As high-school seniors finalize their decisions about where to apply to college this fall, many are likely scouring the pages of the U.S. News & World Report Best Colleges guide. Getting into a top-ranked school on the list is the ultimate goal for countless students.
That’s a problem — both for the students who miss out on excellent schools that don’t make it to the top of the rankings, and for less well-known colleges like mine that not only see our reputations hurt by the problematic rankings list, but also potentially lose millions in philanthropic dollars.
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As high-school seniors finalize their decisions about where to apply to college this fall, many are likely scouring the pages of the U.S. News & World Report Best Colleges guide. Getting into a top-ranked school on the list is the ultimate goal for countless students.
That’s a problem — both for the students who miss out on excellent schools that don’t make it to the top of the rankings, and for less well-known colleges like mine that not only see our reputations hurt by the problematic rankings list, but also potentially lose millions in philanthropic dollars.
I’ve hated the U.S. News rankings for a long time and haven’t been shy about expressing my feelings. I’ve written essays and given interviews — including on Malcom Gladwell’s two-part podcast on the subject this summer — to point out that the most popular college-ranking guide is little more than a measurement of wealth and privilege. It harms institutions such as the one I lead, Dillard University, because we don’t have a lot of rich, white, full-time, traditional students who as alumni will be able to make the mega donations that swell endowments. Fully 80 percent of our students receive the federal Pell grant, a primary source of aid for low-income students, dooming us from the start in a rankings race that designates endowment size as a primary qualification for moving to the top of the list.
In the wake of 2020’s racial reckoning, philanthropists and corporations started to give more to historically Black colleges and universities like Dillard, recognizing that we provide tremendous opportunity to the students we serve and were overdue for financial support. MacKenzie Scott led the way by giving more than half a billion dollars to 23 HBCUs. Very thankfully, Dillard University was in that group.
I noticed something immediately, though, about the first six HBCUs to receive donations — they were the top six in the U.S. News rankings of the best HBCUs. As in its larger rankings list, U.S. News uses wealth as a major factor in determining which HBCUs rise to the top. Not surprisingly, those six colleges, all outstanding institutions, also have the six largest endowments and fewest Pell grant students among HBCUs.
When the second group of donor recipients was announced, Dillard received $5 million — our largest private gift ever. As the third-smallest school to receive funds from Scott, we saw our gift as proportional to our size and an enormous blessing. But I couldn’t help but wonder whether our gift would have been larger if U.S. News had ranked us higher.
As it happened, our ranking inexplicably dropped 11 points two years ago. We eventually learned the cause: a clerical mix-up. U.S. News had sent its request for data that year to one of our former staff members, even though we had provided the guide’s staff with updated contact information. But because the U.S. News staff members didn’t hear back from us, they penalized Dillard for not participating. The problem was corrected the next year, and our ranking jumped eight points, but the damage was done.
Those who run the college guide insist they don’t penalize schools for not participating in the rankings race. But in our case, by listing our data for that year as N/A, or not available, U.S. News made a decision that created a wild swing in our rankings, potentially costing Dillard millions.
Our story highlights the arbitrary nature of these rankings and the problem of factoring them into decisions about where philanthropists direct their dollars.
Consider, instead, Scott’s simple but ingenious approach to giving. Among the factors she used to make her choices were strong and consistent leadership, potential for high impact, and a dedication to helping others. Her team had conversations with dozens of industry experts before deciding which institutions to support. The final gifts were given upfront with no strings attached, allowing the colleges to spend the funds however they saw fit.
Scott’s approach should be fully embraced by philanthropists and foundations looking to have a transformative effect on institutions. They should also deploy a more sophisticated analysis of data to identify colleges that rise above the rest. For instance, if School A has a 70 percent graduation rate, and School B has a 50 percent rate, many would assume that the former is doing a better job. But if only 10 percent of School A’s student body receives Pell grants compared with 70 percent of School B’s, it is actually the latter college that is doing the transformative work of graduating lower-income students facing multiple barriers.
While higher-education leaders have long criticized the U.S. News approach, the vast majority remain slaves to the rankings. Strategic plans are still developed that include rankings goals. Employment contracts continue to include bonuses for employees when the school climbs higher on the list.
Donors, however, have no excuse for perpetuating the power of one rankings list. If they truly want to have an impact, a diverse array of organizations, including the United Negro College Fund, the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities, and the Rutgers Center for Minority Serving Institutions, can provide them with insight into those schools that are making a real contribution with limited resources.
The key word is “if.” Far too many philanthropists chase the clout that a gift to an already wealthy school provides. They should consider how Scott’s historic giving generated much greater publicity and praise than those gifts ever produce.
The lesson is one that any college student would understand: The so-called gold standard of college rankings should never be the basis of philanthropic gifts. The rankings exist for just one reason — to perpetuate privilege.
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