lqw 4B The Michigan Daily - Wednesday, March 25, 2009 Wednesday, March 25. 2009 -The Michigan Daily 51B RANKINGTHE R/ THE KEY TO INTERPRETING COLLEGE RANKINGS IS UNDERSTANDING THE METHODOLOGY BEHIND THEM. WHICH OF 'NKINGS THESE WILDLY DIFFERING SYSTEMS ARE WORTHWHILE? BY STEPHEN OSTROWSKI DAILY STAFF WRITER THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN calls itself home of the leaders and best, And while the catch- phrase might smack of arrogance, there is plenty of support that this school does lead the pack and is one of the best - application rates, research grants, alumni base apd college rankings. The U.S. News and World Report lists the Uni- versity as the 26th-best institution of higher educa- tion in the country, wedged comfortably between the University of California at Los Angeles and the University of Southern California, respectively. Forbes Magazine, meanwhile, listed the Univer- sity at161st, right between Lake Forest College and Wisconsin Lutheran College. In the world of college rankings, neck-breaking double takes abound. But it's the nature of the business that discrepancies exist - why would Forbes begin ranking schools if its list was going to match up almost exactly with U.S. News, the lead- ing rankings publication? The flip side to that, of course, is how could a dozen different publications differentiate their rankingsysternsenough to make printing them worthwhile? The trick is widely vary- ing methodologies so that the same qualities that got a university in one publication's top 20 barely warrant a ranking above 200 to another publica- tion. College rankings might not be what they appear to be, but they can't be written off altogether. At least prospective students don't think so. Accord- ing to Michigan Cooperative Institutional Research data, 41.6 percent of students entering the Uni- versity in Fall 2008 said that rankings were "very impnrtant" in decidincEwhere tn attend. nmnared U.S. News 1. HARVARD and World 2. PRINCETON 3.YALE Report 26. UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN Undoubtedly the recognized authority on college rankings, the U.S. News list can be likened to the hyper-masculine, turbo-Neanderthal fourth-grader that dom- inates the blacktop and crushes the meek competition. But name recognition does not necessarily translate into respect. The.Education Conservancy, an education reform organization, has an open letter on its website signed by several university presidents that criticizes the U.S. News rankings as "misleading" and says that its system tends to "overlook the importance of a student in making education happen and overweight the importance of a uni- versity's prestige in that process." As detailed on its website (college.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com), U.S. news obtains its rankings by averaging together differently weighted components. First is peer assessment, weighed at 25 percent, for which university administrators rate schools' academic programs on a 1-5 scale. Second is retention rate, weighed at 20 percent, which measures how many students graduate in six years or less and how many freshmen return the next year. Another 20 percent is faculty resources, con- sisting of class size, faculty pay, the highest college degrees obtained by professors, student-faculty ratio and percentage of fulltime faculty. Then, there is student selectivity (measured by standardized test scores), accounting for 15 percent. The next 10 percent is financial resources or "average spending per student on instruction, research, student services, and related educa- tion expenditures." See U.S. NEWS AND REPORT, Page 85 0° LW 0 V 16. BROWN UNIVERSITY 17. RICE UNIVERSITY 18. EMORY UNIVERSITY 18. UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME 18. VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY 21. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA - BERKELEY 22 CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY 23. GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY 23. UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA 25. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA - LOS ANGELES 26. UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN - ANN ARBOR 27. UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA 28. TUFTS UNIVERSITY 28. WAKE FOREST UNIVERSITY 30. UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA - CHAPEL HILL 31. BRANDEIS UNIVERSITY 32. COLLEGE OF WILLIAM AND MARY 33. NEW YORK UNIVERSITY 34. BOSTON COLLEGE 35. GEORGIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY 35. LEHIGH UNIVERSITY SOURCE: U.S. NEWS AND WORLD REPORT Forbes 1. PRINCETON CAUFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY Magazine 3. HARVARD 161. UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN Playing apparent foil to the U.S. News is Forbes Magazine, whose rankings are based on "the quality of education (universities) provide and how much their stu- dents achieve." . Rankings are determined in conjunction with the Center for College Afford- ability and Productivity and include five components. First, weighed at 25 percent, is the number of alumni in the yearly "Marquis Who's Who in America" list, a directory of influential people in the nation. A description of the rankings system's methodology on Forbescom said this measurement was selected over the peer assessment method used by U.S. News and student opinion prioritized heavily in Princeton'Review. The Forbes list focuses on alumni achievement more directly than any other rankings. Accounting for another 25 percent is student evaluation of professors, compiled from entries on RateMyProfessor.com. Anyone who's posted a too-harsh review on the website out of temporary anger might see how this measurement could be imperfect. But Forbes attests that the method is sound, as the website serves as a sort of consumer review forum free from the control of university administra- tors. Rounding out the list's components are four-year graduation rate (16.66percent), average student debt (16.66 percent), and number of awards