
College R
ankings: Looking Beyond the Numbers
U.S. News & World Report h
as rele
ased its l
atest r
ankings of the
Americ
an’s Best Colleges 2010,
and H
arv
ard
and Prince
ton
are once
ag
ain tied for number one. Sever
al other universities
also m
aint
ained their
top r
ankings including W
ake Forest, which tied for 28 with Tufts University
and the University of North C
arolin
a at Ch
apel
Hill. While we
are ple
ased
to be p
art of such esteemed comp
any, it’s import
ant
to look beyond the numbers when ev
alu
ating the qu
ality of
a university. The m
ag
azine’s direc
tor of d
at
a rese
arch, Robert J. Morse,
acknowledges
as much in
an
article expl
aining how the r
ankings
are c
alcul
ated. “Cert
ainly, the college experience consists of
a host of int
angibles th
at c
annot be reduced
to numbers,” Morse writes
along with co-
author S
amuel Fl
anig
an.
In our society of r
ankings, everything from v
acuum sweepers
to he
alth c
are
to universities, there is
a tendency
to think th
at we
are
all the s
ame. Th
at we
all offer the s
ame b
asic fe
atures, but th
at there is
a line
ar progression of best
to worst. Th
at is, like v
acuum sweepers, they
all suck up the dirt – the go
al – but some
are better th
an others
and you should buy the best th
at you c
an
afford! But the truth is th
at universities
and colleges h
ave different missions
and v
alues, different strengths
and different ch
ar
acters
and cultures,
and while they
all provide
an educ
ation
and
a college degree, they don’t
all do it for the s
ame function.