According to the U.S. News and World Report's "America's Best Colleges and Universities 2008," Dartmouth is no longer a top-ten school. In case you missed it, we dropped from 9th to 11th in the rankings for best national university. Across the nation, humbled Dartmouth students, alumni, professors, and administrators all shrugged their shoulders this summer and wondered why. What have we done to so disgrace our dear old alma mater? Or, what has Dartmouth done to disgrace us?

Dartmouth has an identity crisis, and it's obvious. Neither a college nor a university, Dartmouth has instead accumulated a flawed fusion of undergrad/grad/research/teaching. The resulting sacrifices of quality, exodus of professors, and heaps of bad press, ultimately guaranteed our fall from the top ten.

Big picture-wise, our rankings plummet is completely insignificant. Maybe our egos felt better in years and ranks past, but no one cried himself to sleep over the drop. Certainly there are more important things to worry about. A little self-reflection, however, can go a long way. As silly as rankings may be, we could benefit from knowing where we went wrong. If Dartmouth aims to provide the best educational experience possible, it's worth understanding whatever criticism we receive, and deciding whether that criticism might be justified.

Where Dartmouth Doesn't Measure Up

First, a look at the rankings. U.S. News uses seven categories to determine a college's rank: peer assessment, student selectivity, faculty resources, graduation and retention rate, financial resources, alumni giving, and graduation rate performance. The categories all receive different weight when assessing a school's final score. The faculty resources score makes up 20 percent of a college's grade, whereas peer assessment counts for 25 percent. While faculty resources is determined by six subfactor scores, peer assessment relies entirely on the results from a peer assessment survey, filled out by presidents, provosts, and deans of all participating colleges within the school's own category--in Dartmouth's case, National
Universities. More on that to come.

U.S. News has received criticism for its rankings' scoring subjectivity, sometimes resulting in smaller, lesser-known schools receiving so-so (or poor) rankings largely due to lack of prestige. In May, twelve schools signed a letter stating they would not participate in the peer assessment survey.
Another fifty schools have since joined the anti-peer-assessment movement. They argue the survey is entirely subjective and respondents' answers are based on hearsay and biases, rather than actual facts about the quality of education. That it holds the most weight out of any category, they say, is absurd.

This scintillating conversation about peer assessment may seem beneath our Ivy League pedestal, but it's not. Dartmouth suffered in its peer assessment score. Last year, the school received 4.4 out of 5. This year, our peers deigned to give us 4.3. That's the difference between a B+ and a B. That's also the difference between 9th and 11th place, as it turns out.

For some reason, or reasons, peer institutions believe the quality of Dartmouth's education is dropping, or at least that it's not as impressive as they once believed. Peer assessment may be a flawed method for ranking a college, but it's neither random nor based entirely on whim. Our peer institutions don't live in a vacuum. Could they be onto something? Is Dartmouth actually in trouble?

Losing our edge?

Over the past two years, Dartmouth has seen what's been declared a "mass exodus" of professors and administrators. At the same time, Dartmouth has received less-than-glowing press due to a number of unrelated situations: including trouble with the Alumni Association and last fall's dialogue--or reportedly lack thereof--regarding race on campus. Negative press, justifiably or not, affects the way our peers view us.

Although our administration insists that Dartmouth is a college, U.S. News placed the school in the national university category. When our peers compare us to other universities, it probably hurts when we insist we're not one. It probably also hurts when we lose professors known for their research. Negative press has called attention to the fact we're hemorrhaging faculty members in general, losing multi-million dollar grants, and failing, according to criticism, to remain on the cutting edge. So we're seen as a so-so university, a fact ostensibly made obvious by bad press stemming in large part from a group of angry and vocal alumni intent on seeing that Dartmouth remains a college. At some point, our peers picked up on our identity crisis--and that it possibly means a sacrifice in the quality of Dartmouth's famed educational experience.

Not Enough of a University

Dartmouth has all but hemorrhaged distinguished professors. The reasons for these sudden departures over the past few years sometimes troublingly stem from "philosophical differences" with the administration. Perhaps even more troubling is that in most of these cases, other institutions are just more attractive. Maybe they offer more research opportunities. Maybe their presidents are just more loveable than ours. It's hard to say. In any case, it appears that there's a trend here: a good handful of our own professors prefer other universities.

In 2005, the David T. McLaughlin Distinguished University Professor of Psychology, Dr. Michael Gazzaniga, announced his decision to leave the college for the University of California, Santa Barbara. Gazzaniga was director of the College's Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, was named to the President's Council of Bioethics, and, according to The Dartmouth, was "considered the father of cognitive neuroscience." His departure closely coincided with the National Science Foundation revoking most of the $21.8 million grant awarded to Dartmouth the previous year to help fund the College's Center for Cognitive and Educational Neuroscience (CCEN). Gazzaniga now heads the interdisciplinary center for the study of the mind at UCSB. Since his departure, Dartmouth's CCEN has been entirely phased out of existence.

In September 2005, the Arthur R. Virgin Professor of Music Jon Appleton announced that he would leave Dartmouth at the end of the 2005-2006 school year to become a visiting professor at Stanford University. According to an article in The Dartmouth, Appleton explained that the administration's failure to "curb grade inflation, reduce class size and stay on the cutting edge" drove him to his decision. During his career, he's helped to develop the Synclavier-- a digital performing instrument--and received the Guggenheim, Fulbright, National Endowment for the Arts, and American- Scandinavian Foundation fellowships. Appleton taught at the college for 38 years.

