《美国新闻与世界报道》大学排行榜是如何毁掉高等教育的？

来源Bob Samuels: How the US News & World Report College Rankings Are Destroying Higher Education
译者idealbubble
Bob SamuelsPresident, University Council - AFTBob Samuels，大学事务-教师联合会主席
2010年8月30日
The most influential force shaping the priorities of higher education in America is the U.S. News & World Report, which ranks universities on their selectivity and the average SAT scores and high school grades of the incoming students. In other words, the universities are not ranked on what they actually do once the students get to the schools; instead, the institutions are rated on who attends the schools and how many people are excluded from attending. Universities and colleges thus have a perverse incentive to recruit students so that they can reject them and then raise the school's selectivity rating.对美国高等学府的等级评价最具影响力的《美国新闻与世界报道》大学排行榜，根据高校的入学筛选率，SAT平均分，以及被录取学生的高中成绩对大学进行排名。也就是说，这个大学排名并非基于学生进校后大学的作为，而是依据诸如什么样的学生被录取了，有多少学生未被录取这样的指标。为此，高等学府不惜一切手段大力进行招生，这样他们就可以拒绝更多的学生，从而提高学校的入学筛选率评级。
U.S. News & World Report also rates universities and colleges based on their reputation as reported by peer institutions. This part of the ranking system has been highly controversial, but what most people fail to notice is that this reputation rating does not try to assess the quality of education. In fact, all of the categories that U.S. News & World Report uses do not even attempt to judge what goes on in the classroom, and the main reason for this lack of analysis is that the institutions themselves do not have any shared method for judging the quality of faculty teaching or assessing the level of student learning. Since higher education institutions have not developed any accepted method of evaluating the effectiveness of undergraduate education, parents and students are forced to rely on ranking books that the universities and colleges themselves reject.
《美国新闻与世界报道》还按照兄弟院校对一所大学的声誉评价对该所大学进行排名。这种评分体系一直倍受争议，但大多数人都没有发现本质问题：这种声誉评级体系并没有真正涉及大学的教育品质。事实上，所有《美国新闻与世界报道》所使用的排名指标都没有涉及发生在一所高等学府的教室中的事情，而缺乏这一分析的主要原因则在于学校自身也没有任何对教师教学质量、学生学习水平进行评价的可共享的途径。既然高等院校自身都不能发展出一套行之有效的评价本科教育教学成效的方法，那么学生家长与学生们也只能依靠那些院校本身颇为抵触的排名榜了。
However, even if every school criticizes the validity of the U.S. News & World Report college rating system, these institutions still spend a great deal of money and time on trying to raise their rankings. In other words, a bad evaluation system is driving the decisions of many of our colleges and universities. For instance, in order to raise their selectivity rating, schools pour money into advertising and recruitment in order to make sure that many students apply. In fact, even the universities that reject the vast majority of interested students spend lavishly on trying to attract more students so they can reject the highest number of applicants.
然而，即使每个院校都在批评《美国新闻&世界报道》排名体系的有效性，它们还是花了大量的时间与财力试图提高自己的排名。这也就是说，一个糟糕的评价体系事实上竟成了改变许多院校决策的推力。比如，为了提高入学筛选率排名，学校在招生宣传上投入庞大，以确保大量的学生前来申请。事实上，即使这些院校拒绝了大批有意向的学生，它们还是会耗费巨资以吸引更多的学生前来申请。这样，他们就可以刷新拒绝申请者人数的最高纪录。
Another key way that schools compete for the applications of incoming students is by showing off their great athletic centers, food courts, and other extracurricular activities. Once again, due to the lack of any accepted method of evaluating student learning, colleges and universities rely on non-educational aspects to attract and retain students. For example, when students and their parents go on school tours, most of the information given relates to non-educational topics like housing, parking, dining, fraternities, athletic facilities, and entertainment options, and when guides do provide information concerning educational activities, it is often false or misleading.
