by P.D. Lesko

I READ THE hefty Department of Education Statistics Quarterly from cover to cover with the relish that some people save for their favorite travel magazines. So, I was delighted to discover that U.S. News and World Report's controversial college ranking list includes percentages of full-time faculty employed. I read that several of the top 10 universities claimed over 95 percent of their faculty were full-time. What bastions of responsible hiring, or so most parents and students reading those numbers might think.

The truth, of course, isn't as close to 100 percent full-time faculty employment as those colleges would like everyone to believe. I went to my bookshelf and cracked open my 2001 copy of Petersen's Guide to 4 Year Colleges. There, I found the percentages of faculty who were full-time, as well, at the various institutions. At Harvard, officials had reported to Petersen's that 73 percent of faculty were full-time. To the officials at U.S. News and World Report, Harvard had upped the percentage from 73 to 99. Of colleges in the top 10 of U.S. News and World Report's rankings, and Petersen's Guide, Harvard had the largest discrepancy, with a 26 percent difference reported between the two sources.

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