To hear some education professionals talk about it, the U.S. News & World Report college guide is evil — an adjective one college president actually used to describe the annual ranking.
Now colleges are cramming a guide of their own into the clutter of sources on the market.
It doesn’t rank anything. It doesn’t include public colleges and universities. And if you’re looking for snarky quotes about party scenes or town-gown relations, it isn’t for you.
But the colleges say the database, a Web site called U-CAN, is the first national consumer information tool created by schools themselves.
More than 600 colleges are participating.
“There’s no spin,” said James Nondorf, vice president for enrollment at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y. “All the colleges are just putting their information out there.”
The schools are publicizing that data at a time of high anxiety about college admissions and rising frustration with the role U.S. News & World Report plays in the process.
In August, Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., joined an expanding list of schools that are boycotting the “beauty contest” section of U.S. News’ rankings. That’s where the magazine asks school officials to rate their peer institutions — the most important factor in where colleges fall in the rankings.
The National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, the umbrella group of private schools that developed U-CAN, stressed that the site wasn’t created to compete with U.S. News.
The point is to offer transparency, to help students make “apples to apples” comparisons and hopefully to remove some of the uncertainty in college admissions, said Skidmore President Philip A. Glotzbach.
“We’re not trying to start a war with U.S. News,” he said.
U-CAN stands for University and College Accountability Network, and what you’ll find at www.ucan-network.org are standard two-page school profiles for each school.
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They list statistics about admissions, SAT scores, demographics, tuition, loans and more. The numbers come dressed up in bright graphics. Buttons take you to targeted information on the colleges’ Web sites.
There is a touch of spin — by the schools.
Each gets to plug what makes it unique. Skidmore, for instance, is a “close-knit learning community” set in “the vibrant city of Saratoga Springs.” College of St. Rose students become “citizen leaders” and study in 81 buildings “on tree-lined sidewalks surrounding a campus green in the heart of Albany [N.Y.].”
The hope is that students such as Mike Himpele will use the site as a starting point to sift through college options.
The senior is 16 years old, in love with sports, and interested in business. He wants to go away to college, but not so far away that he can’t come home “in case the laundry has to get done.” He was overwhelmed by all the options at first.
To narrow those options to about four schools, he turned to established brands: the College Board and Peterson’s.
His complaints?
“There’s a real lack of photos, to give you the real sense of campus life,” Himpele said. “I cannot find detailed pictures of the college campuses there.”
You won’t find those on U-CAN now. It’s a work in progress.
Himpele’s guidance counselor, Russell Weinlein, hadn’t heard of the U-CAN site. He planned to poke around on it. He also didn’t feel a burning need for more data.
“I guess it’s neat, but we have the books, we have the school Web sites we can go to,” Weinlein said. “It’s not a bad thing, but I think there’s enough information for counselors and students to get out there without another Web site.”
So much stuff, in fact, that Weinlein doesn’t bother with the U.S. News rankings.