Rank and rile

The Atlantic Monthly's recent release of yet another compilation of college rankings joins US News & World Report and The Princeton Review in the sludge of assessments of academia. They guide the desires of prospective applicants, affect university administrative policy, and create endless elementary debates on whose university is better and why. Do they create any productive outcomes other than profits for the magazines from increased sales to frantic parents scrambling to send their kids to a school in the top 20? The frivolity and superfluous nature of such rankings lend themselves to empty promises and false reputations based on subjective data and peripheral observations. Applying to colleges then becomes a number game.

Tufts falls, depending on which list being scrutinized, in the 27 to 36 range, meaning we attend a top school, though we are not at the peak. The numbers get more specific. According to The Princeton Review, we rank 13th for food, but according to a survey in the publication, "It's true what they say about Tufts; the school is filled with bitter Ivy League rejects." Great. So according to the experts Tufts is a well-fed but acrimonious campus whose students, upon hearing that Tufts would be home for the next four years, gave out a grand Al Gore sigh of disgust. These gurus of the undergraduates really have honed down their skills to a science of generalities.

So what are parents and students purchasing when they buy these bibles of the bachelor's degree? First, they receive an effective guide to the colleges and universities in America. For all their faults, these compilations do tend to provide some analysis of the various programs, specialties, and atmospheres of different campuses. They also, through their rankings, create divisions between top tier schools and secondary schools that allow students of differing academic abilities to genuinely guide their college search in the right academic realm, even if the cut-offs are imperfect. Where they are wrong, though, is in the creation of a precise hierarchy which alienates, divides, and dictates choices and decisions by prospective students to the point where a school becomes unattractive because a 45-year-old editor decides that its town-gown relations are bad. Well, if the university fails to play nice with its neighbors, then maybe it will fail to educate me, the prospective students must think.

The bottom line is that university analysis by newsmagazines is tainted by worthless rankings. By jumping on the "best of" bandwagon, The Atlantic Monthly has succeeded in creating even more confusion for prospective students and more contention for current students -- not to mention an inevitable boost in circulation. But don't worry; word is that the administration is trying to bring us into the 20-to-15 range for next year. Let's hope.