When U.S. News and World Report publishes its annual college rankings, it is one of the publication's most widely read issues, but a local college president says such lists are meaningless.
RIT president Bill Destler recently posted a blog entitled "The Ultimate Absurdity of College Rankings." Destler said, "We need a diverse set of higher education institutions to serve our nation's needs for an educated citizenry." He said using the same filter, for instance, to try to compare schools like Princeton to North Carolina A & T is meaningless.
Destler says a much better method for evaluating the quality of colleges and universities is to start with the mission of the institution and evaluate its success in achieving that mission.
