Posted on 09/24/2007 7:27:16 AM PDT by SirLinksalot
If presidents of some of the nation's top liberal arts colleges get their way, they will no longer be included in the U.S. News and World Report's influential collegiate ranking system.
At issue is the "reputation survey," part of the ranking system that is filled out by the presidents of colleges included in the survey.
Presidents from some of the nation's leading private and liberal arts colleges met in Annapolis Tuesday to discuss a possible boycott. Approximately 80 presidents and 71 academic deans of the nation's leading liberal arts colleges attended the annual meeting of the Annapolis Group, an organization made up of 121 private and liberal arts colleges.
Todd Wilson, director of communications for Sarah Lawrence College -- which is among those not participating in the reputation survey -- called it "a collegiate beauty contest that is not a valid basis for judging the quality of education."
While the group did not call for an overall boycott of the rankings system, according to its newly named chair, Kate Will, the majority of members indicated their intent to stop participating in the reputation survey, which produces what she says is "not educationally valid research."
A letter was sent out last May by Lloyd Thacker, executive director of The Education Conservancy, and 12 college presidents to hundreds of their colleagues asking them to "refuse to fill out the U.S. News and World Report reputation survey and refuse to use the rankings in any promotional efforts on behalf of their college or university."
Thacker told CNN that "rankings have reduced students to consumers, education to product, and gaining admission into college a high-priced game that has to be played."
The letter has acquired 22 new signatures since it was sent out May 10, and it received overwhelming support in Annapolis on Tuesday.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
Number of AntiAmerican Despots hosted:______
Number of Caucasian Students Lives Destroyed by false accusations:_____
Number of useless “studies” degrees issued: _____
I’ll add to the list :
Number of schools hostile to ROTC :____
Typical Liberals - if you don’t like research results, ban the research...
US colleges are trying to figure out how a measly third-rate weekly newsmag has come to control their lives, and to control the perception of their value.
It’s really quite bizarre, and the inability of the colleges collectively to ward this off speaks volumes about the hollow core of much of US academia.
But...
Students are consumers.*
Education is a product.*
Admission is a game.
And long has it been so.
* Not that there's anything wrong with that.
I remember the ado over the "most liveable city" surveys. My former hometown, Fargo, North Dakota, always ranked near the bottom when weather was included and near the top when it wasn't.
Ditto for San Fransicko-- it is a paradise if you are a rich well-connected gay and hell if you are one of the poor schmucks who work for a living, pay taxes and are trying to find affordable housing.
My own yardstick is to look at who wants in and who wants out. Nobody every drowned in a rubber raft heading to Cuba.
but the university “product” market is rigged.
You have no guarantee of utility.
If you have a difficient degree there is no refund.
If you can’t get a job with your degree, you can’t even get away from the cost of the useless degree via bankruptcy. You are an indentured peon to the university system.
(though hardship discharges do exist but are for those near death)
This is driven primarily by parents, some of whom base their own self worth on which college their kids get into. Courses of study are selected with college admission in mind, as are extra curriculars. Some parents will push their kids into charitable service work. Others will invest big money into tutors who do "first credit" instruction over summers and breaks (so that the student can get credit for extra courses that may, or may not have been offered by the school), or attend a community college for more credits. Then there's coaching courses for the SATs.
It is a huge push, bordering on obsession, to have a better college admission package than the next kid, to have the highest GPA, to have more credits overall, to have more AP credits, to have more honors and awards, to have more time building houses for the poor in the Dominican Republic, to have more Varsity letters, more endorsements from Mayors and legislators... just to get into a brand name college. It is a game.
I base these statements on my experiences teaching at a private college-prep school in Baltimore. It was an eye-opening experience.
Quite a few of the colleges listed really just suck. The magazine would do us a real favor listing them by the number of weirdos, flakes, commies, lesbians, homosexuals, fake Indians, atheists,& tree huggers there that are teaching at each of these schools. That would be a real bonus section in any magazine! (not to mention “global warming scientists” too!)
It's not really a game, but there is a system, so of course you can game the system, just like any system. There are things you can do first of all to find a good match between your kid and the college of her choice - and second of all to maximize the appeal of her application. The gaming of the system all comes in on the second part. If you don't do your research and due diligence on the first part, you can game until you're blue in the face and it will do you no good.
The USNWR ratings are interesting (and somewhat informative even) but they are only useful as part of a big mosaic of assembled facts. My daughter's college is right where I would have expected it to be in the USNWR standings, so they're pretty much spot on at least as to her school. And they don't seem to be too far off wrt the other schools that we investigated fully - the ones she applied to, five in all.
bttt
On the other hand, it makes sense to look for the "right" college that will (1) give your child the best possible education, not necessarily for a particular career, but for his personality, strengths, and interests; and (2) be a "good fit" in terms of philosophy, environment, and social attitudes. I see nothing wrong with parents spending time and effort to find the "right" college in THAT sense of the word!
My eldest is a bright kid - scored well on the SATs and made good grades in a tough prep school - but shy and eccentric, a hard worker but not an intuitive learner. She would sink without a trace in a big state university. She also rejected a school with a heavy Greek scene because that whole concept is antithetical to her. So she's in a very small liberal arts college with a stellar academic reputation, not a lot of PC nonsense, very much "in loco parentis" attitude, and a strong religious affiliation (even though a different church from ours). I could have moved heaven and earth and called home every favor I hold to get her in my Ivy League alma mater, but it wasn't worth it because it was the wrong school for her personally.
Did she start looking at colleges in her sophomore year, and revising her resume with college applications in mind? Of course! But, as an old lawyer friend of mine once said, there's no point in padding your resume with clubs you join just to pad your resume, "because you will be shown up for the fraud that you are!"
A diploma always has utility. It doesn't qualify you for everything, but it does open doors. Brand-name diplomas open more doors.
Not even math/science/engineering majors always get jobs right out of college that are exactly in line with their degree. It is a silly expectation given the market of job opportunities today. As for the cost of college these days, yes I agree it is absurd. Some schools are less expensive than others and some majors have more job opportunities than others. A prospective student who is supposedly smart enough to go to college is smart enough to think through the options.
You are an indentured peon to the university system.
I take it you didn't major in Personal Responsibility?
You can't rely on just one source - you have to cast your nets wide.
But the most important thing (once you've narrowed down your choices to 5 schools or so) is to VISIT - and visit as incognito as you can. Daughter and I would arrive quietly and unannounced on the campus, dressed as much like everybody else as we could manage, and just wander around. Sit in the student union and have lunch, nose around the library stacks, park on a bench outside an open classroom door, sit under a tree and watch and listen to the people. Do they look happy and engaged? Harried? Anxious? Are they busy? Are the professors visible and interacting with the kids? We learned more in our time just hanging around than we did on the 'official' guided tours, class visits, etc. But of course those are valuable too, if only because they give you an idea of what the school finds important.
Daughter's a sophomore, and she is still VERY happy with her choice of school.
I do! And I've met parents who had the gall to ask about the grades of their children's "rivals" at parent-teacher conferences. 'It's ok if my Johnny got a B on that test as long as Billy got a C!'
You sound like you took a reasonable, healthy approach to your eldest's college. And I know that reasonable folks like you are in the majority. However, that does not change the fact that a great deal of gamesmanship goes on in some circles.
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