总统的口信

亲爱的CC社区:

I joined this remarkable community at 科罗拉多大学 19 months ago because we have a long history of thinking differently and accomplishing what other schools cannot. We provide the finest liberal arts education anywhere in order to ignite our students’ passions and potential so they can help to create a more just world.

在CC, we aren’t afraid to take courageous actions to support our 愿景 and mission. We were the first higher educational institution to implement the Block Plan (1970), the first to implement an Antiracism Commitment (2018), and the first institution in the Rocky Mountain region (and the eighth in North America) to achieve carbon neutrality (2020). None of this was easy, but we don’t settle for easy at CC. 

今天, I’m proud to announce that we will once again be at the forefront of taking bold and courageous action in service of our mission, 愿景, 和价值观. After extensive deliberations and surveys of our students, 工作人员, 教师, 校友, 和父母, 我们社区的情绪是明确的. 科罗拉多大学 will no longer cooperate in the deeply flawed U.S. 新闻 & 世界报道 “最佳大学”排名.  

We are pulling out of this ranking because it privileges criteria that are antithetical to our values and our aspirational goals. 这里有几个例子.

• U.S. 新闻’ flawed 方法 still equates academic quality with institutional wealth and continues to rely heavily on the infamous questionnaire asking institutions to rank each other’s reputation, 受制于博弈的非客观过程.
• It continues to equate academic rigor with high school rank and standardized test scores, a metric that creates perverse incentives for schools to provide “merit” aid at the expense of need-based aid. This metric is also inconsistent with our belief that the educational experiences we provide transform our students regardless of these class rank and test scores, 这就是为什么我们在2019年选择了可选测试.
• 此外, U.S. 新闻 & 世界报告 方法, weighing the proportion of students with debt and the total amount of debt at graduation, creates incentives for schools to admit wealthy students who can attend without incurring debt. We cannot reconcile our values and our aspirations with these metrics or the behaviors they motivate. 

We are making this move despite having benefited from these 排名. We are a prestigious, highly selective, private liberal arts college. Over the past decade, we have been ranked consistently between 25 and 29. Additionally, our peers consistently rank us as the second or third most innovative school. We expect that we will drop in the 排名 based on our decision to leave the U.S. 新闻 & 世界报道 排名. If this occurs, it will not be because our educational quality has changed, but because U.S. 新闻 & 世界报道 会继续使用不完整的数据对我们进行排名吗.

在CC, we pride ourselves on the immersive educational experiences we provide through the Block Plan; our small class sizes; our commitments to antiracism, 可持续性, and wellness; and our willingness to take bold actions and have courageous conversations. We will continue to attract a diverse group of students who will choose us because of the unique educational experiences we offer at 科罗拉多大学, irrespective of how a third-party judges that experience. These are students who want to learn in a highly immersive curriculum, 谁想要深度?, authentic collaboration in small learning communities, and who want to participate as partners in the learning process with peers and professors alike through our highly innovative Block Plan.

We will no longer perpetuate and be complicit with a system that encourages applicants to evaluate schools based on a biased ranking using opaque criteria that are associated with wealth and privilege. 而, we want prospective students to choose us based on criteria that the 排名 do not measure: analytical reasoning, 创造性地解决问题, 批判性思维, 对失败和暧昧的安慰, making meaning of the world and one’s place in it, exploring new ideas, and fostering creativity and innovation.

科罗拉多大学 has and will continue to share dashboards on our website with metrics that we consider important, 比如毕业率和留校率, 多样性, 以及研究生的成功, 如此......以至于...... prospective students and their families can make decisions about whether CC is right for them.

前进, we will focus our efforts on becoming a leader in educational access, 机会, 社会流动性, 学生转换.  勇敢地离开 U.S. 新闻 & 世界报道 是向我们的价值观学习的一部分吗, 愿景, and mission; acting with integrity; and operating consistently with our aspirations for the future of CC. I hope that other courageous liberal arts colleges will join us. 

真诚地,

L. 理查森的歌
总统