<p>NESCAC+Swarthmore+Pomona+Colgate+ W&L+ Grinnell. Hot off the presses:
<a href="http://www.wesleyan.edu/cgi-bin/cdf_manager/template_renderer.cgi?item=54741%5B/url%5D">http://www.wesleyan.edu/cgi-bin/cdf_manager/template_renderer.cgi?item=54741</a></p>
<p>
[quote]
Joint Statement on College Rankings
September 7, 2007</p>
<p>I, and the other undersigned presidents, agree that prospective students benefit from having as complete information as possible in making their college choices.</p>
<p>At the same time, we are concerned about the inevitable biases in any single ranking formula, about the admissions frenzy, and the way in which rankings can contribute to that frenzy and to a false sense that educational success or fit can be ranked in a single numerical list.</p>
<p>Since college and ranking agencies should maintain a degree of distance to ensure objectivity, from now on data we make available to college guides will be made public via our Web sites rather than be distributed exclusively to a single entity. Doing so is true to our educational mission and will allow interested parties to use this information for their own benefit. If, for example, class size is their focus, they will have that information. If it is the graduation rate, that will be easy to find. We welcome suggestions for other information we might also provide publicly.</p>
<p>We commit not to mention U.S. News or similar rankings in any of our new publications, since such lists mislead the public into thinking that the complexities of American higher education can be reduced to one number.</p>
<p>Finally, we encourage all colleges and universities to participate in an effort to determine how information about our schools might be improved.</p>
<p>As for rankings, we recognize that no degree of protest may make them soon disappear, and hope, therefore, that further discussion will help shape them in ways that will press us to move in ever more socially and educationally useful directions.</p>
<p>Michael S. Roth, President
Wesleyan University</p>
<p>Anthony Marx, Amherst College
Elaine Hansen, Bates College
Barry Mills, Bowdoin College
Nancy Vickers, Bryn Mawr College
Robert Oden, Carleton College
William D. Adams, Colby College
Rebecca Chopp, Colgate University
Russell Osgood, Grinnell College
Joan Hinde Stewart, Hamilton College
Stephen Emerson, Haverford College
Ronald Liebowitz, Middlebury College
David Oxtoby, Pomona College
Alfred Bloom, Swarthmore College
James Jones, Trinity College
Catharine Hill, Vassar College
Kenneth Ruscio, Washington and Lee University
Kim Bottomly, Wellesley College
Morton Schapiro, Williams College
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Morton Schapiro?</p>
<p>
[quote]
I, and the other undersigned presidents, agree that prospective students benefit from having as complete information as possible in making their college choices.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Does this mean that Wesleyan and Wellesley might start making their Common Data Set public any time soon ... and Middlebury agreeing to stop fiddling with the numbers?</p>
<p>Posting more college info directly on college Web sites sounds fine to me, as long as the postings adhere to common data definitions.</p>
<p>Tokenadult, it would be wonderful if one of half of the schools did one half of what they are pretending they'll do. Seeing the signature of schools that have so far refused to make the simplest of data available to the PUBLIC highlights the continuing hypocrisy of the schools. </p>
<p>How much should we believe that "Since college and ranking agencies should maintain a degree of distance to ensure objectivity, from now on data we make available to college guides will be made public via our Web sites rather than be distributed exclusively to a single entity."?</p>
<p>Will we see how Wellesley fills its Peer Assessment survey? Allow me to laugh at the comment that they will make the data "made available to college guide" public. What they will do is publish the data they DEEM the public should know: the ultra-sanitized and entirely unverifiable data that can be found in the "photoshopped-to-death" brochures. Should we trust schools that make the grass look greener in the winter and add many faces of minorities to their catalogs? </p>
<p>Do the schools want to (re)gain our trust? Start PUBLISHING the information and let US be judges if it is better than the much-maligned USNews reports. </p>
<p>I ain't holding my bated breath!</p>
<p>To your point, xiggi, on posting Common Data Sets, I recently a re-searched on-line CDS' from schools I couldn't find in the past.... low&behold, Trinity & Pomona now post them, whereas they were not to be found less than a year ago....BUT Wellesley's is still password protected, and Colgate, Vassar (although they have an OK factbook) and Wesleyan have no mention of a CDS. Don't hold your breath!</p>
<p>All those schools are considered the little ivies?</p>
