Creators of U.S. News & World Report’s inaugural ranking of online college programs continued their defense of the much-publicized list this week when they said their methodology would “evolve over time” and that students shouldn’t base their college selection on the magazine’s rankings.
What seemed to be an acknowledgment of online learning’s mainstream appeal and acceptance was quickly turned into a rallying point for campus technology officials disappointed with the list.
Some educational technologists panned the U.S. News list of the nation’s best online course offerings when it was released in early January, criticizing the compilation as one that lacked higher education’s full participation and expertise from campus officials with experience in web-based education.
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A month after the rankings were picked apart in a blog post from WICHE Cooperative for Educational Technologies (WCET), a group that pushes for online course advancements in higher education, U.S. News researchers Bob Morse and Eric Brooks answered dozens of questions from WCET members who took issue with the finished product, which was hailed by schools on the list and disparaged by those who weren’t.
Morse and Brooks described their effort as a “first step” in meeting growing demand for “comparative information on the relative merits of online programs” that has yet to be compiled.
They refuted the claim that U.S. News did not consult online education experts, saying they contacted a “large number of academics” who helped formulate their questions.
The magazine’s first stab at ranking online schools would help fill an “information gap” encountered by students evaluating web-based course offerings before they commit to attending a school, the researchers wrote.
Many in higher education were irked that U.S. News, which describes itself as “a leading ranking resource” for prospective college students, called its online rankings the “best advice” for those evaluating their college options.
Morse and Brooks clarified the magazine’s selling point.
“U.S. News hopes that the rankings will only be used as one tool and not the only basis for deciding which online programs to select,” the researchers wrote. “U.S. News is the first to say that rankings should not be used as the sole basis to choose a program and that they should be used as one tool in the college/program search process. We stress the need to look at many factors in addition to rankings like cost, programs offerings, etc.”
The magazine, which has published a national college ranking since 1983, included online college programs in a separate ranking this year, breaking the lists into sections: faculty and credentials, student engagement and assessment, and student services and technology.
Colleges that ranked highly in every category were included in an honor roll listing.
Challenged by WCET questioners who asked if colleges that made the magazine’s rankings were paying for leads generated by the U.S. News website, Morse and Brooks said simply that the magazine was a private company and would not release financial information or web statistics.
In a Jan. 10 blog post, Russell Poulin, deputy director of research and analysis for WCET, pointed out that of the 2,000 surveys it sent to colleges, U.S. News received less than half of them back.
The bachelor’s degree rankings had the most responses with 194, making the rankings appear less comprehensive than once thought.
“The small number of useful surveys speaks to the scattershot methodology used by U.S. News,” Poulin wrote. “We would have thought that they would have engaged experts to develop questions and then pilot test the survey on a sample of institutions.”
Morse and Brooks said they were “pleased with the response rate” and expect more participation from colleges and universities in 2013.
The researchers said they hope to incorporate student outcome data in next year’s rankings – student grades, dropout rates, and more – to complete a more comprehensive list of online colleges with proven academic track records.
“Of course, some questions will be refined; that’s just part of the process,” they wrote. “We learned a lot doing this for the first time, and some of that will shape next year’s questions.”
In a lengthy explanation of the magazine’s methodology for the college rankings, U.S. News says it was careful about who participated in its first ranking of online college programs.
For instance, schools that launched online course offerings for the 2011-12 academic year were removed from the survey results “because of their inabilities to supply a full academic year’s worth of data.”
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