高校吸引申请者的另一个关键的竞争途径在于炫耀他们的运动中心，食堂餐厅以及其他课外活动。又是这样，由于缺乏评价学生学习的公认方法，院校只能依赖这些非教育方面来吸引并保持生源。比如，当学生和家长前来高校参观时，学校所提供的大多数信息都是关于非教育因素的方方面面，比如住宿、停车、膳食、兄弟会、运动设施、娱乐选择，而当他们提供一些与教育活动密切相关的信息时，这些信息不是谬误百出，就是误导大众。
While one possible indicator of educational quality is the size of classes, the way the U.S. News & World Report presents class size is very misleading. For instance, many large universities claim that more than 50% of their classes have fewer than twenty students. However, a school may meet this requirement by having 100 classes of 500 students (serving 50,000 students) and 101 classes with 5 students (serving 505 students). In other words, it looks like a student at this school may have an even chance of getting into a small class, but in reality, they have one in a hundred chance of being in a class with less than twenty students; therefore, one can have an even number of classes in both categories, but only a tiny percentage of students will be able to take small classes.
比方说，一个可能衡量教育质量的指标是班级的规模，但是《美国新闻与世界报道》关于班级规模的说明常常使人误入歧途。举个例子，许多大学都声称自己50%的班级是少于20人的小班。然而，任何达到这个标准的院校都可能是以100个坐着500名学生的教室和101个只有5个学生的教室蒙混过关的。换句话说，看上去一个该校的学生可能会有均等的机会得到小班上课的机会；但其实，他们只有百分之一的机会进入小于20人的小班听课。所以，一所高校完全可以在两类班级上保持均等的数字，但事实上还是只有一小部分学生才能享受到小班化教学。
Another tricky indicator of academic quality employed by U.S. News & World Report and other ranking systems is the percentage of faculty who are full-time. Not only does this indicator have no proven connection to educational quality, but the reported statistics are highly misleading. In fact, most of the top universities report that over 90% of their faculty are full-time, but they can only make this claim by not including graduate students and non-tenured instructors as faculty. If these universities did count everyone who actually teaches at the university, the number of full-time faculty teaching undergraduate courses would be closer to 35%. Moreover, this statistic does not account for the fact that many professors never teach undergraduate students, and nationally, many of the classes taught by professors at research universities are graduate courses. Likewise, U.S. News & World Report also uses a statistic concerning the student-to-faculty ratio, but this number does not examine whether these faculty members actually teach undergraduate students.
另一个《美国新闻&世界报道》及其他排名体系所使用的关于学术品质的指标也令人匪夷所思，这就是全职教员在全校所占的比例。这个指标不仅与教育质量没有什么确凿的关系，而且就连公布出来的统计也充满歧义。事实上，大部分的高等学校都会宣布本校90%的员工是全职的，但他们在做这个宣称的同时并未将研究生以及非终身教职的讲师算作在内。如果这些大学把所有在大学里任教的人都包括进去，那么教授本科生的全职教员不过接近35%。更何况，这个统计还没能揭示出一个事实，那就是很多教授根本不教本科学生，在全国范围内，研究性大学中教授所教的课程都是一些研究生课程。同样，《美国新闻&世界报道》还使用了一个学生与教职员工的比例指标，但这个数字亦并不能保证这些教员工否为本科生授课。
This brief examination of the U.S. News & World Report rankings shows that most--if not all--of the major categories are misleading, and they do not even try to account for student learning or the effectiveness of teachers. In other terms, parents and students make one of the biggest and most expensive decisions of their lives based on faulty and deceptive information. Moreover, universities and college often criticize these rankings as they pour money into trying to improve their positions. It is clear that we need a new system of ranking and ratings, and if the higher education institutions do not begin to asses the quality of their instruction in a clear and transparent manner, some outside entity, like the federal government, will require a standardized approach to judging the quality of instruction and the learning of students.
这个对《美国新闻&世界报道》大学排行榜的粗略审视表明，其中大部分的（如果不是所有的）主要评价指标类型都具有误导性，而且它们根本反映不了学生的学习情况以及教师工作成效。换言之，家长与学生在根据虚假失实的信息做他们一生中最重要的决定。更令人不堪的是，各大高等院校一边在对这个排名体系频繁指责，一边却在花巨资提升自己在排行榜上的名次。显而易见，我们需要的是一个全新的排名和评级体系。如果高等院校不能以一种清晰、透明的方式来评价自己的教学质量，那么，像联邦政府这样的外部机构就会采用一种标准化的方法去评价高校的教学质量与学生学习水平。