<p>^^The OP was just putting a catchy title on his thread. Don't be offended; if the Ivies are generally the top research universities, then the schools on this list -- generally the top liberal arts colleges in the country -- could be considered the little ivies, I guess. But the main point here is that today's joint statement, xiggi's caveats notwithstanding, reads like progress in the endlessly tedious debate over how to treat the USNWR rankings.</p>
<p>The little Ivies are usually considered to be the NESCAC schools, Amherst, Bates, Bowdoin, Colby, Connecticut Collge (notably missing from the letter), Hamilton, Middlebury, Trinity, Tufts (kind of a special cae), Wesleyan, Williams. Some lists of little Ivies omit Conn and Trinity.</p>
<p>Hmmm... maybe they expect applications to be down this year...</p>
<p>I particularly like the sentiments in the second paragraph, but the most interesting part, to me was:</p>
<p>
[quote]
from now on data we make available to college guides will be made public via our Web sites rather than be distributed exclusively to a single entity.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I'm willing to wait and see; the quote is nicely vague, but it really could imply that all of these schools will make their CDSs available on the web, and it seems (to me at least) to suggest that they will not fill out the U. S. News survey at all. U. S. News will have to scurry around to web sites to cull their information (as they do now for a handful of non-submitters). </p>
<p>I don't think that this will make much difference in the sales or influence of US News's rankings, but at least these schools are not underwriting an enterprise whose effects they find harmful.</p>
<p>"Amount of reliable data published" is just another criterion by which universities can be ranked. No reason why US News or an Association Of Overpaying Parents can't publish a "transparency index" of the colleges. </p>
<p>Website information can be certified or even audited, whether for CDS compliance or any other standard.</p>
<p>Data from individual universities can be combined, centralized and processed on independent third-party web sites not under the universities' control.</p>
<p>And the evil number crunchers will continue publishing their analyses.</p>
<p>Here's a report that was linked to Trinity's press release today. It's from a month ago, but may flesh out a bit of what Trinity's understanding of some of the terms of the letter mean:</p>
<p>
[quote]
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.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>It's also notable that one step that the "full-fledged" Annapolis Group protesters, including Trinity, took is not mentioned in the Little Ivy letter: the pledge to not supply the peer assessment.</p>
<p>Some other notable non-signatories: Davidson, Claremont McKenna (xiggi??); also Hamilton, Oberlin.</p>
<p>.. or Macalester, or Smith. Barnard's pres was out front with this in the first place, maybe she doesn't need to say anything else.
Oberlin has a new president that started like 2 days ago.They make plenty of information available already.</p>
<p>Furman's president commented on this recently in the Greenville news:</p>
<p>I have never been a rankings fan. I think the more schools do to allow prospective students to get a peek into what they are really like is a good thing. I would definitely be in favor or increased efforts to this end.</p>
<p>"of," not "or" --- won't let me edit tonight!</p>
<p>WesDad</p>
<p>Hamilton is on there. I'm pleased to see Grinnell and Carleton on there and I'll bet Oberlin and Mac will follow. These are such amazing schools! They don't need a number by their names to prove it.</p>
<p>Hamilton is listed among the signatories. And I don't think these colleges expect their applications to be down. S2 attends Colgate and they had a big jump in applications this year and a corresponding drop in % admitted (as i suspect is the case with most, if not all, of these schools). Three nephews attended Williams and I doubt their apps will be going down anytime soon either. I don't think these schools are doing this because of dissatisfaction with their place in the rankings, and I am willing to credit them (cautiously) with good intentions.</p>
<p>I don't think that they expect their applications to go down either. U. S. News will continue to publish the rankings, and the rank order won't change any more than in any other year among the top 25, where a place or two seems to matter most. (As an aside, U. S. News currently consults school web sites to get the data for a number of schools that don't submit it voluntarily and ranks them.) </p>
<p>Still, I don't think that it's any coincidence that it was a group effort by the top LACs rather than a case where someone took a unilateral step. That says something about the sway of the rankings.</p>
<p>Hawkette, the institutions in the Annapolis Group (80 colleges) ARE boycotting the peer review section!</p>