The form submitted by the provost at the University of Wisconsin at Madison deemed 260 of its 262 peer institutions to be of â??adequateâ? quality. A survey from the University of Vermontâ??s president listed â??donâ??t knowâ? for about half of the universities. The forms provided by Ohio State Universityâ??s president and provost were virtually identical. And the University of Floridaâ??s president, like his highly publicized colleague at Clemson University, rated his own institution well above many of his competitors.
Long a sore spot for many critics, the peer assessment survey for U.S. News & World Reportâ??s annual college rankings has been subjected to especially tough scrutiny since June, when an official at Clemson revealed that her bosses, as part of a larger strategy to propel the university up the rankings, had regularly given low scores on the “reputational” survey to other universities to make Clemson look better.