President’s Letter

Thus, many colleges and universities, including Stanford, have begun to consider withdrawing from the annual U.S. News survey on the grounds that its methods of ranking institutions are misleading and inaccurate. At the same time, Stanford and other institutions wish to make useful information widely available and welcome objective reports about our programs. Because there is not yet a sufficient consensus on an alternative method of delivering information, Stanford, after much consideration, decided to continue to submit objective data ­ though not subjective reputational votes ­ to U.S. News this year.

We also took the first step toward an alternative by establishing a new World Wide Web site ­ www.stanford. edu/home/statistics/ ­ on which we offer data that may be helpful to prospective students.

We have invited interested colleges and universities to join us in further refining definitions and categories, and in posting standardized web pages that clearly display facts and statistics on programs, students, student-faculty ratios, faculty quality, financial resources and other pertinent indicators. The early reaction has been positive, including a suggestion by another university president that I very much like ­ having outside auditors certify the accuracy and integrity of the data each school posts. The founders of Yahoo! have expressed willingness to provide a central gateway to such pages through their Web search programs.

With such information, students and their families would be able to review and compare schools’ programs and resources, without the distortion of information that occurs in U.S. News’ ranking system. At the same time, I continue to urge U.S. News to reform its annual college survey practices.

* U.S. News should eliminate its attempt to rank colleges and universities like automobiles or toasters. The rankings of many institutions change dramatically from year to year (e.g., Stanford has never been assigned the same spot two years in a row; Johns Hopkins has been bounced from 22nd to 10th to 15th the last three years). Such moves are entirely misleading and say more about inconsistent scoring methods than actual changes in quality.

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