Matthew Mugmon: Moving on up, but to where?

It's been a long, tumultuous journey, but Penn is finally about as high on the charts as it can ever get.

According to the latest U.S. News and World Report rankings, our fine institution is now, along with Cal Tech, Duke, MIT and Stanford, the fourth best university in the nation, trailing only the Ivy triumvirate of Harvard, Princeton and Yale.

The beginning of the road to the top was a rocky one, but in more recent years, it's been a fairly steady climb.

And every year, the only thing that changes besides the ranking itself is the degree to which Penn administrators claim to discount the ranking's validity.

In 1990, when Penn leaped from 20th to 13th on the list, an assistant to the University president called the ranking "a confidence builder," but conceded, "if you start playing with the criteria, you can make one university go up and one go down."

When, in 1992, Penn fell from 13th to 14th, beating out only one other Ivy, then-University President Sheldon Hackney complained, "There is no significant change, and it is a very inaccurate ranking," adding that, "I think that it is such a flawed mechanism that it will never treat us well."

The U.S. News editors were even more harsh in 1993, when they placed Penn at the bottom of the Ivy League and 16th overall. Then-interim University President Claire Fagin said the new rank was "disturbing."

Judith Rodin took the helm that year. With her came a new proud-but-cautious attitude toward the University's slowly rising profile in the magazine.

When Penn reached No. 11 in 1995, Rodin said Penn was "on a roll," but wisely made note of her uncertainty about the standards by which U.S. News makes its judgments. After all, in any given year, Penn's ranking could rise or drop.

And drop it did, in 1996. "There is no question that this ranking, and others like it, are comparing apples to oranges in many respects," Rodin said at the time.

The next year began Penn's final ascent to its current spot at the "top." With the University reaching seventh in 1997 and sixth in 1998, Rodin was careful not to exaggerate the improvement's significance, calling the rise merely "helpful as we seek the most able students."

In a March 23, 2000, interview with 34th Street Magazine, Rodin was asked, "What is your idea of total happiness?"

Her joking response: "A No. 1 ranking in U.S. News & World Report."

But was she really joking, after all?

At least, we know, she's not complaining -- not the way her predecessors did.

And with Penn's new high rankings in the last few years, the standard Penn response takes on an air of self-satisfaction disguised as modesty: "It undoubtedly has a real effect, whether or not we think the variables that are all included in the rankings are the best ones," she said this week.

Provost Robert Barchi went a bit further when Penn cracked the top five last year. "We're really delighted to see that we are considered one of the top research institutions in the country," was his somewhat detached response.

"But we knew that already," he added.

It's hard to believe that Rodin and her team of administrators don't strive every year to improve Penn's rank, no matter what they might say about it. And nor should Rodin ignore it: the yearly U.S. News feature is about the closest thing there is to a college admissions bible.

Until it gets a fancier name and an even more impressive logo than the one devised this summer, Penn probably won't move up any more. Administrators have done a skillful job getting the University to its new No. 4 spot. Now, they could focus on why our Engineering School -- a school rich with history, a school that this year saw its Bioengineering program finish sixth -- only ranked 37th overall on the magazine's charts. In fact, according to U.S. News, it sits ahead of only one other Ivy League engineering program -- incredibly, Yale.

Tracking the University's rankings over the years is good for little more than entertainment. Forget whether or not the numbers are accurate. After all, how can anyone honestly believe in the concept of reducing an entire university to a single number?

Only the U.S. News editors -- and, perhaps, our president -- know for sure.

Matthew Mugmon is a senior Classical Studies major from Columbia, Md., and executive editor of The Daily Pennnsylvanian .

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