Coalition Will Try To Alter U.S. News Ranking System

A Stanford-led coalition of students at universities across the nation is fighting to force U.S. News and World Report to abandon or fundamentally alter its annual ranking of colleges.

According to Nick E.S. Thompson, the vice president of Stanford's student government and an organizer of the movement, the idea came from a belief that the rankings are subjective but exert undue influence over prospective students and employers.

At Harvard, Jedediah S. Purdy '97 said he has been contacted by Thompson and plans to begin a movement at Harvard like the one at Stanford.

Purdy said the effort is still in its early stages, but he has contacted members of the Undergraduate Council and urged them to introduce a measure asking Harvard to with-hold information from U.S. News until the magazine reforms its ranking system.

Purdy said the key demand being made by the student-led coalition is that the magazine list its top schools alphabetically, not by an aggregate score reached by the survey.

In this year's survey, Stanford dropped two places from fourth to sixth, and for the first time in six years, Harvard was dethroned from the number one spot, slipping to third.

Students from Yale and Princeton, this year ranked first and second respectively, have also expressed significant interest in the project, Thompson said.

"It's a good thing [Yale and Princeton are participating]," he said. "If it were just Stanford and Harvard, it might seem like sour grapes."

Thompson said he was planning to introduce such a resolution in Stanford's student government last night.

At press time, he said he was "99 percent sure" the resolution would pass.

Specific Issues

The specific complaints raised by Stanford students are that the magazine's "subjective" rankings are "taken as dogma" by prospective students, employers and the general public, according to a press release from Thompson.

The release also claims that universities often make administrative decisions based on how they will affect U.S. News rankings rather than how much they will improve the school.

Stanford University Director of Communications Terry Shepard said in the Monday edition of the Stanford Daily that he does not agree that universities are influenced in their decisions by the rankings but did say that he supports the students' efforts.

"We wish [them] well," Shepard told the Daily. "All of the schools at the top of that list are excellent schools, and to try to distinguish between them by tenths of points is impossible. You can't statistically capture the qualities of a university."

Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis '68 said in an e-mail yesterday that he has not heard of the effort. But he wrote that Harvard takes little stock in the rankings.

"We don't think the ranking of colleges in the very specific way U.S. News does makes very much sense (and we didn't [last] year or the year before, either)," Lewis wrote.

While Lewis said he does not think withholding the information would be useful, he did say grouping the top schools together rather than ranking them would be more useful than the current system.

"I don't think there is any useful information in the tenths-of-points differences that the U.S. News ranking is based on," Lewis said

Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis '68 said in an e-mail yesterday that he has not heard of the effort. But he wrote that Harvard takes little stock in the rankings.

"We don't think the ranking of colleges in the very specific way U.S. News does makes very much sense (and we didn't [last] year or the year before, either)," Lewis wrote.

While Lewis said he does not think withholding the information would be useful, he did say grouping the top schools together rather than ranking them would be more useful than the current system.

"I don't think there is any useful information in the tenths-of-points differences that the U.S. News ranking is based on," Lewis said