The review’s 2002 edition of “The Best 331 Colleges” hit bookshelves recently with good news and bad news for MSU. The survey ranks colleges in areas ranging from party schools to best libraries based on interviews with students.
This year, the Spartans made No. 6 for “major frat and sorority scene,” No. 3 “jock school,” No. 6 for “students packing the stadiums” and No. 13 for “teaching assistants teaching too many upper-level courses.”
The university has fallen off several other lists during the past several years, including party school, where it was ranked as high as third, and “college newspaper gets read,” where MSU ranked sixth a year ago.
College officials, including administrators at MSU, tend to discredit these surveys as “anecdotal” and “not scientific.” And, frankly, we do have to agree to some extent with MSU spokesman Terry Denbow, who said “this is all so much silliness” - especially when our university has fallen off the chart for the campus newspaper being read.
But the fact is current students and prospective students - not to mention parents - get much of their information about colleges anecdotally from friends or family members. Most of us began to learn about MSU from watching sporting events on television or hearing people tell their tales of college life here.
Many students get information about classes or specific professors from their peers who’ve been in those classes, and there are many Web sites that rely on anecdotal evidence to rank professors.
The university itself uses some of these tactics during orientation programs, using personal stories from faculty, staff members or other students to present information about health, safety or simply campus pride.
It would be nice to think everyone would do their homework and make decisions about MSU based purely on academics and programs, but that’s not the reality. It’s this anecdotal evidence that often first gets our attention.
All of the tongue-in-cheek categories aside, The Princeton Review delves into some important areas with its surveys. It’s troubling to think MSU has made the list for “teaching assistants teaching too many upper level classes” two years in a row.
It’s often necessary to use TAs or part-time faculty members to teach classes - especially in times of shrinking budgets - but that doesn’t appear to be the message students are receiving.
And when MSU made the party school list the year after the March 27-28, 1999, riot, it was certainly a concern to the entire community. Students and residents certainly do not want their home known as a place prone to chaos and malicious destruction.
The university - administrators, faculty, staff members and students - needs to fight the misperceptions lists like The Princeton Review pervade about a campus. That’s the only way we can make sure MSU doesn’t appear on those negative lists next year.
