Wait, College Ranking Surveys Don't Measure Learning?

In a Q&A with Robert Morse, the man behind college rankings, he explains that "the schools themselves aren't measuring learning," with rankings instead being provided by "reputation survey, admissions data, faculty data, financial-resources data, alumni giving and graduation and retention rates." There is little change in the list year to year, so it's up to pure speculation to track currents in higher education.

Reid Buckley writes in The American Conservative that "Higher education has destroyed young Americans’ ability to express themselves on the page—or in their own minds." He places every experience other than academia in the ranking of things which can draw out one's native ability to discriminate, and write. Held alongside Robert Morse's ranking, perhaps it's time Morse's asked what he sees as being the toughest question: "What are students learning?"

What's more important than that?

[Photo credit: David55King]