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St. John's Seeks an Alternative to College Rankings
Along with many other colleges and universities, St. John’s College does not take part in college surveys that are designed to rank colleges. This includes the annual U.S. News and World Report survey for “America’s Best Colleges,” released this week. The college also will not publicize any rankings or ratings of St. John’s by other college guides or media.
Since 1997, St. John’s has declined to provide data to U.S. News, or to fill out the reputational survey which factors heavily in the magazine’s rankings. This year, however, dozens of additional colleges have decided not to cooperate with all or part of the survey. Instead, St. John’s and other colleges are working toward the creation of a common data template that allows college-bound students and their parents to evaluate individual colleges and make comparisons among them.
While the college has some specific objections to the methodology of the U.S. News exercise, St. John’s is more concerned that rankings fail to serve students who are making one of the most important choices of their lives. “Ranking and rating colleges actually limits choice for students, who should have the opportunity to consider colleges apart from these artificial measures of quality,” says St. John’s President Christopher Nelson.
St. John’s will participate in a new consumer information initiative, led by the National Association of Independent College and Universities. The project will create a common template for providing in-depth information about enrollment, academics, student demographics, graduation rates, class size, tuition and fees, and other information important to students and their families. Unlike most college rankings guides, this template also allows college to present information about the special nature and mission of their institutions. Called the University and College Accountability Network, this project is expected to be rolled out beginning this September.
Rankings assume that the value of an education can be quantified, says Nelson. “Students ought to be looking at the quality of a school, and measuring quality requires the exercise of judgment, a considerably higher function than the ability to count,” he says. “Rankings involve too much counting and too little judgment.”