Colin Diver on life without the U.S. News rankings

Colin Diver's views on the U.S. News rankings -- and why Reed College refuses to cooperate with them -- appeared in the Atlantic Monthly more than a year ago. But the publication of his article predated the founding of MoneyLaw, and President Diver's views retain their value for this audience:

For ten years Reed has declined to fill out the annual peer evaluations and statistical surveys that U.S. News uses to compile its rankings. It has three primary reasons for doing so. First, one-size-fits-all ranking schemes undermine the institutional diversity that characterizes American higher education. The urge to improve one's ranking creates an irresistible pressure toward homogeneity, and schools that, like Reed, strive to be different are almost inevitably penalized. Second, the rankings reinforce a view of education as strictly instrumental to extrinsic goals such as prestige or wealth; this is antithetical to Reed's philosophy that higher education should produce intrinsic rewards such as liberation and self-realization. Third, rankings create powerful incentives to manipulate data and distort institutional behavior for the sole or primary purpose of inflating one's score. Because the rankings depend heavily on unaudited, self-reported data, there is no way to ensure either the accuracy of the information or the reliability of the resulting rankings.

Before becoming president of Reed College in 2002, Colin Diver served as the dean of two law schools: Boston University (1988-89) and Penn (1989-99).