Thursday, September 13, 2001

Officials skeptical about tier rankings
TCU ranked below Baylor, SMU in Tier II
By Sarah McClellan
Skiff Reporter

School officials expressed skepticism about the validity of the U.S. News and World Report college rankings released last week that placed TCU in Tier II among the top 128 universities in the nation.

Baylor University and Southern Methodist University are also in Tier II. They scored higher than TCU in almost all categories.

“In my opinion we’re a better institution than both of those schools,” Ray Brown, dean of admissions, said. “It always shocks me that they outrank us. This year SMU had trouble selling its class while we had trouble keeping ours down.”

Chancellor Michael Ferrari also expresses doubt about the accuracy of the rankings.
“I have serious reservations about the annual rankings by U.S. News and other publications,” Ferrari said.

Ferrari said one of his concerns is the subjectivity of the rankings.

“It’s hard to judge the fairness or objectivity of these rankings,” Ferrari said. “The raters are heavily biased by perceptions of the quality of graduate programs and/or name recognition.”

The criteria used by U.S. News and World Report includes academic reputation score, freshman retention rate, predicted and actual graduation rate, the number of classes with less than 20 students, classes with 50 or more students, student-to-faculty ratio, percent of faculty who are full time, SAT and ACT scores, freshmen in the top 10 percent of their high school class, acceptance rate, and average alumni giving rate.

Brown said the criteria should include a measure of student satisfaction, and the reputation score should be omitted.

The reputation score is compiled from a survey of university chancellors or presidents, provosts and deans of admissions, he said. They rate other schools in the survey.

Brown said the rankings shouldn’t be judged by outside sources.

“(The rankings) measure subjectivity and not objectivity,” Brown said.

TCU’s reputation score is 2.8, out of a possible 5.0, this year. The reputation score is worth 25 percent of the ranking.

Princeton University, Harvard University and Yale University, are ranked as the top three universities in the nation respectively with reputation scores of 4.9.

Ferrari said he also thinks the criteria should be changed to reflect the effect the school has on a student instead of how high a student’s GPA and SAT scores are when they enter the school and financial resources of the school.

“I would prefer output measures rather than input measures, i.e., how much do students actually learn, what do graduates contribute to their professions and society, etc. rather than resources per student,” Ferrari said.

Brown said the rankings can be easily manipulated by school officials who may not report numbers correctly.

However, he said it doesn’t matter much since people don’t base their college choices primarily on the rankings.

“Most people can figure out that’s not a very smart way to pick applications,” Brown said. “If you let rankings rule you, you’re not being very thoughtful.”

Sarah McClellan
s.l.mcclellan@student.tcu.edu