Pulling Rank(ing)
Good morning.
Recently, I saw a headline in Becker’s Hospital Review that was similar to past articles I’ve seen in Becker’s and other media. The headline was “12 medical schools boycott US News rankings: Who, why and what’s next.”
I decided I wanted to speak on this topic in today’s column, and in preparations to start writing I looked back on that Becker’s article. It had already been updated. In what seemed like the blink of an eye, the 12 in that headline was updated to 13 – another prominent medical school announced they were no longer going to participate in U.S. News’s annual medical school ranking. And that number doesn’t even count the many other schools – like ours – that no longer submits required data, or has never done so. For all of those schools, U.S. News must rely only on publicly available information to fill out their list.
This topic, the validity and usefulness of this and similar school and/or program rankings, is not at all new. For years the Association of American Medical Colleges has been critical of the U.S. News ranking and a proponent for changes to their system. In 2001, an article titled America’s Best Medical Schools, A critique of the U.S. News & World Report Rankings appeared in the AAMC-published journal Academic Medicine journal. Articles by other authors on this topic have appeared in that journal over the years.
I shared my views on these rankings in an April 2016 VC Notes and little has changed from my viewpoint since then. Below are some of my points in that column about why the UMMC School of Medicine does not and has never participated in this ranking. They continue to be valid today and are very similar to reasons given by other medical school deans who’ve chosen to no longer send data to U.S. News, like my friend and fellow dean Dr. Larry Jameson from the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine.
In April 2016 I said:
“To cite just one glaring weakness, about 40 percent of a school's overall score is based on reputation. To measure reputation, U.S. News sends out two surveys a year - one to deans and senior administrators and the other to residency program directors. The survey lists ALL of the medical schools and asks the respondent to rate them from 1 (marginal) to 5 (outstanding).
It's highly unlikely that a busy dean or administrator even has time to complete such a survey, let alone give a thoughtful evaluation of schools he or she knows almost nothing about. As one might expect, more than two-thirds of deans and a higher percentage of residency directors do not return the surveys.
Even some of the objective metrics U.S. News considers convey a bias toward larger and better-resourced programs. Faculty-student ratios, for example, tell you very little about how much contact students may actually have with their teachers. At schools with a 10-to-1 ratio, a large percentage of the faculty may be in research labs and rarely encounter a medical student.
From our perspective at UMMC, there is concern that the U.S. News methodology doesn't value some of the things that matter a great deal to us in medical education. We have been (national) leaders of the trend toward holistic admissions - looking beyond merely MCAT scores and GPAs to consider other experiences and gifts that may contribute to the formation of a successful physician. U.S. News, however, still places a premium on high academic achievement alone.
For those schools that have opted out of the rankings, our shared perspective is that there are excellent schools that rank near the top of the U.S. News list and excellent schools that rank near the bottom of the list (or not on the list). These schools may have dramatically different missions, but they may be equally competent and successful in achieving their respective goals. To try to rank them against a common set of criteria is, well, somewhat like ranking apples and oranges on the “Best Fruit” list.”
Over the last decade, through my work with the Liaison Committee on Medical Education and the Association of American Medical Colleges, I have visited or reviewed documents for ALL of the M.D.-granting schools in the U.S. and Canada. I would put our program up against any of them.
I consider the state of our medical school exceptionally strong. Our location on a ranking would have no impact on that opinion. We are excelling in our charge to train and provide excellent and highly qualified physicians for Mississippi. Most significantly, and not a metric included in U.S. News’s ranking methodology, is our success in taking Mississippi residents, whose MCAT scores suggest to some they are less prepared for medical school than those in other states, and producing physician graduates that score at or above the national average on exit standardized exams. The education and experience students receive through the UMMC School of Medicine are first-rate. When they graduate, they can feel their preparation to enter the next phase of their career is on par with other new doctors from around the country. That this metric isn’t reflected in the U.S. News ranking is significant and a major reason why, under its current system, it doesn’t reflect our value among other schools.
Every medical school has a different mission. At UMMC, our mission is to take Mississippi residents (100% of our students) and train them to become physicians in this state. On this, we are wildly successful. According to real and validated data, we rank 4th nationally of medical schools that return their graduates to practice in state.
Concerns about this and all national rankings aren’t new but they’ve certainly gotten more complex over the years and as more and more highly regarded institutions pull out, there’s sure to be change. As we regularly do, we’ll evaluate our participation level and adjust at such time that we feel that it’s best for our medical school, our mission and the state we serve. Of course, we want to be considered among the best in the country and we feel we are already there. We will stay true to our mission and continue to train Mississippi residents to help us build A Healthier Mississippi.
