Every few weeks, a new list of college rankings is released — each with its own criteria for what aspects of colleges and universities are worth considering. Some are based more on research, and others more on campus life. The variety in how colleges are ranked is matched only by the variety in colleges themselves.
In September, The Wall Street Journal and Times Higher Education released their most recent list of schools they deemed to be best. Usually, these reports come and go with little fanfare. But this year, their list took a little heat.
The criticism came from Richard Vedder, a higher education professional who helped Forbes develop their ranking system of U.S. universities. Writing for Minding the Campus, Vedder criticized the “diversity component” that the WSJ/THE rankings took into consideration. Also known as the environmental factor, this measure includes statistics on the racial diversity of a campus, as well as the proportion of international students they enroll, and comprises 10 percent of a school’s score.
Vedder argued this category was created in an attempt to be politically correct, rather than to identify the actual quality of an institution. The way he sees it, most schools have already achieved these kinds of diversity, and that other factors are far more important to consider.
In Vedder’s dream world — a world he acknowledges to be nearly impossible — the only diversity that would come into play in the ranking of colleges would be the diversity of ideas.
What Vedder doesn’t see is that this fairytale — the one where rankings are able to consider the diversity of ideas — is not a fairytale at all. It’s already happening. When colleges consider their applicants’ races and ethnicities and origins, they are all but ensuring a diversity of ideas. Were they to decrease their emphasis on these kinds of diversity, a sharp decrease in the diversity of ideas would be sure to follow.
The more diverse a student body is on paper, the more communities and cultures and opinions and experiences that study body will represent. This is the definition of diversity. Schools wouldn’t have to seek out a diversity of ideas — it would happen naturally.
The argument that rankings only consider diversity to be politically correct is just not true. This is a theory born out of the same alt-right racism wherein people claim they’re being discriminated against when minorities are given equal rights to themselves. It’s ridiculous.
If a school were to disregard diversity, and evaluate students solely on academics, they would suffer significantly. Their students might have all the academic qualifications in the world, but without diversity, their realm of learning would still be very narrow. However, if a school sought out a diverse student body, regardless of their academic merit, those students would still have a lot to learn from each other.
The college admissions game is tough. Some people will get in, and some people won’t. Some of that will be based on smart students are, and some of it won’t. And sometimes, the thing that gives one applicant an edge over another is the country they were born or the community they were raised in, or even the color of their skin. This isn’t wrong.
When you consider diversity in college rankings, it admittedly puts certain states at a disadvantage. California, New York and Hawaii — states where diversity thrives — have no problem scoring high in diversity. Vermont, Maine and New Hampshire on the other hand, don’t stand a chance in these areas.
But this doesn’t make that category unfair. It is a legitimate detriment to schools in non-diverse states that they have such a homogeneous population. If their student bodies are lacking the diversity that other schools have, they are missing out from the benefits of this, too. And that should be reflected in their rankings.
That’s not to say diversity should be increased for the sake of rankings — it should be increased for the sake of diversity itself. In fact, schools shouldn’t do anything solely for the sake of rankings. Both universities and students place far more weight on these rankings than they deserve. Schools are so much more than those numbers can show, regardless of which criteria they decide to use.
But that’s not the world we live in. Rankings are a very real part of higher education. And that means we need to decide what we want those rankings to reflect. Contrary to what Vedder says, diversity should absolutely make the list.
