RELEASED: August 21, 2008

DANVILLE, KY—Once Forbes magazine released its inaugural America's Best Colleges list, the web article's feedback section quickly filled with opinions regarding the ranking. Reactions ranged from "no way" to "hooray!" Following are selected comments that give a sense of the debate and include some notable references to Centre.

Posted by taylor85
So, Centre College in Kentucky, who nobody has ever heard of, is more than 40 spots higher than UPenn?

You guys really should have done a bit more research before publishing this. Attributing 25% weighting to RateMyProfessors.com is just laughable.

Posted by WestPointDad
Actually, taylor85, Centre is every bit as good as its ranking. Do a little research and you'll find out. My son's "final two" were West Point and Centre, and it was a very tough decision for him to make. This list simply reaffirms what we knew at the time—he couldn't make a bad decision between the two. Both are among the very best in America.

Posted by Askew36
I've never heard of Centre, although I'm sure it is an excellent school. Rankings like these can perhaps call attention to schools that are underrated gems. That being said, this list suggests that Centre is better than MIT. That just isn't so.

Posted by Wally2
Some of you are dogging on a school just because you've never heard of it? Get over yourselves. Centre, as one example, is a top-notch school that creates critical thinkers out of its students.

So what if it edged out MIT or Berkeley. Those schools aren't a good "fit" for many students. I know they wouldn't have been for me.

I like that the ranking tries to look at a few unorthodox characteristics. That makes it stand apart from the one that gets all woozy in the knees at the classic big-name schools. (And just for the record, I did not go to Centre.)

Posted by HillarE
As a recent alumnus of Centre College, I am dismayed to read the number of comments disparaging Forbes' ranking based solely on Centre's presence in the top 15. While no ranking system is perfect, and none can ever fully predict a student's chances for success, Forbes lays out clear criteria for its choices, and based on those criteria, I can say with some confidence that Centre certainly deserves its recognition.

While this school may not be as well known as those whose place it has taken in this list, this state of affairs has more to do with its small size and location than it does with the quality of education offered, and to dismiss it based on lack of reputation alone displays the sort of elitism that prevents all institutions of higher education from striving towards improvement.

Through Centre College I had the opportunity to run a nonprofit group, present research, sing for a jazz ensemble and obtain a Fulbright grant. Perhaps more importantly, I had advisors who still recognize my voice when I call them on the phone; I thrived in classes of fifteen students; and I knew everyone on campus by name. Attending a school that offered merit aid, in an area of the country too often slighted, I found myself far less shielded from the realities of class and regional differences than my peers at less affordable institutions. And now that I find myself in the workforce, I have the same skills and the same drive as my friends who attended better-known schools.

Do I think that Centre is the 13th best school in the country? Not necessarily, in that I haven't visited all of the other schools cited. And I do believe that my school, like all schools, has a good deal of room for improvement. Nonetheless, Forbes' placement of Centre in a deservedly high position reflects a refreshing refusal to be bound by conventional wisdom and a willingness to consider what students across the country seek.

Posted by saxaphonst
The academic literature about RateMyProfessors.com does not show a very strong correlation between evaluations on RateMyProfessors.com and in-class evaluations. I believe the terminology that Forbes itself uses is: "The research to date cautiously supports the view that RateMyProfessors.com is relatively similar to the SET used by universities themselves."

The academic literature comparing SETs and RateMyProfessors.com methodologies shows correlations far from 1.00. This does not qualify as very strong correlation.

Finally, please do note that the RateMyProfessors.com ratings are statistically significantly higher for easier courses. Although Forbes attempts to combat this bias with their "rigor/easiness variable," such a measure would have to quantify such subjective and varying factors that any scholarly mind would deem it meaningless.

I leave you with one last quote from the Forbes.com description of methodology: "To be sure, the research is not all enthusiastically supportive of RateMyProfessors.com."

I am not enthusiastically supportive of Forbes.com's America's Best Colleges of 2008.

Posted by Bizenny
People on the West Coast should know Centre; it beat out UCLA and USC for the vice-presidential debate in 2000. However, you West Coasters shouldn't feel too bad, seeing that Woodrow Wilson said Centre "had graduated more men of prominence in 60 years than Princeton has in her 150."

Posted by wombats
It is nice to see an attempt to rank colleges on the quality of their product. Obviously there are a lot of top schools well down the list that you would not expect. I do not understand all of the small school bashing. A lot of the small schools (Wabash, Centre, Washington and Lee, Bates) on the list provide a fantastic education.

I graduated from Centre. The majority of my professors received their doctorates from top academic schools such as Harvard, Yale, Duke, Vanderbilt, Princeton. I think that I got a very good education. Forty percent of Centre graduates receive advanced degrees. I would estimate that well over 20% of my classmates received doctorate degrees in one form or another. I do not think that schools with the reputation and resources like Dartmouth and UCLA are not as good as smaller schools. They offer different things for their students. Smaller schools can sometimes offer a better education for the right student.

Posted by sean9891
This is, without doubt, the most arbitrary college ranking I have ever seen. Excluding the obvious top ten, I could pull colleges out of a hat and achieve more accurate results. I mean, RateMyProfessors.com? I sincerely believe that this was just something thrown together at last minute to sell some issues to the thousands of desperate prospective students. Either that, or the creators were bribed by Centre and Wabash.

Posted by itown
As a graduate from Franklin and Marshall (ranked 35th according to Forbes), and a current graduate student at an Ivy League school who spends a significant amount of time as a TA for a class of 150, I cannot believe how much of the teaching of the undergrads is actually done by me. I find it appalling that these students at an Ivy League school are learning upper level science by a graduate student who is only about two years older than them. It's about time someone put out a list that doesn't rank schools skewed by history.

Posted by Wally2
Moving on: If people want to argue that no guidelines can fully capture the best colleges in the country, then that's fine. I can understand some grievances with Forbes' data, but I can also poke holes in what competitor U.S. News does. A portion of U.S. News weighs the caliber of student who is accepted to a college (Top 10 in high school class, etc.). I've always been of the mind that it's not what kind of student goes in, but rather what kind of man/woman that the college can produce…probably not a quantifiable measure. Not to mention that it doesn't scratch the surface of being a Top 10 student at a rural public school versus a Top 10 student at a New England prep school. No system will be a perfect gauge and make everyone happy.

All in all, I think Forbes has made an effort to look past elitism and reputation to rank these schools.

To see how Centre fares in other college rankings and guidebooks, click on the following links:

U.S. News

Consumers Digest

Princeton Review

Colleges That Change Lives

The Fiske Guide to Colleges

Kiplinger's Magazine

UCAN

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Founded in 1819, Centre College is ranked among the U.S. News top 50 national liberal arts colleges. Consumers Digest ranks Centre No. 1 in educational value among all U.S. liberal arts colleges. Centre alumni, known for their nation-leading loyalty in annual financial support, include two U.S. vice presidents and two Supreme Court justices. For more, visit http://www.centre.edu/web/elevatorspeech/

For news archives go to http://www.centre.edu/web/news/newsarchive.html.