Profile: Robert Morse
COLLEGE RANKINGS GURU
The annual college rankings issue of U.S. News & World Report is, without a doubt, the magazine’s most visible brand name and its biggest revenue producer. So notes, Robert J. Morse, MBA ’72, who is in charge of compiling those rankings. “This is the one (ranking) the academic community cares about the most,” says Morse, who formerly worked with E. F. Hutton and with the U.S. Treasury Dept. and became involved with the rankings in 1987.
Besides the weekly issue, which reaches 2.1 million, Robert and his staff in Washington DC also produce a newsstand guide to colleges, a 1,500-page book, and a web site that is constantly updated. As he puts it, “There’s no question that this is the most widely recognized college rankings in the world.”
Popularity, however, does not equal lack of controversy. Many academics question the validity of a numerical ranking of colleges. Some also question many of the 16 statistical parameters that go into a university’s ranking—indicators such as alumni giving, exclusivity in admissions, general reputation, and the new “value added” measure created by Bob to compare a school’s graduation rate with the “expected” graduation rate calculated from the incoming students’ test scores. But despite the criticisms, the rankings continue to sell. And, as Bob notes, “Many college presidents have found it an acceptable benchmark to measure performance.”
A native of Minneola, Long Island, Bob chose MSU for graduate school without the aid of a rankings book. “It was affordable and had a good reputation,” he recalls. “I’ve done well with the quantitative skills I learned at MSU.” And, he says, MSU does well in his rankings. “MSU is in the Top 50 of the public universities and in the top third of all major universities,” he says. “That’s pretty good for a school that’s true to its mission. MSU does well to provide value added, so it does transform lives, just as its slogan says.”
