August 23, 2004
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Topic: Question of the day
As part of my book promotion, I’ll be at my alma mater, Washington U. in St. Louis, which is hosting one of the presidential debates. There will be a lot of political stuff going on all around that time, and while I don’t think i’ll be getting involved, I’m trying to think, if I could make one sign to show on tv, or, if I could ask one question to both candidates, what would it be. What would you guys ask?
Topic: US News & World Reports college rankings
One of the many objectives of my book, “College Daze” is to have Washington U. in St. Louis remove itself from these rankings. The two main reasons, are that it promotes harmful competitiveness between schools and between students, as well as that it is a poor measure of “quality of education.” When I graduated in 2003, Wash U was ranked #9 in the country. That’s right, I went to a school that many would acknowledge to be one of the 10 best, right up there with the ivy’s. My personal experience, which I’ll say was average as in I enjoyed school about as much as anyone else, was a personal red-flag that these rankings are deceiving people to believe that they are going to suddenly love school because they’re going to have dynamic professors, engaged classes, etc. How can a #9 ranked school be only average, with professors and classes as dynamic as high school?
As it turns out, Wash U is ranked #9 based on two leading variables. One is their wealth, or the size of their endowment. The second reason is their ability to market students with a high level of selectivity, bringing in not the best people, or best students (i don’t believe there’s anyway to determine that) but the best people on paper, based on grades, SATs, extra-curriculars, etc. Those two factors are the prime reason why Wash U is ranked so highly, and why they are able to charge $30,000+ semester for the privilege of receiving credits from Wash U., versus receiving credits anywhere else.
Many professors are wary of the rankings. It is my hope, that “College Daze” will be read by these and other professors to turn their wariness into something meaningful, so that they demand that Wash U. not be included in future rankings, as a statement that the rankings do not reflect quality of education, and that schools should not measure themselves against one another by these rankings. However, it was my expectation that what would really need to happen before Wash U pulled itself from the rankings, was Wash U to slip in the rankings. This weeks US News & World Reports shows Wash U slipping out of the top 10, to spot number 11. It’s already no their website, www.wustl.edu if you want to see whether the school pays attention to such things or not.
Currently listening to: Madonna the Immaculate Collection
Currently doing: more editing, waiting for my 2 aussie friends and english friend from camp to arrive, bike ride later, stare at some adventure travel magazines in the library
Currently looking forward to: just bought a discovery pass from greyhound, $575 for 2 months of unlimited travel in the US and Canada. Heading to St. Louis, Austin for the austin city limits music festival, www.aclfestival.com, heading to san fran to hopefully meet a book publisher, heading to berkely to see what the school is all about, and we’ll see what else develops.
Comments (1)
the journey sounds great. seeing America by bus probably brings it more into focus than anyother mode of travel. Anyway, I’m really interested in your views on reforming education. One of the things I’ve been doing is looking at colleges that do things very differently: College of the Atlantic in Maine and St. Johns’s in Annapolis and New Mexico are two.
Of course the key question is: What is education? Is it vocational training or is it learning to challenge existing world views? I read in an interesting book about “What the best college teachers do” (I’ll go back and find the title/author later) that the biggest issue was not what students didn’t know, but what they already know that isn’t true, a particularly massive problem due to the state of k-12 education in America.