After Gazzaniga's and Appleton's abdications came the resignation announcements of Daniel Webster Professor of Government Allan Stam and Associate Professor of government David Becker; Italian professor Giuseppe Cavatorta; interdisciplinary historian and Kathe Tappe Vernon Professor of History at Dartmouth Leo Spitzer; Leon D. Black Professor of Shakespearean Studies Peter Saccio; and earth sciences professor Richard Birnie. Between fall of 2005 and fall of 2007, eight professors left the college, or announced their intention to leave the college. According to "Ask Dartmouth," a new feature on the Dartmouth website maintained by the College's Offices of Public Affairs, Government, Psychological and Brain Sciences, English, and History are four of the five most popular majors. Five of the aforementioned eight professors teach for those departments. Overall Dartmouth has an 8 to 1 student-teacher ratio, but that shining figure means little to a government major, now with two fewer professors.

Dartmouth hasn't just lost beloved professors. Simultaneously, numerous administrators have either left Dartmouth for other schools or chosen to retire. Dean of College James Larimore left for Swarthmore. Dean of Admissions Karl Furstenberg retired. Ozzie Harris resigned as Director of the Office of Institutional Diversity and Equity, citing "philosophical differences" with the administration. Abby Tassel, coordinator of the Sexual Assault Awareness Program, quit in 2005, also over "philosophical differences." And Leah Prescott, Tassel's replacement, announced her own resignation this summer.

Students choose a school for many reasons including the quality of education they expect to receive. Why do professors and administrators choose schools? And, more importantly, why do they choose to leave?

Too Much of a University

In the past year, several relatively high-profile incidents and situations placed Dartmouth in the public eye, or at least kept people--and peers--aware that there's trouble in paradise.

First, the ongoing and intensifying fight between a certain group of alumni and the Dartmouth Board of Trustees. For four years in a row, an alumni petition candidate has been elected to the Board. Last year, the Board proposed to amend the Alumni Constitution, which would have made it harder for petition candidates to become elected. Amidst louder and louder furor, the proposal failed, and the constitution remained unchanged. In the meantime, op-eds and articles appeared in the Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and the New York Times, lambasting the College on numerous counts: for the Trustee debacle; for the supposed breaches in free speech; and for focusing too much on turning the college into a university.

These complaints, and their progenitors, have had two effects. First, they have very publicly expressed dissatisfaction with the president and his administration. They've called attention to the fact that all is not right in Hanover, and they're certainly justified in this belief, at least with regard to faculty retention.

Another result of this public ire is a little more complicated. The majority of rabble-rousers are known political conservatives, to a polarizing degree. Their opinions are equated with the Dartmouth of old--before coeducation--, when tradition ruled, even if it meant sacrificing quality of education or academic advancement. Academia generally shuns conservative thought, for better or worse; a very outspoken conservative group of alumni both calls attention to Dartmouth's very real problems, and simultaneously reminds others that we're a school known for cripplingly conservative dogma that often finds us comparatively behind the times.

The Alumni Constitution-related airing of dirty laundry wasn't the only time Dartmouth made headlines. Last year also saw a publicized "debate," so to speak, about race issues at the school. In a series of events that culminated in the Rally Against Hatred and the over-the-top "Natives are Getting Restless" edition of The Dartmouth Review--complete with an Indian holding a scalp--, Dartmouth was portrayed in the media as a college of extremes, with an emotional and inarticulate left fighting against a right so mean-spirited that they discredited whatever valid arguments they may have had. Whether the portrayal was fair, Dartmouth students and faculty came across as either too sensitive, or too insensitive. The message, the debate, was lost in the shuffle.

That's three strikes against Dartmouth that our peer institutions might have picked up on: faculty retention problems; resistance to change; and seeming lack of intellectualism when the opportunity arises.

Dartmouth: (So-so) University in all but name?

In his 1998 inaugural address, President Wright said "Dartmouth College is a university in all but name." He explained this point, insisting that Dartmouth could be both college and university, and that the fusion of the two would only help to strengthen both. From the Ask Dartmouth website, an excerpt from this speech:

Our support for the graduate and professional programs does not diminish our commitment to undergraduate education or our emphasis on excellence in teaching. Nor does taking seriously our obligation to pursue excellence as teachers in any way blunt our commitment to cutting-edge research and scholarship. Each strengthens the other. Our direction is clear. We seek to build upon and to expand our dual commitment. We will work to continue to attract the very best faculty possible and to support them in their scholarship and research endeavors. And, in turn, we are equally committed to excellence in teaching, at all levels of this institution. We can enjoy the best of being a college and a university.

The U.S. News rankings tell us very little about how to fix Dartmouth, or in what direction we should go. In our situation, all they do is hold up a mirror, forcing us to see that our peer institutions think less of us. It's up to us to figure out why--and whether this assessment is justified.

While we've lost eight professors in the past two years, we have hired 49 new teaching professors since Wright's inauguration. In 1997, the student-teacher ratio was 12 to 1, and now, as I've said, it's 8 to 1. For a college or a university, that's a great number.

Still. Couldn't we do better? Dartmouth seems to be losing the battle in an arena that's more than mere statistics. Internal political division among alumni, students, and administrators threaten to dissolve a carefully balanced union of interests. Appleton left because he felt that Dartmouth had fallen behind in cutting edge research, which Wright specifically promised would not be the case. In the attempt to precariously balance our education--at least for show--between College and University, between conservative and liberal, we have failed on all fronts.

Or at least that's what our peers seem to think.