Schools Blast 'Best Colleges' Survey

Presidents of small colleges are up in arms over this year's version of what they call an "inaccurate", "superficial" and "unscientific" college survey that will appear on the front page of the October 26 U.S. News and World Report.

According to representatives of several small schools, the "Best Colleges in America"--a survey which asked college presidents to rate the best institutions of higher education by category--ends up rating the schools by reputation, not by facts.

Some officials at the small colleges said this week the article could damage their institutions because they depend on their public reputation to attract students.

Middlebury College President Olin C. Robison has taken the initiative against the study. In a letter to David Gergen, U.S. News and World Report editor-in-chief, Robison charged that the study is biased because the magazine surveyed only presidents whose opinions were only hearsay.

"I doubt that presidents have more than a superficial knowledge [about other schools and cannot respond] with any degree of authority," Robison said this week in an interview.

Robison was not the only one to protest the study's inaccuracies. Officials at Amherst College also criticized it for what they labelled unscientific methods of collecting data and blatant inaccuracies.

Amherst, which did not respond to this year'ssurvey, fell from number one in the small liberalarts college category in 1985 to number three inthe 1986 survey, according to a spokesman there.

Robison sent copies of his letter to thepresidents of the other 113 small liberal artsschools in the same category as Middlebury. Hisletter attacked the underlying premise of themagazine's survey that "college and universitypresidents have special knowledge about thestrengths and weaknesses of most otherinstitutions."

But Lucia Solorzano, U.S. News and WorldReport's associate editor for education said thisweek that the magazine "asked around for the bestauthority" on rating colleges and pickeduniversity presidents because the magazinebelieved "they should know about other colleges."

Middlebury's president said he offered to helpthe magazine conduct a more comprehensiveanalysis. But Solorzano said Robison "offered tohelp correct the problems which we know areevident in this survey" but then sent out copiesof his protest letter to his colleagues.

Harvard's Vice President for Government andCommunity Affairs John Shattuck said he agreesthat the survey "should not be taken too seriouslybecause it is hardly scientific."

Robinson said the magazine was catering to "ageneral public desire for simplified information,"and that the survey is just a ploy to increasemagazine sales