UO ties at 115 on annual list of best colleges.

Byline: Bob Keefer The Register-Guard

CORRECTION (ran 8/30/05): A story on Page A1 on Aug. 20 incorrectly said that Northwestern University tied with the University of Oregon in 115th place in U.S. News & World Report's latest college ranking. Northwestern was actually in 12th place. Northeastern University and three other schools tied with the UO.

The University of Oregon has been ranked No. 115 among American universities in the newest U.S. News & World Report college rankings, which were available Friday on the Web and which will be published Monday in the magazine.

Oregon State University was among the unrated "third-tier" universities in the annual listing, titled "America's Best Colleges 2006.'

The UO actually was tied in 115th place with four other colleges in the "National Universities" group, which includes 248 universities (162 public and 86 private) that offer a wide range of undergraduate majors as well as master's and doctoral degrees.

Loyola University of Chicago, Northwestern University, the State University of New York at Buffalo and the University of San Francisco also ranked 115. Last year, the UO was tied at 117.

The rankings are not without controversy; some institutions refuse to participate. To rank colleges and universities, U.S. News first assigns schools to a group of their peers, based on categories developed by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

John Moseley, senior vice president and provost of the UO, said the ranking shows that the university has held its own.

"The good news is, in spite of the budget cuts, we seem to have maintained our position," he said. "The bad news is that in areas directly reflective of the budget, we are slipping. We have to have larger classes. We have more students and less money."

First published in 1983, the U.S. News & World Report college rankings have been popular with college-bound students and their families while coming under increasing attack from critics, who call the numeric rankings misleading and meaningless.

The magazine says it does its utmost to make sure the rankings are fair, basing the scores on a combination of objective measures such as graduation rates and class sizes, and more subjective criteria such as peer evaluations.

Some colleges have stopped participating. Reed College in Portland refused this year for the 10th year in a row to provide information for the survey.

The small private college once was ranked ninth among liberal arts colleges before it stopped returning the questionnaire in 1995; the following year its ranking plummeted to the unrated fourth tier, the bottom of the college barrel. This year it's ranked No. 47.

Reed spokeswoman Beth Sorenson said the college still questions the methodology of such lists and offered a statement from Reed President Colin Diver about college rankings:

"They are primarily measures of institutional wealth, reputation, influence, and pedigree. They do not attempt, nor claim, to measure the extent to which knowledge is valued and cultivated."

Stanford University likewise doesn't return the questionnaire, though it posts statistics on its Web site that answer the magazine's questions. Stanford was ranked fifth this year.

The magazine almost invariably places Ivy League schools, particularly Harvard, Yale and Princeton, at the top of its list.

In 1999, following a change in methodology by the magazine, the California Institute of Technology got the No. 1 spot, based largely on the amount of money Caltech spends per student. The following year the magazine changed its criteria again, bumping the Ivies back into the top three slots.

This year's top three are Harvard, Princeton and Yale. Caltech and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are tied at No. 7.

ON THE INTERNET

The college rankings can be seen on the Web

at www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/college/rankings/rankindex_brief.php; a subscription is required for detailed information.