Stillman College is pulling out of one of the nation’s most popular college rankings, which officials called “flawed” and “misleading.”

The private liberal arts college in Tuscaloosa is the first historically Black college to publicly announce its withdrawal from the annual U.S. News and World Report, officials said Monday. Stillman’s departure follows recent pushback from smaller colleges, as well as criticism from the nation’s schools chief.

Stillman College President Cynthia Warrick said the popular ranking put lower-resourced schools – and HBCUs – at a disadvantage, and can present a false picture of schools’ work with students.

“Even though we’ve got these students getting PhDs and getting great jobs and starting their own businesses and we’re producing teachers and our Honda Quiz Bowl team won a national championship, we don’t get any credit for that,” Warrick said in an interview with AL.com.

“If the data were more fair, then you’d have more HBCUs higher in the ranking system because of the outcomes they produce,” she added.

Stillman received an overall score of 40 out of 100 in the U.S. News and World Report’s 2022-23 rankings. Researchers ranked the college 63rd out of 132 southern regional colleges, and 59th out of 77 HBCUs.

The school likely was dinged by poor graduation rates. Warrick said she did not think the rankings accurately account for Stillman’s student body demographics or internal efforts to improve diversity and career outcomes.

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Most of Stillman’s students are African American, female and eligible for Pell grants, and the college has over 100 students who are parents.

“Stillman has found that the circumstances of poverty challenges these students to make decisions that call them in and out of enrollment,” Warrick said. “Yet, Stillman remains committed to them. How does U.S. News measure our commitment? I opine that it does not.”

The U.S. News and World Report surveys colleges annually based on graduation and retention rates, social mobility, academic reputation, faculty resources, student selectivity, funding, donations and student debt.

The report weighs student outcomes the heaviest, at 40%, using six-year graduation rates and other factors like graduate debt. Researchers say they collect most of their data directly from schools, but use similar guidelines to other federal databases.

Rankings

According to the 2022-23 U.S. News and World Report, an average of 23% of students graduated from Stillman within six years. That’s compared to 27% reported by the National Center for Education Statistics.

Both measures include data from 2015, which could have skewed overall graduation rates, Stillman officials noted.

During that year, the college eliminated several athletic programs, which caused more than 200 students to leave campus and caused graduation rates to drop, according to federal data.

“The rankings – based predominantly on graduation rate – do not explain Stillman’s drop in retention as a factor of student athletes’ transferring; instead, it is used as a measure of quality for our institution’s academic programs,” Warrick wrote in her announcement.

The report also relies on a peer institution rating system, which asks colleges to rank other similarly sized institutions based on several different factors. A recent research article in the American Journal of Education found that rankings may skew future peer assessments.

“They don’t know if we’re innovative,” Warrick said. “They don’t know what kinds of programs we have, and many of them have never been to my campus. They put a 20% weighting on this peer survey, and to me that’s not fair.”

Warrick noted that other efforts among colleges to improve accessibility and diversity, as well as national accolades and career outcomes, also aren’t included on U.S. News’ rankings.

Stillman’s departure comes amid years of criticism from college deans and faculty across the nation.

At least two other colleges, Colorado College and the Rhode Island School of Design, withdrew from the U.S. News and World rankings this year, according to Inside Higher Ed. Several top law and medical schools also recently pulled out of the rankings.

Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said in March that colleges should not worship at “the false altar” of the annual rankings. In 2022, he called the rankings a “joke.”

In response, the U.S. News asked the Secretary to put more pressure on colleges to comply with data requests.

“Our rankings help aspiring students as they take their first step in ensuring their career opportunities, earning potential and quality of life,” the organization said. “This is especially important in today’s environment where the admissions process has become increasingly competitive, less transparent and more time consuming. As tuition continues to skyrocket, students require reliable information to guide them in their decision-making process.”

Warrick said she isn’t opposed to a ranking system altogether, but believes that researchers should reassess how much weight they put on certain topics.

In her letter to U.S. News CEO Eric Gertler, Warrick challenged leaders to create an independent task force of outside experts and stakeholders to reevaluate how it develops the rankings.

Read the full letter below, or here.