When the Forbes magazine rankings of America’s best colleges were released this summer, the Wabash community beamed with pride to see the institution ranked #12. The study has undoubtedly raised national interest and should help to broaden our pool of applicants, thus further refining the image of the Wabash man. But what on the surface appears to be a great honor for Wabash College may not be as lucrative as it seems. When an organization like Forbes produces information on the quality of American higher education, it is bound to draw high levels of attention. Unfortunately for Forbes and, well, Wabash, the attention has not all been praise, with many calling into question the factors used by Forbes to compile the survey. In its inaugural ranking, Forbes magazine, economist Dr. Richard Vedder of Ohio University, and the Center for College Affordability and Productivity rated the top 569 American undergraduate institutions. For the purpose of offering an alternative to the U.S. News & World Report rankings, Forbes created a new set of criteria by which to rank schools.
Red Flags It should be no great shock that Princeton holds the top spot. While Forbes admits that ordering schools from first to 569th is inherently absurd, one of the Ivies is going to be top dog, and Princeton happened to match best with Forbes’s formula (or perhaps it was the fact that Steve Forbes, editor-in-chief of Forbes, went to Princeton). Regardless, there are a number of surprising results. Relatively unknown Centre College in Kentucky was ranked #13 overall and #3 of schools in the Midwest, above University of Chicago (#18) and Washington University, St. Louis (#146), both perennial powerhouses in U.S. News and The Princeton Review ratings. The United States Military Academy, while certainly a well respected and well known institution, ranked #6 above Yale, Columbia, and Northwestern, numbers 9, 10, and 11 respectively. And even the proudest Little Giant has to pause after noticing that our own Wabash College ranked higher than MIT (#14), Stanford (#23), and Brown (#27). In fact, it seems the system rather likes all-male institutions, with Hampden-Sydney, St. John’s, and Morehouse all finding spots in the rankings (which included roughly the top 15% of American colleges). Also intriguing was the number of institutions that didn’t seem to live up to their reputations. University of Pennsylvania, Georgetown, and Johns Hopkins all ranked outside the top fifty, while two Ivy League schools, Cornell and Dartmouth, fell outside of the top 100. Not that simply being in the Ivy League should automatically place an university at the top of the list, but these elite schools carry a high level of prestige, and because of that can afford to be very selective in their admissions. Having higher standards for incoming students greatly increases the amount of intellectual depth a classroom can support, and, as a result, these schools should perform better on paper. Perhaps the brightest red flag, bringing immediate question to the rankings, was the placing of the only other Indiana school in the top fifty, DePauw University, taking the 47th spot. Any study ranking DePauw above the real DePaul (#451) as well as Duke (#80) and Vanderbilt (#105) must be flawed. So why do the rankings vary so greatly from previous systems, and how are there so many suspiciously ranked schools? Methodology Along with the goal of creating an alternate ranking system, Forbes wanted to address concerns of students, so the data used leans toward revealing student perspective. A noble idea, but when that idea translates into using RateMyProfessors.com and Who’s Who in America as 50% of data collected, accurate and informative results fall by the wayside. Student evaluations of professors from RateMyProfessors.com accounted for 25 percent of the study. The website was founded in 1999 as a database for students to rate their instructors. Forbes estimated they used 7 million evaluations when formulating their rankings. They looked at the categories of Easiness, Helpfulness, Clarity, and the average of Helpfulness and Clarity to provide overall Quality. Each category is based on a one to five rating scale, with the scale being inverted for the category Easiness as to provide more points to the schools reportedly having more challenging professors. While all this sounds reasonable, the problem is that anyone, student or otherwise, can submit a rating on RateMyProfessors.com. Parents, professors, and even the homeless, so long as they have access to the internet, can submit evaluations an unlimited number of times. Another 25 percent of this problematic review system was founded on alumni listings in Who’s Who in America. While there is a limited number of people listed in Who’s Who, the “honor” is not awarded due to a certain standard of merit or scholarship but rather by a person nominating himself and paying an entrance fee. Furthermore, Forbes magazine featured a rebuke in 1999 of Who’s Who in America in which the author of the article told of a man submitting an application with a bogus biography under a false name who was then published in the society’s annual book. This is not an attempt to downplay a person’s acceptance into Who’s Who, but rather an explanation of the problems that resulted from the use of the Who’s Who “data” in the national rankings. Even though the rest of the methodology is reasonable (including components like four-year graduation rates and accumulated student debt of those borrowing money), the use of RateMyProfessors.com and Who’s Who casts a dark shadow on the entire system. So in a faulty study, what does a #12 ranking mean for Wabash? What About Wabash? Wabash is a great school - but no one needs a national survey to understand that. While college rankings are not acceptable justification for college selection, they are paid quite a bit of attention. These rankings have made headlines and drawn attention to Wabash that previously might not have been received. Bigger schools with bigger names often outshine this fine institution, but, if only for a moment, Wabash was in the spotlight, and this was a positive occurrence. While the question of Wabash’s belonging in the top fifteen is open for interpretation, it should not be placed there just because Forbes said. The rankings obviously have their shortcomings, but that doesn’t mean Wabash does not belong near the top. Wabash may not have the number of National Merit Scholars MIT does, but the home of the Little Giants is great for different reasons, such as those Professor Brouwer listed in this issue’s interview with him. But what does the ranking mean for Wabash? As for an immediate, direct impact, it is unclear. Perhaps we will see a strong increase in applicants or a broadening of the range of quality professors interested in teaching here. But after the Forbes ranking is forgotten, Wabash will remain largely the same. After the bloggers stop ranting and Forbes comes out with the next round of rankings, Wabash will again find it’s niche as a small liberal arts college for men located in quiet Crawfordsville, Indiana, flying mostly under the radar. To compare colleges hierarchically degrades education to quantifiable rankings when, specifically at Wabash, education is about much more. Nonetheless, Wabash’s unique qualities and engaging environment make a strong argument for a high ranking, and it’s nice to know the world outside this small community recognizes our school. Wabash students already knew its quality and did not need a magazine to tell them how to think of their school. For some, knowing how the results were tabulated lessens the importance of the ranking, and others pay it no mind. Wabash is a top-notch school where young men receive an education both in and out of the classroom that many envy and few experience. That can’t be ranked. |
