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IWU cracks U.S. News’
list of top 100
Results don’t rank with
University officials
By C. Adam Wren
Editor-in-Chief
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Sojourn Photo / Scott Clark
One of
the best—University sponsored banners hanging in the Student Center
Mallway catch the attention of passing
students. | As college application deadlines loom on the
horizon, high school students across the nation are looking for ways to winnow
down a number of potential schools they’re considering to a “short list.”
Many of these students will likely turn to publications such as U.S.
News and World Report’s national ranking guide “America’s Best Colleges” to aid
them in their decision—which could prove to be a boom for Indiana Wesleyan
University.
The University made a signifi cant jump in the rankings this
year, climbing from an unranked tier three to a tier two institution, garnering
a rank of 62 out of 142 Universities-Master classified schools in the Midwest
Region, leading University offi cials to place banners touting the
accomplishment at various locations across campus over the past several weeks.
Despite the presence of the celebratory banners, some University offi
cials say that the high profi le rankings don’t deserve as much consideration as
they receive.
“The U.S. News system doesn’t really identify the best
schools, it identifi es the most privileged and reputed schools,” according to
Don Sprowl, Assistant to the Vice President for Institutional Research. “The
truly best schools are those that actually accomplish their missions—those that
successfully educate their students.”
The rankings, issued in Aug. 2006,
are based on six differently weighted categories collected during the 2005-2006
school year: an opinion survey of offi cials from peer institutions, the number
of freshman who return for the fall semester sophomore year, faculty resources,
selectivity, financial resources and alumni giving rate.
In an effort to
compare “apples to apples,” institutions are classifi ed as a National
University, Liberal Arts Colleges, Comprehensive Colleges- Bachelors, or
Universities-Master.
IWU faired well in the peer assessment, freshman
retention rate and graduation rate categories, and not so well in the faculty
resources, student selectivity and instructional expenditures categories.
Because of the controversial nature of the ranking system, says Sprowl,
attempts to boycott the rankings have been unsuccessful. This, he says, is
because U.S. News can compile the rankings without cooperation of ranked
colleges and universities.
“So, we provide the data they request, they
compile their rankings, and we hope to come out O.K.,” writes Sprowl in a report
that summarizes the Universities rankings. “But the U.S. News rankings are never
of central concern.”
Dr. Bud Bence, Vice President for Academic
Affairs, agrees with Sprowl, and says that the rankings present a predicament
for a mission-minded University like IWU.
“One of the challenges of U.S.
News and World Report (rankings) is that to make it to the top, we’d have to be
more selective,” says Bence. “We might be tempted to hire a professors based
more upon the doctor’s degree than one’s ability to teach and mentor students
effectively.”
Both Sprowl and Bence cite the ranking system’s reliance
on popularity and reputation as one aspect that detracts from their reliability,
in addition to their focus on system inputs rather than outcomes.
The
publication, according to its representatives, acknowledges some of the rankings
system’s shortcomings in appraising these intangibles, but asserts their
helpfulness as well.
“Certainly, the college experience consists of a
host of intangibles that cannot be reduced to mere numbers,” according to a
statement by Robert J. Morse and Samuel Flanigan on the publication’s website.
“But for families, the U.S. News rankings provide an excellent starting point
because they offer the opportunity to judge the relative quality of institutions
based on widely accepted indicators of excellence.”
Despite drawbacks,
Bence acknowledges that the rankings do have some value.
The ranking
system, according to Bence, helps the University “with public relations and
enrollment, reputation, and fundraising. It sharpens our competitive spirit.”
They also play a role in helping high school students and their parents
in their search for a college or university to continue their studies, says
Sprowl.Because the rankings are often used this way, University officials were
prompted to take a closer look at the statistics they submit to the publication,
in hopes of providing prospective students with a “consistent picture of the
educational experience” at the University, says Sprowl.
But in order to
provide that consistent picture, the University had to be careful in selecting
what statistics they reported, and from which college within the University they
drew the statistics.
According to Sprowl, “In the U.S. News survey, some
items appear to relate to the entire University, while others appear to relate
to the traditional campus,” he says. “But responding to some items with
University numbers and other items with CAS numbers produces a report that is
internally inconsistent and misleading.
“This year’s ranking is based on
enrollment, retention, and graduation numbers for the entire university, but
faculty resources and admissions data that reflect the traditional campus,” The
individual numbers are valid, but together they do not convey an accurate
picture of the institution.”
In the future, all statistics reported to
U.S. News will be based exclusively on CAS figures.
“Restricting the
entire questionnaire to CAS yields a consistent picture of the IWU experience to
the US News target audience - students pursuing a traditional undergraduate
education,” Sprowl says. “It’s something all that school’s wrestle with.
Different school’s handle it different ways. This is just what seems
appropriate.”
But, says Sprowl, this approach will likely result in some
“oddities” for next-year’s statistics.
“When they ask us whether we have
graduate programs, IWU does but CAS does not,” says Sprowl. “So the US News
profile will look odd next year when we say IWU has an enrollment of 2935
students, all undergraduates, but this will be the true answer in the context of
the question.”
Sprowl says that statistics for the 2008 edition of the
publication will be collected and submitted sometime this spring. For more
information on the rankings, visit usnews.com.
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