College Rankings Dirty Tricks

Richard Vedder of Ohio University, an outspoken member of the recent Spellings Commission on the Future of Higher Education, has a higher education blog called "Center for College Affordability and Productivity." It's smart, provocative and well worth reading. If there's ever an award for "Least Bland Blog With the Most Bland Name," it would definitely be a contender.

In this post, Vedder comments on a recent Wall Street Journal article$ from the invaluable Dan Golden about the way some colleges are manipulating the U.S. News & World Report college rankings. This says it all:

ALBION, Mich. -- Adrian Jean Kammerer hasn't given Albion College a dime since she graduated in 2004. "I don't have money to be giving to Albion," says the law-school student. "I'm living off student loans."

Yet Albion counted Ms. Kammerer as an alumni donor to the school in 2004, 2005, and 2006. School officials keep her on the donor roll by treating the $30 she gave as a college senior as a $6 annual gift for five years. Ms. Kammerer isn't scheduled to drop off Albion's donor list until 2009.

Such fiddling -- which helped boost the percentage of donating Albion alums to 47% in 2006 from 36% in 1998 -- paid off handsomely. U.S. News & World Report's annual higher-education survey puts Albion's alumni-giving rate at 14th among liberal-arts colleges, contributing to an overall ranking of 91st among 215 such schools. In 2003, Albion boasted of its alumni-giving rate, among other credentials, in a cover letter for a grant application to the Kresge Foundation, which ultimately awarded the school $4.7 million.

This kind of shameful book-cooking is nothing new; a few years ago it was all about dropping low-scoring students out of the average SAT numbers (the WSJ busted colleges on that one too). Implicit in all of this is a certain "it's all just a game" ethic--most colleges think the U.S. News rankings are illegitimate to begin with, so by that logic there's no harm in looking for an edge. Sort of like Gaylord Perry throwing spitballs or Michael Waltrip cheating in NASCAR.

Which is exactly why the college rankings need to be more aligned with what actually matters in higher education -- teaching, learning, things like that.