---

BY JEFF DAVIDSON

In print | Published January 22, 2009

Despite a professed aversion to college rankings, Swarthmore College has always been a beneficiary of what one might call the “inner beauty” contest of higher education. On Jan. 7, the college took a bold number one spot on the Princeton Review’s Best Value Colleges of 2009 list publicized by USA Today, a list which included Williams, Amherst, Princeton, Harvard and other institutions of a similar ilk. Kiplinger, a personal finance and business-forecasting magazine, ranked Swarthmore at number two on their 2009 Best Values list. Kiplinger’s list only included liberal arts colleges, with Pomona College in Claremont, CA coming in as first on this list.

As President Al Bloom and other members of the administration have consistently expressed, college rankings tend to be deceptively simplistic. “Such lists mislead the public into thinking that the complexities of American higher education can be reduced to one number,” Bloom said. He, along with 19 other college presidents, agreed at the start of the fall 2007 semester that rankings would not be used in any new publications. In addition, in recent years, Swarthmore has removed rankings from College publications that target prospective students.

However the college tries to distance itself from them, the rankings will inevitably influence the school, from bringing the attention-shy institution into the glare of the public eye, to boosting admissions applications numbers. Furthermore, the consistency of being a highly ranked good value begs the question, “What makes Swarthmore such a great bang for your buck?” This question is particularly significant in light of last semester’s discontent surrounding financial aid and Bloom’s recent letter informing the community of the $400 million loss to the College endowment.

The Ranking Methodologies

The first step in addressing that question is to examine the ranking methodologies of each company. The system each company uses to determine their rankings considers total cost, financial aid and academic excellence.

The Princeton Review breaks down its methodology into three categories: an academic rating, a financial aid rating and a Tuition GPA, otherwise known as the “real cost of college.” The academic rating is generated by student opinions on the accessibility of professors and how much a class contributes to actual learning, and school statistics such as the acceptance rate. The Princeton Review generates its financial aid rating using the same type of combination of provided statistics and student opinions. The Tuition GPA is the total cost of the college (tuition, board and fees, minus the average financial aid package). The Tuition GPA does not take into account, however, work-study or student loans.

Though the Princeton Review does not reveal how much each category is weighed against the others, they do call their system “stir[ring the data] up in an algorithm based on the idea that bang for your buck means excellent academics, great financial aid and/or low tuition. Simply put, it means value.”

Kiplinger uses many of the same determining factors, but is more exact with what it considered important to value. According to Kiplinger.com, two-thirds of a ranking is found by the school’s academic quality and one-third by affordability. These two categories are determined through data reported by Peterson’s as well as by Kiplinger itself.

Beyond numbers

Ostensibly “objective” attempts to pin down the true value of a college are often criticized for missing those qualities of an education that evade quantification. The companies who deal in college rankings acknowledge this flaw and try to rectify it by surveying students, professors, and other members of college communities. Vice President for Development and Alumni Relations Stephen Bayer found it especially important that student opinions were added to the methodology.

“That says a lot — the students recognize they are part of a remarkable institution that has their best interests always at heart,” Bayer said.

However much a ranking system may try, measuring the actual value of an education goes well beyond the scope of its capabilities. Dean of Students Jim Larimore emphasizes the Swarthmore’s commitment to undergraduate education. “The focuses on small classes, the large proportion of our classes being taught in a seminar and the fact that most students do seek out their faculty for advice or to answer questions or just to know each other a bit more — I think that just feeds and renews the intellectual experience students have here,” he said.

Alumni of the college have also expressed appreciation for the impact that a Swarthmore education has had on their post-Swat lives. “Swarthmore prepared me for the real world by showing me the importance of the life of the mind but also showing me how that can connect to the real world because of the inherent moral implications of knowledge,” Maria Macia ’07 said in an e-mail interview. “This philosophy behind the education challenges the idea of a separation between an ivory tower and the ‘real world’ and fosters a disposition that strives to connect them — something impacting me now because I try to do so now that I am in the ‘real world’,” she said.

