The Spire

Owen Whaley ’24

Chief News Editor

President Vincent D. Rougeau celebrated Holy Cross’ entry into the top thirty of the U.S. News & World Report rankings of national liberal arts colleges last week. “This is a recognition of the incredible work of our students, faculty, and staff,” he wrote in a September 18 email to the campus community. “I am deeply grateful for the many ways in which you contribute to our community and support each other and our young people. Thank you.”

The rankings were released amid intense backlash to U.S. News’ longstanding influence over higher education. In recent months, top law and medical schools and a small number of undergraduate institutions have denounced the rankings as incompatible with values of justice and equity and ceased sharing internal data with the publication.

“We have reached a point where the rankings process is undermining the core commitments of the legal profession,” said Yale Law Dean Heather K. Gerken as her institution kickstarted the boycott late last year. “As a result, we will no longer participate.”

Within days, many of the nation’s leading law schools – including Harvard, Columbia, Stanford, Georgetown, the University of Michigan, and the University of California, Berkeley – cut ties with U.S. News. Deans accused the rankings of punishing institutions that direct students toward public interest careers and pressuring admissions teams to admit high-income applicants, undermining diversity. 

“Now is a moment when law schools need to express to U.S. News that they have created undesirable incentives for legal education,” wrote Berkely Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky.

In January, the law schools were joined in their boycott by more than a dozen medical schools from across the country: Harvard, Stanford, Columbia, Duke, Johns Hopkins, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Chicago, the University of Washington. “Rankings create perverse incentives for institutions to report misleading or inaccurate data, set policies to boost rankings rather than nobler objectives, or divert financial aid from students with financial need to high-scoring students with means in order to maximize ranking criteria,” wrote Harvard Medical School Dean George Q. Daley in a letter to university affiliates.

Undergraduate institutions struggled with the notion of refusing to share internal data with U.S. News. While Yale Law had inspired a mass exodus of graduate schools from the rankings, virtually no undergraduate institutions followed Columbia’s lead after it announced its own boycott in June. Yale and Harvard continued supplying undergraduate data despite playing a leading role in previous boycotts. Their hesitance was due in large part to the rankings’ pronounced influence on families of students navigating admissions.

U.S. News rankings have shaped perceptions of the nation’s colleges and universities from their first publication in 1983. A 1999 study by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that, for undergraduate institutions, declines in the rankings lead to higher acceptance rates, lower yields, and worse academic performance among matriculated students. As U.S. News maintains a policy of ranking all colleges and universities regardless of whether they submit internal data, undergraduate deans feared falling in the rankings as a result of incomplete or missing information.

“I hope that by making this choice we have undermined the credibility of U.S. News, because it has far too much influence over education,” Berkeley Law Dean Chemerinsky told the New York Times in an April interview. “But I’m a realist. I know they’re doing rankings. I want to make sure that whatever the data is, it is done accurately.”

For many, Reed College offered a cautionary tale. The top-ranked Portland liberal arts college withdrew from U.S. News in 1995 and saw its standing immediately plummet in subsequent years. The consequences have been long-lasting; in this year’s survey, Reed was ranked 67 in national liberal arts colleges.

Ultimately, 99% of the top 100 universities and 97% of the top 100 liberal arts colleges included in the 2024 rankings submitted their data. Holy Cross did not join the boycott against U.S. News.

The intense criticism led U.S. News to overhaul its survey methodology. The 2024 rankings placed greater emphasis on first-generation and Pell-recipient performance and graduation rates and borrower debt and less emphasis on financial resources. Numerous categories, including alumni giving rates, class sizes, and high school class standing, were abandoned entirely.

“This recognition is one to celebrate, even while we acknowledge that national rankings do not confer objective value on something as meaningful as a liberal arts education. They do tell us, however, that our mission, strategic vision, and daily efforts are making a significant and positive impact,” Rougeau wrote in his September 18 email. “We know from our survey data that academic reputation matters to our young people – whether they are current or prospective students – and national rankings support their ability to engage confidently in the college decision-making process.”Rougeau expressed confidence in the survey’s methodology and utility. “I commend outlets like U.S. News and the Wall Street Journal for rethinking what matters when evaluating the quality and purpose of an excellent liberal arts education,” he wrote.