Staff Editorial: Pass the grain of salt

Maybe Dean of Admissions Lee Stetson should start spending his days picking lottery numbers. He seems to have a way with predictions.

Last year at this time -- the same day that Penn was named the nation's sixth-best university by the editors of U.S. News and World Report -- Stetson offered a frank take on the University's high esteem, as well as a small prediction of its possible future positioning.

Looking back, he was just about right on the money.

"When you see Harvard, Yale and Princeton well entrenched in one, two, three and M.I.T. up there as well, it's hard to visualize us moving much further," Stetson said. "We could move a bit, but I think we are in a great place and should be pleased to be there."

Yesterday, Penn did move that little bit, jumping into a tie with Stanford University and the Massachusetts Institute for Technology for fifth place on the 2002 edition of the controversial and well-publicized ranking of American universities.

The new position -- and more importantly, the growing perception that Penn is truly among the nation's elite colleges -- is indeed a notable accomplishment for the University. It's a testament to the enormous strides Penn has made in recent years to improve its educational offerings, quality of research and overall campus community. And it's even more impressive, considering the considerably lower position -- number 20 -- that the University occupied just 12 years ago.

But despite the growing notoriety, it deserves repeating that these rankings still provide little more than a crude and overgeneralized impression of the relative value of our nation's top colleges and universities.

To report, for example, that an established research university can fundamentally improve in relation to others -- especially over the course of just one year -- is not simply naive. It's just plain ridiculous.

Further, the U.S. News rankings are based upon an unproven research methodology that leaves the door open to too many disagreements. The fact that Penn was ranked highest in "faculty resources," for example, provides few insights into the quality of an education here -- especially since the factors driving the "faculty resources" category are both random and generally unknown.

The higher U.S. News position does, though, provide some value. Despite the rankings' flaws, they help drive improved perceptions of the University. That helps boost the interest of potential students, which results in increased applications and, in theory, an improved freshman class.

That response, though -- along with the affirmation that Penn's image is changing for the better -- is where the value of the U.S. News rankings truly ends.

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