The post-graduate services that the school provides for students have garnered praise from administrators and graduates. Career Services Director Nancy Burkett said that “Many graduates who go on to get graduate degrees often still come back to Swarthmore for advice because sometimes the graduate institutions they attend can be a bit more impersonal,” Burkett said.

Swarthmore has also consistently been praised by students and faculty alike for its tight-knit and nurturing community. “I didn’t acknowledge how at Swarthmore, so many of the minor annoyances I deal with in ‘adult’ life were taken care of for me,” Macia said. “Looking back, I appreciate how easy it was to be able to walk into Worth health center and get to see a nurse almost right away compared to the hassle of setting up an appointment, having a shuttle to take me from my dorm to classes and access to so many free campus events so that I didn’t have to think about potential impacts on me financially,” she added.

However, the other side of the issue concerns the responsibility of colleges for preparing students for life in the ‘adult’ world, and whether the college experience should be idyllic years of bubble, particularly given the current dour economic climate and the increasing need for young people to be savvy and able to navigate a dismal job market. Yet, Swarthmore graduates seem to be pleased with the experience they have gained during their years at the college. “I am grateful to those at Swarthmore who go out of their way to provide [for students] so that we can spend more time thinking about what really matters what we are there — the academics and the friendships,” Macia said.

The future of good-value colleges?

The fact remains that college rankings, by nature, can’t define or encapsulate a “college experience.” Given the time-frame during which the Princeton Review gleaned its data, the ability of college rankings to serve as current indexes comes into question.

With the country in a major recession, some of the key areas where Swarthmore excels in value may be on a decline this year. According to the Princeton Review, their data for determining the rankings accounts for the fall of 2007 through the fall of 2008. The effects of the economic decline on the college were not officially brought to the students’ attention until a e-mail from Bloom to the campus community on December 8.

Both Princeton Review and Kiplinger relied heavily on the cost of a college education to generate its rankings. The college’s financial aid policy is to provide 100 percent of a student’s demonstrated financial need. Student protests in the fall semester over the definition of “demonstrated financial need” — “demonstrated” referring to a value calculated by the financial aid office’s private algorithm rather than the amount of financial aid families claim to need — created a climate of skepticism towards the financial aid office’s lack of transparency in this process. The college, however, has maintained that the financial aid office awards as much money as it can to as many as possible while making sound and sustainable economic decisions.

While the future of the finances of the college, and indeed the nation, remains somewhat uncertain, the annual college budget may be a very different picture this year. There will be stricter rules for budgets within departments that, according to Bloom’s e-mail, “ensure tighter management of our resources.”

“Nobody knows where the economy is going to go and where it’s going to go once it gets there,” Vice President for College and Community Relations Maurice Eldridge ’61 said. “I think we’re all in the same boat on this one. Relative to other schools, our positions aren’t going to change very much.”

Yet the major point is that these may only be problems limited to right now. They all hinge upon an economic rebound, which is something no economist can truly ever predict.

“We have to protect the college for what it is and what it stands for,” Eldridge said. “Part of what we have to do is be as persistent in our fundraising as ever we were. Because the quality of this place is dependent on philanthropy no matter what it is. When the economy has gone south some, it’s even more important that we succeed there.”

Bayer sees this as an opportunity for students to take advantage of.

“In this difficult economic time, companies are looking for the best and the brightest individuals.

There is a flight to quality that these companies are taking, and Swarthmore graduates stand out since they aren’t simply technicians,” Bayer said. “Rather, Swarthmore alumni are multi-talented, flexible, able to think creatively and act nimbly in the work place. I think these are qualities that employers and organizations, and our society need to be successful.”

He sees this especially helpful in terms of facilitating placement of current students into jobs with alumni.

“I think Swarthmore alumni, because of the difficult economic times, are willing to look back to their roots and understand the difficulty students are undergoing now to get jobs,” Bayer said.

Wherever the economy takes the college, the value will do its best to follow.

---

« RETURN TO NEWS

« PREV ARTICLE | NEXT ARTICLE »