Ratings or Rankings? - Michael Stratford, Inside Higher Ed

Since the White House rolled out its plan to create a federal college ratings system last August, administration officials have repeatedly insisted that they are not interested in putting together a scheme that would rank institutions. As recently as Friday, for instance, Education Secretary Arne Duncan admonished a White House reporter’s suggestion that the administration is seeking to develop a system akin to the rankings compiled annually by U.S. News and World Report. “Very different from U.S. News,” Duncan clarified. “This is not a ranking system; this is a rating system.” The administration is proposing a system that rates institutions by giving them scores or grades on a set of indicators, officials have said, but it does not want to rank them numerically like a handful of publications do. But a new paper released Wednesday by the American Council on Education makes the case against the administration’s proposed ratings system by laying out evidence it says shows that college rankings have harmed higher education. http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/03/20/new-report-says-obama-ratings-proposal-will-lead-same-problems-rankings