Breaking Ranks by Colin Diver

Author:Colin Diver [Diver, Colin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781421443058
Publisher: JohnsHopkinsUP
Published: 2022-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

RACE, ETHNICITY, AND RANKING

In a different world, the college rankings industry might have been a powerful instrument for encouraging the most selective tier of higher education to promote the cause of racial and ethnic diversity. But in this world, it has not played that role. Indeed, the rankocrats have been notably hesitant to incorporate diversity metrics into their formulas. The WSJ/THE listings give a small amount of weight (3 percent each) to measures of student and faculty diversity, based on the Gini-Simpson biodiversity index. Niche includes an unexplained “diversity index” as a very small ingredient among the literally hundreds of factors in its formula. Meanwhile, Forbes and Money make no explicit reference to racial factors in their methodologies. Nor does U.S. News.

Although race does not figure in its overall best-colleges listings, U.S. News does not ignore the subject entirely. On its website, it presents a separate list of schools ranked according to a “diversity index.” This category presumably uses a formula akin to the Gini-Simpson index, designed to estimate the probability that a student will “encounter” another student from a different ethnic group.19 The schools with relatively high diversity-index scores compose an eclectic mix of private elites and lower-ranked colleges, as well as lots of public universities, all of which have a relatively wide distribution of students from the seven IPEDS racial/ethnic categories. Based on fall 2018 student data, U.S. News concluded that the most heterogeneous national university was the University of Hawai‘i at Hilo. City College came in 7th. Among liberal arts colleges, Amherst held the same position. Sadly, but perhaps tellingly, the liberal arts school with the highest diversity-index score that year, Pine Manor College in Massachusetts, was under such financial stress that it could no longer continue as an independent entity. It was acquired by Boston College in 2020.20

So, give U.S. News some credit. But its diversity index—like the similar factor used by the WSJ/THE—addresses only interactive (not remedial) diversity. Furthermore, U.S News has buried its diversity ranking, like its other specialized, single-variable listings, deep in its website, overshadowed by the best-college beauty contest, with its eye-catching headlines.

Why, I wonder, does U.S. News—and, for that matter, do most of its cousins—shy away from giving race and ethnicity more prominence? One reason might be disagreement about the purposes and value of demographic heterogeneity in higher education. It is certainly true that racial diversity is legally fraught and politically controversial. Debate continues to rage about whether affirmative action should serve remedial or educational purposes. Many educators predict that the current Supreme Court will drive the final nail in its constitutional coffin. Others think that voters in various states are lining up to ban it. A recent poll indicates that even large majorities of Blacks and Hispanics oppose using race as an explicit factor in college admissions decisions.21

All true. But it seems to me that the real reason for the rankocracy’s hesitancy to feature race and ethnicity in their formulas is that, in our society, prestige is still largely synonymous with Whiteness, and the leading rankings are all about prestige.

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