won by students and faculty. Among the awards considered are the Rhodes Scholarship and-Fulbright grants for students and the Nobel Prize and Guggenheim Fellowship for faculty. See FORBES MAGAZINE, Page 8B 151. OTTERBEIN COLLEGE 152. JOHN CARROLL UNIVERSITY 153. HOBART AND WILLIAM SMITH COLLEGES 154. FURMAN UNIVERSITY 155. UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS, URBANA-CHAMPAIGN 156. UNIVERSITY OF RICHMOND 157. MARYVILLE COLLEGE 158. LEBANON VALLEY COLLEGE 159 GOSHEN COLLEGE 160. LAKE FOREST COLLEGE 161. UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN - ANN ARBOR 162. WISCONSIN LUTHERAN COLLEGE 163 OKLAHOMA BAPTIST UNIVERSITY 164. CENTENARY COLLEGE OF LOUISIANA 165. WHITWORTH COLLEGE 166. HOPE COLLEGE 167. UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 168. MARIETTA COLLEGE 169. UNITED STATES COAST GUARD ACADEMY 170. LEWIS AND CLARK COLLEGE 171. THOMAS AQUINAS COLLEGE SOURCE: FORBES MAGAZINE Washington tMIT Monthly College -.CLBREE 3. PENN STATE Rankings 18. UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN Harvard is ranked 28th. Enough said? On its website,The Washington Monthly prefaces its rankings with the follow- ing: "Welcome to The Washington Monthly College Rankings. Unlike other college guides, such as the U.S. News and World Report, this guide asks not what colleges can do for you, but what colleges are doing for their country." Kennedy allusions aside, The Washington Monthly aims to create rankings of colleges based on one question: "Are they doing well by doing good?" To actually measure universities' devotion to the adage "do good by doing good," The Washington Monthly determines its rankings by three components. The first is a school's capability to perform as an "engine of social mobility"based on the pro- jected graduation rate of Pell students (grants received by lower-income students). Factored in next is research in the humanities and sciences, determined by money spent on projects, the number of PhDs awarded in Science and Engineering and the number of alums who go on to obtain PhDs. Finally, The Washington Monthly weighs service to the community, measured by percentage of students in ROTC, alums in the Peace Corps and grants given to community service projeets. Michigan is one of six institutions to send over 2,000 volhnteers to the Peace Corps, according to the Peace Corps website. Any rankings system that casts Harvard outside the top 10 is pretty anomalous - but keeping in mind President Kennedy's designation of the Peace Corps on the steps of -the Michigan Union, any rankings system that gives priority to student service seems pretty noble as well. 8. CORNELL UNIVERSITY 9. SOUTH CAROLINA STATE UNIVERSITY 10. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, DAVIS 11. UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN, MADISON 12. YALE UNIVERSITY 13. UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME 14. UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO 15. UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON 16. UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS, URBANA-CHAMPAIGN 17. UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS, AUSTIN 18. UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN - ANN ARBOR 19. COLLEGE OF WILAM AND MARY 20. UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA 21. UNIVERSITY OF ROCHESTER 22. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, RIVERSIDE 23. DUKE UNIVERSITY 24. ALABAMA A&M UNIVERSITY 25. CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY 26. RICE UNIVERSITY, 27. OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY, COLUMBUS 28. HARVARD UNIVERSITY SOURCE: WASHINGTON MONTHLY Global 1. HARVARD Language OFMIATY OF MICIGAN Monitor Perhaps the most novel rankings system belongs to the Global Language Monitor, a linguistics organization ranking schools based on, according to lan- guagemonitor.com, a school's "appearance on the Internet, throughout the blo- gosphere, as well as global print and electronic media." This system seeks to measure prominence of a school's "brand name" by counting how many times its name is mentioned online as well as in print and electronic media. GLM attains this information with its "Trendtopper analysis" system; which the company has used to track trends in word usage over the last five years. GLM President Paul J.J. Payack said on the website that the students who go farthest are those who carry the best name recognition. "Prospective students, alumni, employers, and the world at large believe that students who are graduated from such institutions will carry on the all the hall- marks of that particular school," Payack said. "Our TrendTopper analysis is a way of seeing the schools through the eyes of the world at large." That is good news for Michigan students: GLM has the University ranked third, behind only Harvard and Columbia. GLM's ranking system is certainly an innovative idea, given the increasingly digital, Twitter addicted world. But should-GLM's rankings grow in.clout, uni- versities might try to inflate their rank with obnoxious viral videos. It'll be a sad day when a university tries to garner attention via "I'm On a Boat"-type YouTube stardom. 1. HARVARD UNIVERSITY 2. COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 3. UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN - ANN ARBOR 4. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY 5. STANFORD UNIVERSITY 6. UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO 7. UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN 8. YALE UNIVERSITY 9. PRINCETON UNIVERSITY 10. CORNELL UNIVERSITY 11. UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA 12. JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY 13. DUKE UNIVERSITY 14, BOSTON UNIVERSITY 15. NEW YORK UNIVERSITY 16. UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON 17. GEORGIA TECH 18. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SANTA BARBARA 19. MIT 20. UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 21. BOSTON UNIVERSITY SOURCE: THE GLOBAL LANGUAGt MONITOR