College and University Rankings
By Walter Minkel -- School Library Journal, 1/1/1999
www.library.uiuc.edu/edx/rankings.htm
The SLJ Online Library Web Site of the Month comes, for the first time, from an academic library. Public and high school librarians will find great use for this information-packed site when prospective college students come knocking.
The staff of the Education and Social Science Library of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) first assembled a long list of bookmarks to college and university ranking pages. But then Dan Burgard, the library's psychology subject specialist (dburgard@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu), decided that "an organized Web page was better than a disorganized bookmark list."
The site, launched in 1997, provides a list of links to four-year college and university rankings, as well as evaluations of law, medical, business, and international programs. For those interested in the methodology used to determine the rankings, each citation includes the Web page where an explanation can be found. The links offered by UIUC include Money Magazine's "College Guide '98 Value Rankings" list and New Mobility's list of "Disability-Friendly Colleges."
Also included in UIUC's site is a bibliography on college rankings and a section called "Caution and Controversy": a discussion and set of links pertaining to the accuracy and appropriateness of college rankings. "Without a doubt," the page tells us, "knowledge of how rankings are constructed, leavened with a dash of skepticism, can go a long way to ensuring they are used appropriately."-Walter Minkel (wmink@teleport.com), Multnomah County (OR) Library School Corps Technology Trainer
