Professor Makes Personal Report on College Rank

To the Editors:

Professor Juang’s letter to the Review on 10/4 raises serious issues. He claims that because the U.S. News And World Report national college rankings are “vacuous” they are of no real import for us. I respectfully disagree. In fact, I believe that the attitude embedded in the letter, namely “we-are-just-fine-and-the-outside-world-doesn’t-know-it,” is both the underlying cause of our dramatic fall from the high-rent district we used to live in, and the reason we seem to be heading so rapidly for the low-rent academic boondocks.
The diagram below describes our ranking history from the beginning of U.S. News And World Report’s publication of college rankings up to this year’s report. It also shows the same history for six other schools we like to think of as members of our peer comparison group. Looking at this group we notice some interesting features. All started together in the top ten (Oberlin had been in the top 6 continuously from 1961) and all but Carleton and Oberlin maintained a consistently high ranking with little year-to-year variation. Carleton’s fall from grace began a year before our decline but it managed to get back into the top five after ten years of continuous improvement. In contrast, starting in 1989, Oberlin began a steady decline, broken only by the small bounces in 2000 and 2001. Unlike Professor Juang, I regard this situation with some alarm.
Regardless of how we feel about ourselves, the outside world has declining regard for our quality as a liberal arts institution. This will inevitably and negatively affect our ability to attract high-quality students and faculty. It is now a real stretch to claim that our “normal comparison group” is the sixteen top Liberal Arts colleges . Very soon we will be forced to admit that we are really competing for students and faculty with the schools in our present ranking neighborhood of 20-30. The fact that we officially do not seem to recognize the dangers inherent in the low ranking merely makes it harder to adjust rapidly enough. Carleton figured out by the mid 90’s how to bounce back. We alone in the group of seven seen below seem to have no clue. I strongly urge Oberlin to recognize the seriousness of this problem promptly and publicly. But getting out of denial is just the first stage. Since we are falling consistently we need to attack the problem more effectively. I urge our administration, at the very least, get in touch with Carleton and find out how they turned things around.
We are told, among the many rationalizations for our current crisis that are hovering over the campus, that all possible is being done, that even if there was a “problem” it would be due to forces we cannot control, that the budget problem is too severe to do much now, that it doesn’t matter anyway since the rankings are faulty and we know deep in our hearts we’re truly great, etc. If we believe any of this nonsense and continue along our current path we will, perhaps in less than a decade, cease to be regarded as a distinguished institution in the eyes of the students and parents who buy our services, faculty we attempt to attract, top graduate schools, and our former peers. Then, if I should draw the diagram again in 10 years, look for Oberlin under your bootstraps.

–Robert Piron
Professor of Economics