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UNM slipped two spots on an annual best universities list, but some university officials have shrugged off the ranking.
U.S. News and World Report ranked the University as number 181 in the 2014 edition of its Best Colleges Rankings. Results were based on data it gathered from the universities during the spring and summer.
In this year’s ranking, the University fell two spots after placing 179th nationally in the magazine’s 2013 edition. New Mexico State University, on the other hand, was ranked at number 190.
Princeton University garnered the top spot this year.
But UNM Provost Chaouki Abdallah said he is “no longer convinced that (U.S. News) provide an important comparison scale.” He said the study put more importance on input factors, such as the high school standings and ACT scores of the incoming freshman class, rather than output factors, such as where students end up after graduation.
“Due to such methodology, the only public university that ranks in the top 20 is the University of California, Berkeley, at number 20, and no more than 13 (public universities) rank in the top 50 schools,” he said.
Abdallah said UNM’s rank is misrepresented by the magazine because of how many universities tie in their rankings.
“There may be five universities tied for rank 12, and 10 tied for rank 34,” he said. “If you were to group the universities by ranks, since those within the same rank are presumably similar, then UNM’s rank is 55 overall, along with eight other universities.”
According to U.S. News and World Report’s website, it gathers for the study “data from and about each school in up to 16 areas related to academic excellence. Each indicator is assigned a weight (expressed as a percentage) based on our judgments about which measures of quality matter most.”
The magazine then compiles a weighted composite score for universities and ranks the three-fourths of all universities that scored the highest. The remaining lower-ranking universities are then labeled “second-tier” or “rank not published.”
UNM’s rank has been consistent in the past, Abdallah said. He said that although the University rose above NMSU this year, “such comparisons are truly meaningless.”
Still, Abdallah said that although the magazine’s rankings are not perfectly accurate, he still thinks that good publicity is essential for the University.
“This and similar rankings are the window through which some students become aware of us, and I know that we will continue to improve in all rankings based on our own strategies,” he said. “In other words, these rankings are not a goal for us, but they do represent one lens through which we are compared to similar institutions.”
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UNM President Robert Frank said he doubts the significance of the rankings.
“They change these rankings in terms of magazine sales, so it’s hard to be too excited about these rankings,” he said. “I think that these are not fair. I think UNM is more prestigious than that what it gets credit for. These rankings are not the best measure of a university’s caliber or quality in my view.”
Frank said the rankings “do not have scientific basis,” and that it is irrelevant whether UNM rises up in the ranks in the coming years.
“It depends on what they do to sell the magazine next year,” he said.
But UNM has gotten good reviews from the same magazine’s best graduate programs rankings in the past, Abdallah said. He said the magazine ranked UNM’s rural medicine graduate program as the second best in the country.
Abdallah said he is unsure whether UNM’s rank will rise or fall next year. But he still believes that the ranking is not an accurate measure of the University’s achievement, he said.
“By ranking according to different criteria, UNM rises or falls compared to its peers,” he said. “Rankings only matter if they reflect our values, and they should be placed in context.”
