The Observer, September 21, 2007
Volume XL, Issue 4
Outside the Circle
Watered down call for rankings reform
Nineteen presidents of prestigious liberal arts colleges signed a statement on college rankings last week. Though it conveys much criticism and pledges that colleges will not use the rankings in recruitment, the statement contains far less conviction than a previous letter signed by a different group of college officials produced last May.
This letter, unlike last May's letter, does not promise that the college presidents will abstain from participating in the U.S. News & World Report rankings.
This new letter is particularly important because, with one exception, the 19 institutions are all ranked in the top 25 liberal arts colleges in the nation, including Amherst, Swarthmore, and Williams College.
One president who signed the new letter and asked not to be identified said: "You are known by the company you keep," so when the new letter started circulating and it included institutions "we associate with most closely, who we see as our closest peers and in some sense competitors," and the earlier letter wasn't signed by such institutions, the logic favored the new letter.
Russell Osgood, Grinnell University's president, saw several motivations for the new letter. "All of us are suspicious of a ranking metric that would try to say this college is the best," he said. Not only is that approach overly simplistic, but he said that he thinks many of the formulas used "tend to favor those of us with very large endowments," adding that "I don't think dollars spent is a simple way to effectively measure educational value."
But there are many critics to the statement and what it implies.
"As for this latest group of institutions, my only thought is that for them to say, on the one hand, that the rankings mislead the public on educational quality, but on the other hand, we'll keep participating in the hope of persuading the publications to change, seems inconsistent at best," said Patricia McGuire, president of Trinity University.
Only the future will tell if college rankings continue to hold much sway over the application process.
Campus bomb threats mount
Colleges and universities have been the victims of scores of bomb threats since the school year began a few weeks ago. The threats have mostly been in an e-format, and the situation heightened over the Sept. 11 weekend. Universities received e-mails over the weekend stating that an attack would be made on a unnamed campus on the anniversary of Sept. 11.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is still highly involved in tracking down whoever is sending the messages, but after the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime analyzed the messages, it reported that the threats posed "low probability of violence." Police are currently attempting to link the Sept. 11 messages with the previous bomb threats.
At Kenyon College, which received threats last week, President S. Georgia Nugent said, "One thing we do know is that this one came from the same server as the last one. That would lead us to believe that this is part of the pattern." Past threats have originated from servers that "anonymize" the original sender's IP address or location.
At least five other institutions received versions of the same message, including Cornell University, the Universities of Akron and Iowa, and Skidmore and Swarthmore Colleges.
School officials are trying to piece together a "national scope picture" of the threats if they ever want to discover the sender/s.
"My hope is that our best shot of resolving this is for us nationally to band together and try to understand what we can about this," Nugent said.
Michigan resumes distribution of anti-Israel book
The University of Michigan announced last week that its University of Michigan Press would continue distributing Overcoming Zionism, a book that refers to the creation of Israel as a mistake. Several pro-Israel groups complained to the university when publication of the book first started, which prompted a halt to its distribution last month. This sparked even further debate from free-speech activists. The author of the book is Joel Kovel, distinguished professor of social studies at Bard College.
The Executive Board (a faculty group) released a statement last week saying that while it "has deep reservations about Overcoming Zionism, it would be a blow against free speech to remove the book from distribution on that basis. We conclude that we should not fail to honor our distribution agreement based on our reservations about the content of a single book."
The board went on to say that if the manuscript had gone through the standard review process used by the University of Michigan, it would not have been published. But since the University of Michigan made arrangements with Pluto Press for distribution, the university never intended to review each manuscript individually before publication. "By resuming distribution, the board in no way endorses the content of the book," said the board in a statement.
However, the university still has its share of critics, both pro-Israel and pro-free speech.
The (non-monetary) value of a college degree
Although the topic of college degrees is often associated with an increase in earning potential, co-author Sandy Baun argues that a college degree offers non-monetary benefits in the book Education Pays: The Benefits of Higher Learning. The book is part of a growing campaign to frame higher education as a public good rather than a private investment.
The report used data from the Department of Education, the U.S. Census Bureau, and surveys from higher education institutes. The results point to college graduates who are more engaged citizens and who make healthier decisions than those without a diploma. The report argues that a college degree has a high rate of return for society.
"A lot of civic benefits are network benefits," said Suzanne Morse, president of the Pew Partnership for Civic Change, who participated in a College Board panel Wednesday on Capitol Hill. "Your ability to communicate well is more important when the rest of your community can communicate well."
Rates of participation in elections and volunteerism also increase with increased education.
