By the numbers

Students should not take rankings as final say

Last week, U.S. News and World Report ranked the University of Michigan Hospitals No. 12 in the nation. The University made the cut in 13 out of the 16 specialties ranked by the publication, with otolaryngology, geriatrics, gynecology, psychiatry, rehabilitation and rheumatology climbing up the ranks while cancer, neurology, orthopedics and urology took a drop in departmental placement. It is to the credit of the University that it made such an impressive mark in the assortment of health establishments, but the bigger picture of university rankings, which U.S. News has almost monopolized in the information market, is more ominous than promising.

U.S. News is well known for its ranking of both undergraduate and graduate schools, which it classifies according to a scale determined by varying factors; SATs, ACTs, LSATs, MCATs and graduating GPAs of accepted students are obvious elements in the scaling formula. But certain other constituents like acceptance rates, class sizes, alumni donations and the opinion of judges and lawyers (in the case of law school rankings) add inequity to an equation that is already imperfect.

The U.S. News surveys overlook the intricacies of many categories which determine the rankings of these schools. A state-run college will always have a higher acceptance rate than a private school, based on legislative and state policy issues. All else equal, the purpose of the state-run institution is to educate more students at lesser fees. This situation does not necessarily imply that a state-run school is inferior in terms of academic standards than a private institution. But the formulation of the U.S. News surveys generally place public schools lower than private schools. Similarly, factors like class size, which is on average larger in public schools than at private schools, hinder the placement of public schools. It is therefore no surprise that the top-20 national universities ranked by U.S. News in 1997 were all private schools, while only three public schools, including the University, were given a spot in the top 25. So an elemental partiality of this ranking exists against state-run institutions.

Correspondingly, alumni donation rates, which are based on financial and economic factors, and the opinions of judges and lawyers, who are professionals far removed from academia and may have school bias, are a poor reflection of a particular institution's academic standing. Such factors give schools and their rankings a more commercial connotation than an academic one.

Perhaps more portentous than this ranking system are the effects it creates in the information market. For many students, these ratings are the final word in college applications; and many times these rankings are a matter of great distress and discontent to applicants when they are not accepted to the top institution of higher learning. Analogously, in an effort to boost their ranking, university admissions may place utmost importance on the components of this ranking, such as test scores and GPAs, instead of other qualitative elements which should be sought in students. Consequently, many deserving students may be left behind in their pursuit of an education. Also, schools that place a boycott on these rankings run the risk of not being placed at all, exacerbating their problem.

When it comes to selecting a school or a hospital, people need to take the rankings with a grain of salt. Only the student can determine what is best for him or her. Gill Omenn, head of the University's Health System, summed up the recent rankings well when he said: "It is not a science. It's a beauty contest."

07-27-98