Private college official ousted after ranking drops

GENEVA, N.Y. (AP) - Small, private U.S. colleges that rely on tuition for survival ignore at their peril the guidebooks and magazine lists catering to parents and students zealously seeking the perfect school.

So when Hobart and William Smith Colleges, a liberal-arts campus on the leafy slopes above this Finger Lakes town, took a tumble in this month's U.S. News & World Report rankings of America's best colleges, retribution was swift.

Sociology Prof. Sheila Bennett was ousted as senior vice president of the men's and women's colleges. She had failed to submit fresh data that the magazine uses each year in assessing the academic merits of 1,400-plus schools nationwide.

"I don't believe this was intentional - it probably was just an administrative oversight," said Prof. Jack Harris, the faculty's presiding officer.

The episode brings into focus the enormous competitive pressures universities encounter in luring students and teachers, particularly private institutions with small endowments that need to flesh out their budgets with high tuition fees.

"In the absence of other measures of reputation, these rankings and a series of other guidebooks can have considerable import," Harris said. "The U.S. News survey is one of the most public demonstrations of our quality and reputation, whether you buy into it or not."

A year's stay at Hobart and William Smith costs $25,200, plus $6,800 for room and board. Hobart, a men's college, was founded in 1822 and William Smith was started for women in 1908. Their 1,800 undergraduates share faculty, classrooms and an 180-acre campus but each has its own dean, admissions office and athletic programs and awards its own degrees.

Only 84 schools failed to return survey data to U.S. News this year, some for philosophical reasons, the magazine said. Reed College in Portland, Ore., has refused to participate since 1995, saying it finds the survey too simplistic.

Bennett came to upstate New York from Emory University in 1990 as provost and faculty dean. She stepped down from those posts this spring amid criticism of her management style, taking a one-year appointment in charge of off-campus and international programs.

One of her duties was to supply U.S. News with such statistics as graduation rates, financial and faculty resources and alumni donations.

The magazine said it made repeated calls and sent a certified letter but ended up using data reported in previous years. That ended the school's longtime inclusion in the magazine's "second tier" of liberal arts colleges, dropping it to a "third tier" of schools ranked from No. 81 to No. 120.

Bennett, who retained her faculty job, refused to be interviewed. The Chronicle of Higher Education said she resigned her executive post at school President Mark Gearan's request soon after the U.S. News rankings came out.

Gearan would not say if the resignation was tied to the magazine poll. But he stressed that "but for the regrettable circumstances of U.S. News not having received the information, there would have been no change" in the school's ranking.