Black Colleges Joining the Opposition to the U.S. News Ranking System

Walter Kimbrough, president of Philander Smith College in Little Rock, Arkansas, is calling for all black colleges and universities to withhold ranking information from U.S. News & World Report. Kimbrough says that the rankings are inherently unfair to black colleges and universities.

Dr. Kimbrough has sent a letter through the National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education to all presidents of historically black educational institutions urging them to join the growing opposition to the U.S. News survey.

Kimbrough says that the U.S. News rankings favor colleges that reject most of their applicants and have large endowments to pay for the best facilities, faculties, and services. But the historic mission of the black colleges, according to Kimbrough, is to reach out to students who otherwise would not have access to higher education. Black colleges want to find ways to accept students, not reject the vast majority of applicants.