Summary of NACAC/U.S. News & World Report Ad Hoc Committee ...

preliminary results were available to committee members. Among discussion points
were:
- Further analysis of survey results for committee and for public
- Reliance on rankings by international students
- Concerns with the emphasis of the peer assessment survey
- Effects of methodology on data reporting on colleges and other organizations;
desire to allow individuals to organize the ranking data themselves based on their
own weights/preferences
� USNWR discussed the presence of multiple college data publishers who are publishing
much of some of the same basic non-ranking college data that U.S. News is publishing,
existence of other rankings, and demand for information in the marketplace; noted
existence of large amounts of data, and that the value-added is from organizing and
making sense of it for consumers
� USNWR discussed changes in the media industry that have affected print publications,
including magazines, with a resulting shift toward digital content
� Committee will release data from survey throughout the fall, culminating in a survey
report in December 2010/January 2011
� NACAC committee members noted that some of the member survey is predictable,
some is contradictory; for example, survey results suggest that members think rankings
encourages counter-productive behavior, but few identified their own institution as the
source of such behavior
IV. Discussion of recent changes to US News rankings methodology, publication
� NACAC committee members drew attention to the peer assessment portion of the
methodology—member survey indicated the most member concern about methodology
focused on peer assessments
� USNWR has reduced the weight of the academic peer survey in the National
Universities and National Liberal Arts categories in the current year’s methodology
(published 8/17/10) by 10 percentage points.
� Questions about organization of the U.S. News ranking by Carnegie Classifications were
raised; USNWR had discussed internally and with many in higher education over the
years that its old names of categories were not self-evident to some users. As a result,
the ranking category names were changed on 8/17/10. UNEWS felt that the new
categories have become significantly better than in previous years based on recent
feedback by colleges; NACAC members noted that there are still categories that
combine colleges that are substantially dissimilar
NACAC/US News Ad Hoc Committee_Public Summary of 9/30/2010 meeting Page 2 of 3