College rankings often miss mark

U.S. News & World Report's annual college rankings issue appears this week. We at Columbia College Chicago, the nation's largest arts and media college, have decided to no longer submit institutional data to the publication.

We make this decision when a growing number of institutions across the country are expressing skepticism about U.S. News rankings. The president of Sarah Lawrence College in a Washington Post op-ed piece earlier this year called the ratings "misleading" and accused U.S. News of "creating" data it could not obtain from her college.

Members of the 120-plus private liberal arts colleges that make up the Annapolis Group are similarly refusing to provide data for the college ratings issue. In short, there is a growing revolt against the stratified, elitist ratings system employed by U.S. News. These higher education leaders are articulating what Columbia College Chicago long ago recognized: U.S. News college rankings are, in fact, very poor indicators of an institution's quality or value to society.

We believe that the principles in practice here at Columbia represent the finest tradition of democratic higher education in this nation. The ratings- with their emphasis upon selectivity and exclusion based upon standardized test scores - do not promote the kind of diversity that fosters creative expression and intellectual engagement. Neither do the ratings measure the inventiveness or ingenuity necessary for future creative achievement.

The validity of our philosophic approach to education finds validation in the success of Columbia alumni, who include Academy Award and Emmy winners, Grammy and Pulitzer Prize recipients, Guggenheim fellows and Golden Globe awardees. Columbia alumni sit in corporate offices of news organizations and in entertainment conglomerates around the world. This record of accomplishment, in many instances, could not have been predicted from entrance examination scores or even high school academic records.

The U.S. News ratings criteria, simply stated, are not standards of success that Columbia College Chicago chooses to apply to itself. The ratings do not adequately reflect the value of institutions that, like Columbia, open doors to the creative professions for significant segments of American society.

Warrick L. Carter, Ph.D.

President

Columbia College

Chicago