Reed College
In 1995, Reed College refused to participate in U.S. News and World Report annual survey. According to Reed's Office of Admissions, "Reed College has actively questioned the methodology and usefulness of college rankings ever since the magazine's best-colleges list first appeared in 1983, despite the fact that the issue ranked Reed among the top ten national liberal arts colleges. Reed's concern intensified with disclosures in 1994 by the Wall Street Journal about institutions flagrantly manipulating data in order to move up in the rankings in U.S. News and other popular college guides. This led Reed's then-president Steven Koblik to inform the editors of U.S. News that he didn't find their project credible, and that the college would not be returning any of their surveys."
Rolling Stone, in its 16 October 1997 issue, argued that Reed's rankings were artificially decreased by U.S. News after they stopped sending data to U.S. News and World Report. Reed has also made the same claim. In discussing Reed's decision, President Colin Diver wrote in an article for the November 2005 issue of the Atlantic Monthly, "by far the most important consequence of sitting out the rankings game, however, is the freedom to pursue our own educational philosophy, not that of some newsmagazine."
Read more about this topic: Criticism Of College And University Rankings (North America)
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