Colleges increasingly avoiding 'Best' label

The bookshelves will soon be bursting with guides for the next group of high school students looking to make college choices.

U.S. News & World Report's 2008 version of "America's Best Colleges" will be online beginning today. The Princeton Review's will be available next week. More will follow from there.

But what exactly do these rankings mean? Do they really paint an accurate picture?

A growing number of schools -- especially liberal arts institutions -- don't think so. Arguing that the rankings are little more than a "beauty pageant" based on perceived reputations, one group is choosing not to participate in the U.S. News rankings.

Sixty-one U.S. college presidents, including one in Minnesota, have signed a letter from the nonprofit Education Conservancy saying that they will not participate in U.S. News' reputational survey -- a poll in which administrators rate other institutions -- nor will they use the rankings in marketing their institutions to prospective students.

Northwestern College in Roseville is the only Minnesota school that has signed on so far. Three other regional schools -- the University of Wisconsin-Superior and Iowa private schools Luther College and Coe College -- also think the rankings are too dependent on the reputational surveys.

"I like to use the quote that Albert Einstein said, 'Not everything that's measured counts and not everything that counts can be measured,'" Luther President Richard Torgerson said. "You've got to experience the place, interact with the people that are there. What it all comes down to is fit and whether a place feels right."

Coe President James Phifer was a little more blunt.

"Schools can build themselves up, make major progress and go unnoticed for 15 years. It's just crazy," Phifer said. "Conversely, schools can fall apart and their reputation will carry them for two decades. It's unethical. ...

"When the stuff going in is you-know-what, the stuff coming out is going to be you-know-what."

Northwestern College President Alan Cureton declined comment on his school's position.

The Education Conservancy isn't the only rebel group. Several other Minnesota private schools -- including Carleton, Gustavus Adolphus, Macalester, St. Benedict's, St. John's and St. Olaf -- are part of the Annapolis Group, a collection of 120-plus liberal arts schools that has also taken issue with U.S. News & World Report's rankings.

"I have two in college, so I have just been through the college selection process myself," St. Olaf President David Anderson said. "I understand that families so badly want to make the right decision, and you are hungry for any kind of information you can get. The problem is that many of the rankings are trying to quantify an unquantifiable experience."

This spring officials at Gustavus and St. Olaf also opted against participating in the peer review of other schools. Both supplied data to the magazine. Carleton, Macalester, St. John's and St. Ben's participated.

"People tend naturally to like rankings," Macalester College President Brian Rosenberg said. "It's a simpler way of understanding the world rather than looking at lists of data about individual schools. ... But I do think they are reductive and misleading."

An alternative

Because of the dissatisfaction with the rankings, the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities is putting together an Internet-based tool that prospective students can use to compare schools.

The individual colleges are expected to follow a template and provide information so that high schoolers and their families can make accurate comparisons. The site is expected to launch after Labor Day.

U.S. News & World Report editor Brian Kelly said the boycott has been negligible to this point. In addition, the magazine is going to continue to rank schools, regardless of whether they participate in the process.

"Their point is that they are completely unique and individual institutions that just can't be reduced to numbers," Kelly said. "We just respectfully disagree with that. We believe that at some level we can create some good measures that allow you to compare, in effect, apples to apples."

Others aren't so sure.

"I was just getting tired of getting these ranking sheets that were coming from U.S. News," said UW-Superior Chancellor Julius Erlenbach. "I'd say, 'Why are they doing this? Why are they giving so much weight to this piece of it?' We didn't want to be part of the beauty contest anymore."

And that contest has changed how high schoolers make decisions.

"When I was looking at colleges, the main question people were asking was what college was right for me," Rosenberg said. "Too often now, the question people ask is which college is most highly ranked, and that has been overall a pretty destructive thing.

"What parents and students should be asking is what college is the right fit, and U.S. News tends to blur that question."

Jeff Shelman • 612-673-7478

Jeff Shelman • jshelman@startribune.com