One of my favorite folks from Atlanta, T, dropped off this little article in my comments section this morning courtesy of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the fine folks at Black Enterprise Magazine:

Morehouse loses top spot in ranking

Not only did Morehouse, my beloved alma mater and locale of the best four years of my life, lose its number one spot…

…it tumbled down to the #45 slot.

Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

Now I know that a lot of people out there are talking reckless, and you can bet your bottom dollar people are talking shit since folks love to knock us Morehouse fellas down a peg or two from our self-made pedestal in the Black community and HBCU universe.

Every time these bogus rankings come out (and I’ll get to why their bogus in a minute) every body who went to an HBCU loves to toss around their ranking or tell Morehouse that we ain’t shit. It’s a standard ritual. I remember when I was at Morehouse and Spelman overtook us for the #1 slot all the mudslinging that was going back and forth between the ‘House and the fine upstanding women at Spelman.

But alas, these rankings really don’t amount to shit. They didn’t amount to shit when Morehouse was ranked number one and they don’t amount to shit now.

And the crowd said…”jigga what?? jigga who??”

“Panama, what you talking about Willis?”

First of all, let’s discuss this rumble (young man rumble) from the top slot all the way down to the 45 slot. Do you mind? Then let us tally ho..

The Atlanta college, ranked No. 1 for the past two of the biennial rankings, fell to No. 45 on the latest list, in part, the magazine said, because of its comparatively low graduation rates.

This year, the magazine surveyed more than 500 African-American education professionals who rated the schools based on their black student graduation rates, academic and social environments, total black undergraduate enrollment, percentage of black undergrads and 2004 ranking.

And according to the article and an editor for Black Enterprise Magazine, graduation rates were given the highest priority.

Everybody here can read right? Good. Then let’s discuss this.

In 2004, Morehouse was ranked as the #1 best college for African-Americans. Which means that in 2004, all of the criteria that were used placed Morehouse squarely at the top. Including in 2004, an atrocious graduation rate.

Let me tell you all a little something about Morehouse. Our graduation rate blows chunks. I remember reading somewhere a long time ago where our 6-year graduation rate was only at like 66%. A whole 2/3 of all black men that came into Morehouse were actually going to graduate in 6-years. Me and my boys graduated in 4 which makes us something like some wunderkinds or something. Either way, that news isn’t exactly groundbreaking, but its a fact about Morehouse.

A sizeable percentage of men that show up aren’t going to graduate. It’s the case now and it was the case back then.

…Morehouse’s graduation rate fell from 56 percent to 49 percent in the time frame the magazine used to determine rankings…

I’m not exactly sure if that’s the 4-year rate or if that’s the 6-year rate, either way it does blow. However, you’re telling me that in 2004, that shitty rate was enough to get us into the #1 slot, but 2 years later it drops 7 points and it causes you a 44 spot slide? Granted, they said that graduation rates got higher priority, but even still, assuming everything else stayed the same (faulty assumption but without them saying we suck other places I have nothing to go on…they focused on graduation rates, not me, the fuckers), and given all of the improvements Morehouse has made in every other area from their capital plans to academic programs, the professionals surveyed must have only looked at graduation rates.

Hell, it was enough to drop Spelman, a school that even makes it into the US News and World Reports for liberal arts colleges, ranking to #5.

Dude, it’s Spelman. They graduate. And they still get dropped to #5. They were #3 in 2004. Do you really think I believe that?

Hell Clark-Atlanta University was #10 in 2004…now?? Ghost like Patrick Swayze.

But okay, according to those surveyed, Morehouse fuckin’ sucks. Okay…I can live with that.

Then again…it’s a survey. Granted, it’s one that people place a lot of stock in. Not I.

For one…it’s a damn survey. They asked 500 ninja’s of professional stature to rate the schools and assumingly gave them the main criteria to focus upon. According to the 2003 (released in 2004) rankings, they used 1,855 ninja professionals to rate the schools, so I have to wonder why the dropoff in included parties. Any person worth their weight in statistical salt knows that the greater your sample size the better the results.

There were no statistical methods used to determine this here. My guess is that they asked the 500 ninjas to look over the information that they had and give their ranking based on that information.

And maybe that’s good enough, but you can’t convince me that US News does that shit. And you know what, for all the years that Morehouse has been ranked #1 in Black Enterprise, we’ve been ranked like NON-EXISTENT over at US News.

Do you know what kind of shift you have to have in your examination of criteria to cause a school to actually lose 44 slots? That shit sounds like the school lost accrediation or something to me…and of course this all supposes that real stock is being placed in these rankings.

And you know what, people do. And people will. I just did a google search of Black Enterprises College Rankings for 2006 and all kinds of schools placed their ranking on their site. And hell, why not, if you win some shit, fuck it, run with it. Who cares if you didn’t even know if you were nominated.

Word to Michael Jackson.

This is undoubtedly big news in the HBCU community and will be cause for concern at Morehouse and to a lesser extent at Spelman and poor Clark…they just got fucked.

As my boy Maverick just said, “Like, are you seriously telling me that Clark is not one of the top 50 Black Colleges??? There are only 112…”

Indeed.

And half of them you haven’t even heard of before.

Even though I don’t put much stock into this, I did enjoy hearing about how Morehouse College ninjas thought they were the shit…

…oh wait, that won’t change, and we are.

You can tell a Morehouse Man, but you can’t tell him much.

And you can’t tell me that these rankings mean much of shit either. Like I said, they didn’t mean much when we were ranked #1 and they don’t mean much now. Sure, it was good for a little HBCU tension and pseudo-elitism. And yes, I’m sure quite a few folks are foaming at the mouth for the opportunity to put Morehouse on blast.

Then again, those are all the same folks who would tell me that they got a scholarship to go to Morehouse (or Spelman), but went to Tougaloo College instead because it was a better opportunity. And that’s no shot at Tougaloo, I’m just saying that we hear these things.

To anybody who went to another HBCU and wants to take shots at the King…please feel free. We probably deserve it.

However, it’s still Morehouse College.

Two words.

Enough said.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 1st, 2006 at 10:00 am and is filed under Education, In The News, Welcome to Blackness. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.