Education Conservancy

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The Education Conservancy, is an American educational non-profit organization headed by director Lloyd Thacker. It describes its goal as being "committed to improving college admission processes for students, colleges and high schools." ^[1]

1 Criticism of college rankings
- 1.1 List of colleges and universities
- 1.2 Debate
2 Yale conference on college rankings
3 Notes
4 See also
5 External links

[edit] Criticism of college rankings

In May 2007, a movement criticizing the practice of college rankings was initiated by Thacker. It follows previous movements in the U.S. and Canada (by schools in the 1990s such as Reed College, Stanford University, Alma College, as well as a number of universities in Canada in 2006) which have criticized the practice of college rankings.

The Presidents Letter (dated May 10, 2007), developed by Lloyd Thacker of the Education Conservancy, was sent to college and university presidents in the United States in May 2007. The letter does not ask for a full boycott but rather states that:

while we believe colleges and universities may want to cooperate in providing data to publications for the purposes of rankings, we believe such data provision should be limited to data which is collected in accord with clear, shared professional standards (not the idiosyncratic standards of any single publication), and to data which is required to be reported to state or federal officials or which the institution believes (in accord with good accountability) should routinely be made available to any member of the public who seeks it. ^[2]

Instead, it asks presidents not to participate in the "reputational survey" portion of the overall survey (this section accounts for 25% of the total rank and asks college presidents to give their subjective opinion of other colleges). The letter also asks presidents not to use the rankings as a form of publicity:

Among other reasons, we believe [...] rankings: imply a false precision and authority that is not warranted by the data they use;obscure important differences in educational mission in aligning institutions on a single scale;say nothing or very little about whether students are actually learning at particular colleges or universities;encourage wasteful spending and gamesmanship in institutions' pursuing improved rankings;overlook the importance of a student in making education happen and overweight the importance of a university's prestige in that process; and degrade for students the educational value of the college search process. We ask you to make the following two commitments: 1. Refuse to fill out the U.S. News and World Report reputational survey. 2. Refuse to use the rankings in any promotional efforts on behalf of your college or university, and more generally, refuse to refer to the rankings as an indication of the quality of your college or university."^[3]

[edit] List of colleges and universities

Main article: List of colleges and universities which have signed the Presidents Letter

Twelve college and university presidents originally signed the letter in early May. ^[4] The letter currently has sixty-one signatures, though others may be added at a later date. ^[5]

[edit] Debate

A debate concerning the decision of the Annapolis Group to offer an alternative set of data as part of a current movement which challenges commercial college rankings was published as a podcast in the 25 June 2007 issue of Inside Higher Ed. The debate was between Lloyd Thacker, director of the Education Conservancy, who is a well known critic of the U.S. News rankings, and U.S. News editor Brian Kelly. The debate was moderated by Inside Higher Ed reporter, Scott Jaschik. ^[6]

[edit] Yale conference on college rankings

On 25 September 2007, the Education Conservancy will sponsor the daylong conference, "“Beyond Ranking: Responding to the Call for Useful Information." The event will be hosted by the Yale University Office of Undergraduate Admissions. The conference will focus "on developing alternatives for providing students and families with information about colleges". The conference is by invitation only and will include, "education leaders, including college presidents, the heads of associations, and researchers, who might help ponder how a national, Web-based information system would work, what data it would include, and who should design and finance it, among other questions." ^[7]