OPINION

COLUMNIST: What we need are better rankings of colleges

In the beginning, God created the heavens, the Earth, and American higher education. We lived in a bucolic state of nature until an evil serpent, U.S. News & World Report, tempted us to partake of the Tree of Knowledge: namely, college rankings. A fall from grace ensued.

That's what you might think when reading about the recent spate of attacks on U.S. News. Six elite law schools--including Harvard and Yale--announced that they would no longer participate in its rankings, which reward schools whose graduates earn high salaries. Critics say that penalizes institutions that prepare students for less lucrative jobs in the nonprofit world.

They're right. I hope this news spells the death knell for the U.S. News system, which has likewise encouraged undergraduate colleges to favor wealthy applicants. But there were rankings before U.S. News, and there will be rankings after it. What we need are lists that compare schools along different lines, including how well they promote public service.

In America, we love rankings--of everything. Google "top 10" and see for yourself. You'll find endless lists of the best cars, the best movies and the best hotels.

This obsession was foreseen by French philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville, who visited the United States in 1831. America, Tocqueville observed, was the world's most democratic and egalitarian society. Dispensing with hereditary titles, it offered unparalleled opportunity to a wide array of white people. (Black people were another story altogether.)

But the freest country was also the most conformist one: Precisely because we Americans lacked fixed social standards, we were always comparing ourselves to each other.

Call it buyer's remorse, on an existential scale: There's always something or someone better out there that you could have purchased or pursued. The only way you can determine what's "best" in America is to figure out what your fellow Americans think is best.

One useful ranking comes from Washington Monthly magazine, which lists colleges based on the social mobility they provide: Schools that help less privileged students move up the economic ladder get a higher score. The list also rewards schools whose alumni work in AmeriCorps, the military and other forms of public service.


Jonathan Zimmerman teaches education and history at the University of Pennsylvania.

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