Inside Higher Ed:  Seizing the Spotlight on U.S. News, by Jason Solomon (Georgia) & Nancy Rapoport (UNLV):

We all owe Catherine Watt, the former Clemson administrator who gave a well-publicized presentation [blogged here and here] on her university’s efforts to improve its U.S. News & World Report ranking, our gratitude.

Since Watt’s presentation in early June, much of higher education has been forced to confront the issue of what institutions do to affect the rankings, and specifically how they fill out U.S. News’s peer “quality assessment” survey. That survey makes up 25 percent of U.S. News’s rankings formula, dwarfing any other factor. Watt’s presentation included a PowerPoint slide that said “Rate (almost) all programs other than Clemson’s below average.”

The open secret around the illegitimacy of these U.S. News surveys is a secret no more.

As law professors, we’ve been following the kerfluffle with great interest. After all, law schools have been dealing with the same rankings problem — and the same “quality assessment” surveys — as have colleges and universities.

And though neither of us has any love for the rankings, we’re convinced that they’re here to stay. We have hope for various alternative rankings, but we also think that the academy could change the game of “gaming” the existing U.S. News survey by being bold.  …

The quickest way to address the rankings problem is to use the power that U.S. News has delegated to us already and develop incentives for positive competition through this currently flawed survey instrument. If we can accelerate the process by focusing collective efforts on this survey now, then we might be able to use the rankings to improve the quality of the education that schools provide. At least we could draw ourselves away from the self-destructive behavior that catering to the rankings has fostered.