Director of data research at U.S. News Robert “Bob” Morse recently gave details on why Howard University fell 22 spots in the most recent Best Colleges rankings report.
The man behind the U.S. College News Ranking said Howard’s decline during the 2014 data collection was “mainly due to its administrative inability or refusal to report its most recent data about itself to U.S. News.”
Howard fell 22 spots to No. 142, having previously been ranked No. 120 in the 2013 edition. The historically black university is now undergoing changes in administration after Sidney A. Ribeau announced his retirement from presidency the same year, puzzling many: “Howard University president, Sidney Ribeau, was a force for good!” tweeted John Silvanus Wilson, president of Morehouse College.
But Morse says there were many factors behind U.S. News‘s recent report on Howard, and that the school’s rankings fell “sharply” during the Ribeau era.
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There were many factors behind Howard’s rankings decline during Ribeau’s time in office. The school dropped from being in the top 100 in the 2010 edition to today’s position because its ranking scores in academic peer assessment, graduation and retention rates, student selectivity, faculty resources, alumni giving and graduation rate performance all fell relative to other schools in the National Universities rankings.
The indicators where Howard’s performance deteriorated since 2010 account for a total of 82.5 percent of the U.S. News ranking model. In other words, Howard experienced declines in almost all of the key academic indicators used by U.S. News, which resulted in its drop in the rankings.
In the current rankings, Howard is listed as a “school that refused to fill out the U.S. News statistical survey” during our winter and spring 2013 data collection. In Howard’s case, we gave the school credit for all the ranking data that it did report to U.S. News during the previous data collection in 2012.
This meant that almost all the factors used in Howard’s latest ranking were based on its previous year’s data. However, Howard didn’t report data used to compute the alumni giving rate and financial resources per student ranking variables to U.S. News for two consecutive years. For schools that skip two years of reporting data in those two ranking factors, U.S. News estimates those data points.
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Morse says the controversy rankings, which were first published in 1983, are based on 15 indicators, including “a reputation survey, admissions data, faculty data, financial-resources data, alumni giving and graduation and retention rates” that determines America’s Best Colleges annually.
“We’re not comparing all 1,400 schools. We’re dividing them up into 10 categories, like national universities and liberal arts … we assign a weight to each of the variables,” Morse told Time magazine.
“The peer survey, or the academic reputation, is the highest-weighted variable — it’s 25 percent,” he said.
In other news, veteran Washington lawyer and Howard trustee Vernon E. Jordan Jr. will lead a presidential search committee charged with replacing Ribeau, according to reports.
Jordan said Howard’s challenges over the years will not hinder the quest to find a new president and said the search committee has no timetable: “We are not in a hurry. But we know that it is urgent,” said Jordan.
Tommy Meade Jr. is HBCU Buzz‘s Editor in chief. Follow him on Twitter.
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