Last week the juxtaposition of two events caused me to spend some time thinking about just what a good education is and how it ought to be measured. I was fortunate enough to be invited to attend the Kemper Awards ceremony (because my wife, a colleague, and a close friend were among the winners) in which 20 KU faculty were asked to speak about their teaching philosophies. During the week I also read with great fascination the brouhaha caused by the “downgrading” of KU by one survey from 39th “best” public university to 41st best.

At the Kemper ceremonies, my colleague, Martin Dickinson spent his allotted two minutes graciously explaining that he was grateful for having been lucky enough to have had the opportunity to teach at KU for 35 years. My friend, Marjorie Swann, asked why anyone worked as a professor knowing that they would never earn as much as an assistant football coach and answered her own question by showing her love of teaching and scholarship and students.

As I sat there and listened to these two and all the others I realized that superficial numerical ranking of universities absolutely misses the point. And those who put their faith in rankings do as well.

When I think back about what made my undergraduate experience so important to me that I wanted to spend my life as a college teacher and administrator, I realized that it was the people, the students, the staff, the faculty, and even the administrators, who showed me the richness of a world I had hardly glimpsed before I arrived. They introduced me to the life of the mind.

To this day I don’t have any idea nor any particular interest in where my college, Haverford, ranks as against others. What I do care about is the fact that it was at Haverford that I read my first Victorian mystery. It was at Haverford that I learned about the stars in an introductory physics course. It was at Haverford that I used my first computer. It was at Haverford that one of my teachers, Richard Luman, taught me that history could permit me to hear voices of men and women dead for centuries and learn from them. It was at Haverford that a Latin professor, Dan Gillis, taught me not only about Latin oratory but German opera. My college experiences enriched my life then and continue to enrich my life every day. That’s why, 30 years later I still love the place.

I believe that if one were to ask students about what is most valuable to them about KU, it would not be whether we are ranked 25th, 35th, or 55th. At least I hope so. I hope that they’ll answer that it’s people they’ve known, the friendships they’ve made, the things they’ve learned. I do not doubt that rankings have their place. So long as employers put importance on such things they will be important. So long as applicants think in such terms they will matter.

But while we must live with this sad fact, I am coming to believe that part of our job is not to encourage such attitudes but to educate our students and everyone else that rankings tell very little about a college or university. I have always believed that the educational experience is a very personal thing and different for every student. There are students for whom the most important thing about college will be intramural sports and for others it will be the Spencer library. Some will be most influenced by a coach; others by a teacher or staff member. And that’s precisely the way it should be. But let us not become so consumed by the rankings that we begin to believe that they provide any true measure of the quality of a university education, whether they are good or bad

A number of years ago, when I was dean of the law school at KU, I attended a national meeting of law school deans. At that meeting, the dean of one quite prominent law school gave a speech on her successful strategy for raising the ranking of her school. Her plan had two main components.

The first was to spend a substantial sum of money to have brochures printed and distributed to law professors, law school administrators, and judges, the people most likely to be surveyed by the magazine doing the rankings. These brochures explained in great detail how wonderful her school was. The second initiative she proposed was to tailor her admissions process to maximize those qualities valued by the magazine, namely undergraduate grade-point averages and scores on the LSAT.

I remember that at the time she gave this speech I disagreed strongly. I still do. In seeking a higher ranking for her school as her highest priority, she had, in my opinion, forgotten the other aspects of her job and played right into the hands of the rankers.

As a teacher and no longer an administrator it is, of course, easy for me to take the high road on matters like rankings. But I believe that KU is a wonderful place and remains a wonderful place for students and faculty, even with our current economic hardships. I think most of our alumni are proud of KU and will continue to be so, no matter what some magazine or newspaper says our rank is because that’s not what they care most about. It is all the myriad good things about KU that makes this place wonderful and those are what we should concentrate on and make even better and not worry too much what rank some silly magazine says we occupy.