Authentic Values and Ersatz Standards: Making Sense of College Rankings

Faced with new kinds of students and new pressures, universities and colleges confront novel challenges. College rankings may sell magazines, but they distract from the real future of higher education.

By Shannon Hodges

Higher education has become a commodity. Like cigarettes, alcohol, and athletic apparel, colleges and universities are being packaged, marketed, and sold. While college administrations and alumni may laud the value of the "university experience," the liberal arts curriculum, or the opportunity to study with famous scholars, shameless self-promotion often dominates the academy in this glamour age. Nothing illustrates this fact better than collegiate rankings, where the finer points of a higher education give way to snappy advertising campaigns.

Like their Bowl Championship Series counterparts, who rank institutions' football teams, the brain trust at U.S. News and World Report uses a scale that favors glamour schools. In this system, which sorts institutions into different categories, such as universities with national reputations, regional colleges, national liberal arts colleges, and so forth, it has become difficult to keep the categories straight, to say nothing of understanding the nuanced differences between, say, a national liberal arts university and a regional liberal arts university. Moreover, the meaningful issues covered by the rankings—such as percentage of graduates attending graduate or professional school and comparisons of college costs—are mere by-products of an academic beauty contest where looks count far more than substance.

The media moguls say the rankings help people make informed choices, but they are mostly about power, money, and class distinctions. Select institutions possessing a wealth of resources have little to fear and everything to gain from the rankings; they are tailored for them. For example, how often does an Ivy League university or a wealthy public institution like the University of Texas fail to receive high accolades? Such institutions should do well in the rankings. Their incredible resources attract wealthy, highly prepared students, and consequently they make ideal cover material for U.S. News and other magazines.

The profiles that accompany collegiate rankings provide an opportunity for the academic haves to crow about their institutions, using flowery language such as "transforming experience," the "pursuit of truth," "self-actualization," and so on. Advocates of the rankings—faculty and administrators at selective schools-tout them as evidence of how they differ from the bottom-feeding institutions.

Yet those other institutions—the have-nots such as state and community colleges—must educate academically disadvantaged, first-generation college students, many of whom hail from crowded urban or remote rural schools. At many of these institutions, large groups of ethnic minorities and working adults struggle to balance jobs and families and still manage to graduate (sometimes with honors). But their colleges or universities cut little ice in the glamour rankings.

When I taught at a community college, one of my students was a forty-five-year-old mom who juggled two jobs and a full academic load. I have yet to meet any student who worked harder or took academic responsibilities more seriously. Yet she would scarcely fit anyone's definition of select. Her experience, and that of many like her, gives rise to a fundamental question: which institutions have the more important and challenging responsibility—those bright, shining, select, cover-story campuses, educating predominantly the rich and privileged, or poorly funded state colleges and community colleges educating struggling students striving to craft a better life for themselves and their families?

Where are the rankings for the colleges that serve the underprivileged? Where are the articles that brag about campuses maximizing the potential of students possessing few social and educational advantages? For the most part, state and community colleges dedicated to educating the masses are the recipients of scorn. "Oxygen starved," the pejorative used in the June 29, 2001, issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education, is among the criticisms hurled at institutions serving students lacking the wisdom to be born to upper-crust families in geographically advantageous areas. Faculty at privileged institutions must realize that selectivity should not mean an escape into a private country club; on the contrary, it carries with it the responsibility to roll up the sleeves and work to transform the social and educational inequalities so apparent in society.

The Bottom Line

The rankings symbolize the increasing corporatization of higher education. In this age of money, narrow self-interest abounds in our colleges and universities. Decreasing public support for higher education has resulted in an atmosphere of cutthroat competition for students and resources. Witness the recruiting of eighth- and ninth-grade students by college recruiters who pressure young adolescents into early decisions. Many campuses hire slick, high-profile consultants to help them attract students. John Dewey's philosophy of a college education enabling individuals to actualize their innate potential and create opportunities for themselves and other disadvantaged people is easily discarded in this bottom-line approach of snappy ads and colorful sound bites.

In fact, many select colleges appear intent on maintaining the iron curtain separating themselves and the society of which they are a part, even going so far as to discourage faculty from venturing beyond their sacred grounds. Witness Harvard University's taking Afro-American studies scholar Cornel West to the woodshed over his volunteer work in communities, prisons, and schools. When questioned, Harvard's president stated that "outside activity can distract faculty stars from their academic work." This "don't get your hands dirty" approach, echoed at many of our best institutions, represents the lowest form of faculty-lounge liberalism.

Service to Society

What is needed in this rankings-happy era of higher education is recognition that there are many levels of excellence. One type of excellence, of course, has much to do with the scholarship produced by select colleges and universities; it must also be acknowledged, however, that lower-profile institutions that serve the masses and make do with few resources save dedicated faculty and staff not only deserve respect within the hallowed halls of academia, but may in fact be performing a far greater service to society.

Community colleges exemplify this service in the way they provide literacy classes for recent immigrants and courses for adult learners wishing to earn the GED. Similarly, historically black colleges have provided meritorious service to the underrepresented for over a century, particularly during the decades in which our best institutions refused to admit African Americans. Many colleges, includ-ing my current institution, require an intensive service project for completion of the baccalaureate degree. Some people are con-cerned about the accountability of service learning programs, but campuses rely on such programs to take welcome steps toward addressing social ills—something shamefully neglected in the past.

It is encouraging to see campuses evaluated on issues such as the environment in the Chronicle of Higher Education and college activism in Mother Jones and the Utne Reader. More encouraging—because selective institutions generally frown on activism—these rankings include selective institutions. I will feel even more encouraged, however, when the fat cats at U.S. News trot out special editions ranking colleges and universities based on their serving environmental concerns, housing the homeless, enhancing cultural understanding, paying their custodial staff a living wage, and so forth.

Before that occurs, the elite will need to make some changes. According to the Corporation for National Service, highly ranked colleges are less likely than lower-ranked institutions to support community service. Concern for societal welfare and environmental stewardship have little to do with stratospheric SAT scores, alumni connections, inflated endowments, or the power rankings of big-time football. Instead, such concerns focus on critical, often ignored, issues in higher education's own backyard. Rather than winking at them in dusty, archaic, scarcely read mission statements, colleges and universities need to address these social concerns.

Our society now faces immense challenges on several fronts: violence in our communities and schools, environmental concerns, and growing poverty levels. In this context, collegiate rankings, higher education's versions of the swimsuit edition, are as anachronistic as the typewriter. The American public has become increasingly reluctant to champion higher education, as evidenced by dwindling support in state legislatures and the closing of nearly a dozen private institutions in the past decade. Such realities may reflect a perception that the academy has lost touch with public concerns.

Given this situation, campuses must tear down the ivory tower of elitism that has long isolated many institutions of higher education from the larger society. They must stop bragging about how much they have and lead the way in rebuilding our communities and schools. Selective institutions must cease to look down their noses at nontraditional learners and begin creating opportunities for them. The Yales, Princetons, and Berkeleys must continue to educate tomorrow's leaders in medicine, technology, and politics—but they must also address the nation's social, educational, and technological inequalities. Finally, if we must have rankings, let them measure institutions' worth to society, not their glitter.

Shannon Hodges is professor of counseling and education at Niagara University.

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