at Drexel University, where he is also the Associate Dean of Undergraduate Education in the College of Arts and Sciences. Father of three and husband of one, Scott is president of a local high school education foundation and spent many years coaching youth sports.