Showing posts with label Education. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Education. Show all posts

U.S. News college rankings are denounced but not ignored

Post by Unknown on Sunday, September 4, 2011

Morse runs U.S. News & World Report’s annual Best Colleges guide, the oldest and best-known publication to rank America’s premier colleges.

The annual release of the rankings, set for Sept. 13 this year, is a marquee event in higher education. Some call it the academic equivalent of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue.

Colleges broadcast U.S. News rankings on Web sites and in news releases, tout them in recruiting pamphlets, alumni magazines and “Dear Colleague” letters, and emblazon them on T-shirts and billboards. Institutions build strategic plans around the rankings and reward presidents when a school ascends.

“U.S. News doesn’t advertise the rankings,” Morse said in a recent interview at the publication’s headquarters. “The schools advertise for us.”

Morse, 63, has endured for two decades as chief arbiter of higher education’s elite.

No one can stake a credible claim to academic aristocracy without a berth on the first page of a U.S. News list. He is to colleges what Robert Parker is to wine.

College presidents dismiss the rankings. They line up behind conference microphones to denounce Morse and his methods.

Privately, college administrators fret about rankings and ponder how to move up. Presidents and deans telephone U.S. News several times a week to ask “why they rank the way they do,” Morse said. He usually takes the calls himself.

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Post by Unknown on Thursday, August 4, 2011

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