Hartford, Conn., August 16, 2007- Trinity is one of more than 60 colleges in the Annapolis Group, an organization of top liberal arts schools, refusing to participate in U.S. News & World Report's college rankings.
Trinity College agreed first to remove any mention of the U.S. News and World Report annual ranking from its respective publications. Second, we agreed to make available on our Web site the information we provide U.S. News and World Report each year, just as we make the same information available to the College Board, Fiske’s Guide, Barron’s, the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, the COFHE institutions, and others. Thus, information we are asked to provide U.S. News and World Report will be available for all to review online. Third, Trinity agreed not to participate in the academic reputation survey annually requested of presidents, deans of faculty, and deans of admissions.
There have been many recent stories in the national news media about the annual rankings of colleges and universities by U.S. News and World Report. At a meeting of the Annapolis Group (the largest national association of liberal arts institutions) early this summer, presidents from all over the country discussed these rankings because they represent a significant common problem. First is the assumption that something as complex as an educational institution can possibly be reduced to a number and that these numbers can be “ranked” as a measure of quality. Second is the fact that these national rankings have led potentially to abuses like the following:
- Schools might not have always been forthright about the data, or simple mistakes might have been made by those individuals who responded to the 600-point annual data survey.
- Stories abound of boards of trustees who have encouraged their presidents with bonuses if their school’s “ranking” improves.
- Presidents, deans of faculty, and deans of admissions are asked to “rank” the academic reputation of schools in their cohort often without adequate information for many of them.
- Very serious matters (low faculty-student ratios, something wonderful that liberal arts colleges provide their students) are awarded scant value (1 percent).
- Far too much in the arcane algorithm used by U.S .News and World Report is based solely on an institution’s financial resources.
- College guidance counselors all over the country have to battle faulty assumptions on the part of parents (especially parents of first-generation college-bound students) that the “rankings” are statistically sound and that they indicate the true value of a particular college or a university.
- And finally, institutional research offices all over the country have to spend, year after year, vast amounts of time and effort, taken from far more serious matters, just to provide the data for the annual survey.
We do believe we have an obligation to provide –at no charge--useful and meaningful data about our college to the public. The link below leads to the Common Data Set provided to guidebook publishers and a fact sheet. Furthermore, as we have in the past, we will continue to provide information about Trinity to many other college guides that do not generate rankings.
Trinity is in a position of strength with the highest enrollment in its history and the highest alumni participation in more than 30 years. Our faculty and alumni body include recipients of the Pulitzer Prize, the MacArthur award, Guggenheims, Rockefellers, and other national awards. The College is home to the eighth-oldest chapter of Phi Beta Kappa in the country, and our 2,200 undergraduates are drawn from all parts of the U.S. and 30 countries.
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