Colleges happily grade students and evaluate faculty but are often not thrilled by the published report cards they receive as institutions. Every September, school administrators find themselves clamoring in anticipation of the latest release of U.S. News & World Report’s Best National University Rankings, each aspiring to be atop the list. But the usual top-ranked schools according to U.S. News (Harvard, Princeton, Yale, MIT, Stanford, etc.) have recently received relatively low marks from an emerging type of ranking based solely on impressions of inferred tolerance of campus cultures rather than assessments of scholarly contributions, or evaluations of student learning, or descriptions of campus life.
College rankings by the right-leaning Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) and Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the most prominent examples of those ideological ranking systems, mark a far departure from what was once considered the controversial rankings by U.S. News. And they are reflective of a polarization inherent in America that has slowly eroded its social fabric. Surprisingly, out of 250 schools rated by FIRE, the country’s top five schools include Michigan Technological University, Florida State University, and the University of Eastern Kentucky while the bottom five include Harvard, Columbia, and the University of Pennsylvania.
Even more surprisingly, political operatives have mused about using FIRE’s rankings as a tool for assessing whether a university should receive federal research grants, such as the tens of billions of dollars provided by the National Institute of Health, which are pivotal funds used to advance national innovation and competitiveness in science, medicine, and technology.
Read more at Time.
