Rankings Rant

Yesterday, many of us in the PR/Marketing world found out if we are winners or loser according to the latest U.S. News and World Report ranking. Today's Inside Higher Education had a few good articles on why the rankings are a bit (or horribly) flawed. It can be found at http://www.insidehighered.com/.

Let me say this. It is great for the CCCU and private colleges in general that some of the institutions represented have done really well, but having been on several ranked campuses and knowing colleagues at others, I know that the story those rankings tell is largely false.

I also think that the media over emphasizes how many students pay attention to these rankings. The top 10% absolutely due, but the average student at an institution like ours cares little about that list and even fewer understand it. In a lot of ways, the rankings seem to highlight what is wrong with higher ed, because so few of the measures have even a slight impact on the lives of individual students. If higher education is about educating students for life then rankings don't really tell much about the institutions ability to do that.

Or I could be horribly wrong when my institution moves from the third tier to somewhere higher next year and I put that pretty little U.S. News symbol on all my publications.