Its move could encourage other colleges to do the same. Three have acted this year.
Columbia University is dropping out of the undergraduate rankings of U.S. News & World Report.
The university’s law and medical schools earlier announced that they would not participate, but the undergraduate rankings get more attention.
A statement noted that much of the information conveyed in the rankings may be found in the university’s Common Data Sets, which the university just released for this year.
“We remain concerned with the role that rankings have assumed in the undergraduate application process, both in the outsized influence they may play with prospective students, and in how they distill a university’s profile into a composite of data categories. Much is lost in this approach. The combined population of our three schools, along with the presence of students from affiliate institutions, in classrooms and across many aspects of student life, is intrinsic to the undergraduate experience at Columbia. We are convinced that synthesizing data into a single U.S. News submission for its Best Colleges rankings does not adequately account for all of the factors that make our undergraduate programs exceptional,” said a letter from Mary C. Boyce, the provost.
This year, Colorado College, the Rhode Island School of Design and Stillman College have all withdrawn from the U.S. News undergraduate rankings.
Source: Inside Highered
