Admins, students puzzled by Barnard's dip in national rankings

Barnard College fell seven spots in this year’s U.S. News and World Report ranking of the nation’s top liberal arts colleges, landing at 33rd place.

Barnard—the most selective women’s college in the country—ranked seventh of the “Seven Sisters,” a group of historically women’s colleges, while Columbia ranked fourth in the separate national universities list. But many at Barnard were not fazed by the news, faulting the rating process and expressing indifference to the final rankings.

Joanne Kwong, Barnard’s vice president for communications, faulted U.S. News’s changing formula—which takes into account endowment, student-to-faculty ratio, and acceptance rate, among other factors—for Barnard’s sudden drop.

“The methodology and criteria change every year and there always seems to be a lot of movement among the liberal arts schools,” she said in an email. “In past years, Barnard has appeared anywhere from #19 to #38 on the list.”

Barnard had a record-low acceptance rate of 24.9 percent for the class of 2015, but U.S. News only took 2014 rates into account for this year’s list.

“Our admissions numbers have continuously improved in recent years,” Kwong said in an email. “And puzzlingly, our [2010] acceptance rate is lower than half the schools ranked ahead of us.”

Some students said it was impossible for U.S. News to take into account the benefits of Barnard’s relationship with Columbia.

“I don’t feel that’s really fair considering some Barnard students take almost all of their classes at Columbia, this big Ivy League university,” Olivia Grosvenor, BC ’13, said. “And you can’t really consider Barnard separate from Columbia.”

Mona Abdullah, BC ’13, noted that Barnard students have access to Columbia’s campus. “I don’t think Barnard feels the need to duplicate that and create a Dodge or a Butler, because that would be useless,” she said.

At least one student speculated that the Columbia-Barnard relationship could hurt Barnard. Rosa Ammon-Ciaglo, BC ’14, said that while Barnard is a great school, it might not be “growing as an independent institution” because it’s in Columbia’s shadow.

“I think other small liberal arts colleges take initiative and make decisions on their own,” Ciaglo said.

Barnard economics professor Randall Reback, an expert in education policy, recently co-authored a paper studying the accuracy and effectiveness of college ranking systems. His research has shown that a school’s year-to-year ranking has little effect on its number of applicants or the academic composition of the incoming class.

“In general, we don’t find strong effects. Even a seven point drop in rating would be trivial in terms of number of applicants,” Reback told Spectator. “The quality of the applicant pool changes even less.”

Barnard first-year Michelle McPhillips noted that Barnard’s ranking was not the main factor when she chose the school last year.

“I came here because it was a good fit for me,” McPhillips said. “I’m sad it dropped, because I don’t think it deserved to, but it doesn’t change how I feel about the school.

Reback—who co-authored his study with Molly Alter, BC ’10—said there were steps Barnard could take to improve its ranking, if it wanted to. But he added that it had no reason to do so, and had even stopped supplying statistical information to the U.S. News several years ago.

“Honestly, Barnard shouldn’t even care,” Reback said. “Rankings are meaningless with regards to the quality of education,” he said.

Alessandra Rago, BC ’13, said that if anything, her educational experience at Barnard has improved over the last few years.

“The worth of a school is more than a ranking,” Rego said. “It’s what you get out of it.”

Rishab Guha, Avantika Kumar, and Charlotte Murtishaw contributed reporting.
news@columbiaspectator.com