From: "Swisher, Bob" <bswisher@ou.edu>
To: "'it-fyi@listserv.ou.edu'" <it-fyi@lists.ou.edu>
Subject: it-fyi: Colleges Are Excluded From 'Most Wired' Survey (Chron of
Date: Tue, 11 May 1999 11:43:29 -0500
Tuesday, May 11, 1999
Many Colleges Are Excluded From 'Most Wired' Survey, a President
Complains
By KELLY McCOLLUM
Being well wired won't necessarily place your institution among the
"most wired."
That's what administrators at some technology-heavy universities are
saying about the annual "Most Wired" ranking of colleges and
universities by Yahoo! Internet Life magazine.
Mayville State and Valley City State Universities in North Dakota, for
instance, have never gotten a Yahoo! ranking because the magazine's
editors have never sent them the survey of campus technology on which
the list is based. Ellen Chaffee, president of both institutions, has
undertaken a crusade to gain the recognition she feels her institutions
deserve.
Neither institution has been considered for the annual survey because
neither fits the guidelines used by Yahoo! to narrow the field. The
magazine's annual feature, which is called "America's 100 Most Wired
Colleges," acknowledges that it is limited, and it describes the
criteria for inclusion in fine print. For example, all state
institutions with more than 15,000 students are included, but not many
smaller state colleges -- together, Mayville State and Valley City State
have fewer than 2,000 students.
Such distinctions may not be apparent to most readers. "Their list says
'the nation's most-wired campuses,'" says Ms. Chaffee. "It doesn't say
'most-wired big rich schools for smart people.'"
The survey has previously drawn fire from administrators who feel that
the rankings fail to give a complete picture of campus computing, and
from institutions miffed at their low rankings.
Ms. Chaffee says being omitted from the list has an impact on faculty
members and students at her universities. "People look at the list, see
we're not on it, and they assume we're not good enough." She also says
it costs her institutions valuable publicity. "The simple fact of being
included in that survey would get our message out nationally to the
most-likely prospective students."
For small institutions like Ms. Chaffee's, she adds, Yahoo! rankings can
have a greater impact than they do for larger institutions that rank
high year after year. She also says that a ranking could help secure
funds from the state government to continue technology efforts. Money
for higher education has been tight in North Dakota lately, and cutbacks
in 1992 resulted in the Mayville and Valley City campuses' sharing
administrative staffs.
A statement on Mayville State's Web site outlines Ms. Chaffee's reasons
for protesting, and highlights the accomplishments that she says make
her institutions "most wired."
Of the handful of quantitative criteria that Yahoo! uses for its
rankings, Ms. Chaffee's analysis shows that Mayville State and Valley
City State outpace or compete closely with the Yahoo! top 10
institutions. For example, the top 10 average 27 computers per 100
students, while Mayville has 103 (since 1997, the university has
provided a laptopcomputer to every full-time student, paid for by a
tuition increase). At least 95 per cent of the computers at Mayville and
Valley City are under two years old, while the average for the Yahoo!
top 10 is 61 per cent.
Administrators at the University of Minnesota at Crookston say that
institution is in a similar situation. The university has had a laptop
requirement for six years, 70 per cent of its classroom seats are wired
for Internet access, and students have access to a range of
administrative and academic tools via the Web, according to Donald
Sargeant, the university's chancellor. "It's hard to believe that we're
not a best-wired campus," he says.
"If they are going to say they really want America's best-wired
colleges, then they should take a much broader definition of who they're
going to include, or be more clear when they promote it," says Mr.
Sargeant.
The magazine works with Peterson's, a publisher of guidebooks about
colleges, to distribute the survey to institutions that meet
institutional-classification criteria set by Peterson's.
Under those criteria, the survey is sent to institutions with "research"
or "doctoral" Carnegie classifications
(http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/cihe/), technology-focused
institutions, state institutions with more than 15,000 students, and
institutions that made the cut the previous year. Robert Bernstein, the
editor who compiles the rankings, says limiting the competition allows
the magazine to focus on the competitors. The field this year included
571 colleges and universities.
"They didn't fit any of the criteria that Peterson's had set forth,
which is unfortunate, but that's the decision we decided to make," Mr.
Bernstein says of Ms. Chaffee's institutions. "The survey's still pretty
young, and we're trying to include more schools every year." Next year,
he says, the magazine plans to put its survey on the Web, allowing any
institution to participate.
Ms. Chaffee looks forward those changes, which she hopes will put her
institutions in the running for a high ranking.
Background story from The Chronicle:
Case Western Reserve U. Tops 1999 List of 'Most Wired' Colleges
and Universities (4/23/99)
(http://chronicle.com/weekly/v45/i33/33a03601.htm)
Copyright © 1999 by The Chronicle of Higher Education
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