Commentary: The Truth and Consequences of Academic Rankings

• Author: Stephen Joel Trachtenberg
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12634
• Published date: 01 September 2016
• Date: 01 September 2016

The Truth and Consequences of Academic Rankings 803

Stephen Joel Trachtenberg is

president emeritus and university professor

at The George Washington University. He is

a consultant at Korn Ferry International and

partner at Rimon Law.

E-mail : trachtenberg@gwu.edu

Commentary

W hat is the world of rankings all about?

For years I believed that U.S. News &

World Report ’s Robert Morse was the

Darth Vader of higher education, the editor of a

divisive and unfortunate maneuver advanced on the

American education system, a conspiracy designed

to ensure that the academic One-Percenters (schools

with the highest per capita endowment) remain

at the top while the rest of us (tuition dependent)

struggle to push the rock up the hill. The world of

college rankings is a piece of propaganda put before

the public as the Holy Grail, a marketing scheme

developed to sell magazines. But even such ploys have

unintended consequences.

Jacob Fowles, H. George Frederickson, and Jonathan

G. S. Koppell have worked diligently to assess the

world of college rankings, looking at data from a

broad variety of sources and analyzing the effects

of these scorecards on student enrollment, faculty

recruitment, and the overall management/stability of

the institutions, among other variables. Their results

point out several important factors, including the

following: (1) no matter how critical one may be of

the rankings methodology and outcomes, the process

itself has become engrained in the accountability

procedures followed by colleges; (2) the ability of a

school to move up or down is marginal; and (3) there

is a direct corollary between endowment per student

and an institution ’ s place within the rankings.

This article verifies through research what many

academic leaders have been saying anecdotally for

years—the differences between schools below the

top 50 and above the bottom 50 are so marginal as

to make little statistical difference. The best choice

for any given student, faculty member, or individual

administrator about where to study, teach, or work is

best made by personal factors rather than by formal

rankings.

When a university does break into the top 25

academic rankings, undergraduate applications often

multiply, but that result is likely to be on par with

making the Sweet Sixteen of the NCAA basketball

tournament (a category, by the way, not listed on the

U.S. News ranking forms).

My traditional response to the question “Where

should I apply to college?” is “It all depends.” An

analysis of colleges and universities requires finesse,

and that is what is missing from the college rankings

game.

All that said, the authors are correct that few

institutions can avoid complying with the business

of rankings: too many members of the general public

believe that the published listings are true. America is

a nation that annually rates movies, pop songs, show

animals, restaurants, basketball teams, and so on, so

why not colleges and universities?

Stephen Joel Trachtenberg

The George Washington University

The Truth and Consequences of Academic Rankings

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 76, Iss. 5, pp. 803–804. © 2016 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.12634.