Commentary: Flawed magazine rankings give false impressions of Nevada’s universities

Sunday, Aug. 27, 2006 | 7:28 a.m.

The annual U.S. News & World Report college rankings are out. Once again, UNLV has been placed in the fourth tier and UNR in the third. But when viewed with a critical eye, it is clear that the U.S. News & World Report rankings are flawed.

Twenty-five percent of the ranking score is based on reputation alone, which is nonquantifiable, arbitrary and by definition favors those who are already at the top. Universities that are growing and have new programs, such as UNR and UNLV, are ignored.

The optimal class size, according to U.S. News & World Report, is 20 students, and any class with more than 50 students penalizes the institution being ranked. However, because we are in a growing state with an exploding university population, it is virtually impossible to meet those class-size limits. A real irony is that many institutions arbitrarily limit class sizes to no more than 19, leaving out many students just to play the rankings game.

The amount of money alumni give to an institution also makes a big difference in the rankings. However, newer institutions, such as ours, have a smaller alumni base from which to draw, and face an almost impossible uphill climb in relation to more-established institutions.

Many have joined in the chorus criticizing the rankings machine, including The Chronicle of Higher Education, the Association of American Law Schools, the Law School Admissions Council and the online magazine Slate. The National Opinion Research Center best summarized the critics when it concluded that the U.S. News & World Report rankings "lack any defensible empirical or theoretical basis," and that "the weights continue to change, in part as colleges and university officers complain about their rating and suggest alternative formulations, which, not coincidentally play into their own strengths."

What are we to do here in Nevada? We should focus on the fact that our universities are themselves focusing on the issues that should matter to both parents and students - not for the purpose of rank only, but to better our system and the product we deliver to our students.

We are recruiting and retaining outstanding faculty. We have instituted admissions standards that focus on student success. We are working with school districts throughout the state to eliminate, as much as possible, remedial college courses. We are reaching out to alumni. We are focused on improving the six-year graduation rate at our institutions. We are improving the overall going-to-college rate.

We can do more. We can emphasize those fields of study and research in which we excel, and there are many, and become national leaders in those fields. We can do a better job of retaining entering freshman. We can continue to recruit outstanding faculty and researchers. We can better educate the public as to what it means to be a research university and how research can enhance undergraduate programs while at the same time fueling the economy of our state.

Of course our two universities can improve - they work on that every day. But if we simply play the rankings game, we will lose. Instead we should focus on those measures that make a real difference in the long run.