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ISSUE: 09/13/07 > News > BU Rankings
For the third year in a row, Belmont University ranks in U.S. News and World Report’s top schools in the south for 2008. This time, though, Belmont, Tennessee’s second largest private university, slipped one notch to No. 11, tying with Spring Hill College in Alabama.
In the rankings, released this month, Belmont was ranked as the top Tennessee school in this category. Five other schools in Tennessee also topped the category, including Lipscomb University, which came in at No. 25 and Lee University at No. 56.
Even though Belmont is not where it was last year, U.S. News & World Report’s director of data research, Robert Morse, says it’s not a noticeable move in the grand scheme of things.
“A drop from 10th to 11th is not statistically significant and should not be viewed as a real meaningful change in Belmont University’s ranking,” said Morse.
Belmont ranked under top Masters Universities in the south. This category, according to U.S. News, covers schools that have a full range of graduate and master’s programs, but little or no doctoral programs, like medical programs.
Belmont’s provost, Dan McAlexander, said one aspect of the ranking process may have been a reason Belmont slipped this year. This is where the presidents, provosts and chief enrollment officers of colleges rate other colleges' “academic quality” in their region, as well as their own. This affects 25 percent of school’s ratings.
McAlexander said newly hired administrators from other regions might not know much about the schools they end up rating saying he experienced the same thing.
“I was hired from the western region. To be honest with you, the 130 schools on that list, I didn’t know much about them because [my former school] had been competing in the western region,” said McAlexander. “So that number can be affected just by lack of knowledge.”
McAlexander is not the only one who noticed the U.S. News college ranking process is flawed. It has met opposition from the “Annapolis Group,” an alliance of more than 100 liberal arts colleges in the country, and from a non-profit American educational organization called “The Education Conservancy.”
Founder and director of the Education Conservancy, Lloyd Thacker sent a letter out to every college president in the country in May. It essentially called for a boycott of sorts of certain aspects of the U.S. News college rankings. One of these was the previously mentioned reputational survey.
At least 61 colleges signed the letter agreeing not to participate in this survey, including Pennsylvania’s Lafayette College, Minnesota’s Northwestern College and Georgia’s Wesleyan College.
Belmont did not sign the letter of agreement. Rather McAlexander said the university will make efforts to work with the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities. This organization has a Web site where colleges can post data without the subjectivity of reputational surveys.
"U.S. news rankings, for all their flaws… are about the only thing out there where students can get a set of dashboard measures that they can compare [schools with]," said McAlexander. "[It] does a service. That said, I don’t see us going the way of the Annapolis group. I do see us continuing to be interested in helping to be part of a solution."
McAlexander said school officials will continue to focus on increasing graduation and retention rates to keep Belmont climbing the rankings ladder.
“You don’t really live by the rankings, you celebrate them. It’s more important that we be thought of as one of the leading private institutions in the south,” said McAlexander. "We expect that over time we’ll rise in the rankings, but that’s not why we do what we do."
