Many of the institutions that committed to the same resolution placed very highly on the U.S. News ranking of Liberal Arts Colleges for 2008. Even number one spot Williams College forfeited bragging rights on print.
The data that serves as the bases for college rankings (such as graduation and retention rates, class sizes, student/faculty ratios, faculty resources and alumni giving rates) will now be made public via these colleges' Web sites rather than be distributed exclusively to a single agency. Publications are permitted to draw from these public data for their future rankings.
"The question of the how colleges should interact with ranking agencies and publications has been one being widely discussed among college presidents," explained Marx. "We thought because of the attention to this issue, that we should make clear what our views are."
Marx said that the issue of college rankings has been the subject of lively conversation among members of the Annapolis Group, an organization of liberal arts colleges to which Amherst belongs. Several presidents corresponded about the matter this past summer.
"We felt, given all of the conversation nationally, that the top liberal arts colleges should see if we can agree on our views," said Marx.
"I think students will still look to rankings for information and guidance," Marx continued. "I hope our statement will help applicants understand that different students have different educational needs and fits. We want them to recognize that the choice of a college doesn't come down to a simple ranking." He added that, "certain students who don't know very much about the liberal arts colleges–certainly international students-for them [...] the rankings are a particularly useful way to start to research, but hopefully it's not the only way they do."
Marx said that the College evaluates its quality of education in a variety of ways, surveying incoming students, seniors and alumni and cooperating with other ranking agencies that conduct similar surveys to collect comparative data.
Director of Institutional Research and Planning Marian Matheson said that the results indicate that over 80 percent of College alumni earn an advanced degree and a high proportion of alumni work for non-profit organizations.
According to Matheson, "research has shown that high school students who are interested in schools like Amherst use magazine rankings on a limited basis and as just one of many sources of information they use to decide where to apply and eventually where to enroll."
"We are committed to talking to ranking agencies and publications to try to help them to rank us in ways that push us to be more responsible rather than less responsible," said Marx.