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(458) ALFP Debate: Schools of Pharmacy Should Stop Participating in the US News Ranking System

Objective : To describe advantages and disadvantages of Schools and Colleges of Pharmacy (S/COPs) continuing to participate in the US News & World Report Ranking System (USNWR-RS).

Methods: The Academic Leadership Fellows Program (ALFP) contributes to developing leaders in the Academy. ALFP Fellows participate in a debate on current topics in academic pharmacy. With the support of institutional librarians, literature reviews of PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, and Google Scholar were conducted to identify publications discussing the utility of ranking systems for institutions of higher learning, both within and outside pharmacy education. The resulting references and other publicly available resources were reviewed and summarized into reasons for and against continued participation.

Results: Reasons for continued participation in the USNWR-RS included the provision of easily accessible, basic information as a starting point for prospective students applying to pharmacy school; enhanced recruitment of students and faculty through advertisement of schools’ ranks; established name recognition; and potential for increased funding. Reasons against continued participation in the USNWR-RS included flaws inherent to the design and development of the ranking system; use of peer review as the sole source of data rather than use of available objective data similar to medicine and nursing ranking systems; and slow responsiveness from the USNWR-RS publishers over years of discussion with pharmacy stakeholders.

Conclusions: While there are advantages and disadvantages to the USNWR-RS, alterations to the methodology is warranted to more objectively evaluate and compare S/COPs.