Letter from the President

BREAKING RANKS

By Gerhard Casper

n only my fifth year on the Farm, Stanford has achieved acclaim no one ­ least of all me ­ could have expected. This spring, Sports Illustrated ranked us No. 3 among “America’s Top 50 Jock Schools.” Quite an accomplishment under a president who, before arriving at Stanford, thought of offense as an infraction of the law, and defense as the case opposing the prosecution.

Whatever emotion one feels at our selection as a leading “jock school,” these rankings seem at least partially tongue-in-cheek. More difficult to dismiss lightly are the fundamentally flawed efforts of a different magazine to rank “America’s Best Colleges.” Colleges and their individual programs ­ not to mention, prospective college students ­ are far too varied to produce a rank-order list of what is best for everyone.

The critical question prospective college students and their families face is not: What is America’s best college? Rather, it is the more complex and nuanced: What is the best college for me ­ for my needs, my interests, my objectives?

Many college guides help by providing valuable information that allows students to compare for themselves the programs and qualities of colleges and universities. One guide, published by U.S. News & World Report, attempts to rank colleges and universities by a single yardstick. In doing so, U.S. News does a substantial disservice to prospective students and fails to meet basic standards of good social science and journalism.

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