U.S. News & World Report

U.S. News & World Report^[1] is a weekly American newsmagazine. Along with Time and Newsweek, it is a leading American news weekly.

Publication history

Founded in 1933 as United States News, it merged with World Report in 1948. The magazine's founder, David Lawrence (1888?1973), sold it to his employees.

The editorial staff of U.S.News & World Report is based in Washington, D.C., but the magazine is owned by U.S.News & World Report, L.P., which is based in the Daily News building in New York City.

Despite its lurid head lines and conforming to the owner's political point of view, it tends to be more conservative than its two primary competitors, Time and Newsweek.^[2]

Citing the decline in overall magazine circulation and advertising, "U.S.News & World Report" is scheduled to become a biweekly publication in 2009.^[3]

America's Best Colleges

In 1983, the magazine published its first U.S. News America's Best Colleges. The college rankings were not published in 1984, but have been compiled and published annually since 1985.^[4].

These rankings are based upon data which U.S.News collects from each educational institution, either from an annual survey sent to each school, or from the school's website. They are also based upon opinion surveys of university faculty, and administrators who do not belong to the schools. ^[4]

Criticism of college rankings

1990s

During the 1990s, three educational institutions in the United States were involved in a movement to boycott the U.S.News & World Report college rankings survey. The first was Reed College which stopped submitting the survey in 1995. The survey was also criticized by Alma College, Stanford University, and St. John's College^[5] during the late 1990s.

2000s

As a result, "a majority of the approximately 80 presidents at the meeting said that they did not intend to participate in the U.S. News reputational rankings in the future." ^[6] The statement also said that its members "have agreed to participate in the development of an alternative common format that presents information about their colleges for students and their families to use in the college search process." ^[7] This database will be web based and developed in conjunction with higher education organizations including the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities and the Council of Independent Colleges.

On 22 June 2007, U.S. News & World Report editor Robert Morse issued a response in which he argued, "in terms of the peer assessment survey, we at U.S. News firmly believe the survey has significant value because it allows us to measure the "intangibles" of a college that we can't measure through statistical data. Plus, the reputation of a school can help get that all-important first job and plays a key part in which grad school someone will be able to get into. The peer survey is by nature subjective, but the technique of asking industry leaders to rate their competitors is a commonly accepted practice. The results from the peer survey also can act to level the playing field between private and public colleges." ^[8]In reference to the alternative database discussed by the Annapolis Group, Morse also argued, "It's important to point out that the Annapolis Group's stated goal of presenting college data in a common format has been tried before [...] U.S.News has been supplying this exact college information for many years already. And it appears that NAICU will be doing it with significantly less comparability and functionality. U.S.News first collects all these data (using an agreed-upon set of definitions from the Common Data Set). Then we post the data on our website in easily accessible, comparable tables. In other words, the Annapolis Group and the others in the NAICU initiative actually are following the lead of U.S.News." ^[9]

America's Best Hospitals

For the past eighteen years, U.S.News has compiled a list of America's Best Hospitals http://health.usnews.com/usnews/health/best-hospitals/honorroll.htm after evaluating thousands of hospitals across multiple medical specialties.^[10] U.S.News & World Report evaluates hospitals, excluding military and veterans hospitals, based upon sixteen specialties. To be considered one of the top hospitals, medical centers must score at or near the top (at least two standard deviations above the mean) in a minimum of six specialties.

In the latest 2008 rankings, 5,453 medical centers were evaluated of which only 170 hospitals made it into the rankings, and finally nineteen ranked highly enough within at least six specialties to qualify them for the Honor Roll.^[11]

Rankings

Rank	Hospital Name	Location	Points in specialties
1	Johns Hopkins Hospital	Baltimore, MD	30 points in 15 specialties
2	Mayo Clinic	Rochester, MN	28 points in 15 specialties
3	UCLA Medical Center	Los Angeles, CA	25 points in 14 specialties
4	Cleveland Clinic	Cleveland, OH	25 points in 13 specialties
5	Massachusetts General Hospital	Boston, MA	24 points in 12 specialties
6	New York-Presbyterian University Hospital of Columbia and Cornell	New York, NY	22 points in 12 specialties
7	University of California San Francisco Medical Center	San Francisco, CA	21 points in 11 specialties
8	Brigham and Women's Hospital	Boston, MA	18 points in 11 specialties
9	Duke University Medical Center	Durham, NC	18 points in 11 specialties
10	Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania	Philadelphia, PA	18 points in 10 specialties
10	University of Washington Medical Center	Seattle, WA	18 points in 10 specialties
12	Barnes-Jewish Hospital/Washington University	St. Louis, MO	17 points in 11 specialties
13	University of Michigan Hospitals and Health Centers	Ann Arbor, MI	14 points in 9 specialties
14	University of Pittsburgh Medical Center	Pittsburgh, PA	10 points in 7 specialties
15	Vanderbilt University Medical Center	Nashville, TN	12 points in 7 specialties
16	Stanford Hospital and Clinics	Stanford, CA	10 points in 7 specialties
17	University of Chicago Hospitals	Chicago, IL	9 points in 8 specialties
18	Cedars-Sinai Medical Center	Los Angeles, CA	8 points in 7 specialties
19	Yale-New Haven Hospital	New Haven, CT	8 points in 6 specialties