Compensating ASU's Crow

There are few things that everyone across the American political spectrum can agree upon, but one of the ideas that could qualify is having public officials be ultimately accountable to the taxpayers they serve, through elections, policy decisions made by elected officials or, in worst-case scenarios, through the court system.

So we are a little disturbed to hear Arizona State University president Michael Crow has $60,000 in bonus money riding on whether he can get the school out of the “third tier” (out of four) in U.S. News and World Report’s annual ranking of the country’s colleges and universities.

As reported Sunday by the Tribune’s Ryan Gabrielson, the Arizona Board of Regents has approved a $150,000 performancebased bonus package for Crow: $10,000 each for 10 goals set by the board, and another $50,000 if he hits them all.

The magazine’s annual ranking of the nation’s post-secondary schools is the highest-profile attempt to make sense of the dizzying array of choices that talented high school students have as they contemplate which direction to take their lives in. It’s an important marketing tool to watch — probably more productive than draping an “innovation” label around every available program.

But U.S. News gives the most weight to “peer assessment,” or a survey of university provosts, presidents and deans of admission asked to rate a school’s “intangibles,” such as faculty dedication. According to U.S. News’ “Best Colleges” Web site, the survey done for the 2007 issue had a 58 percent response rate, so the source is awfully unscientific, even for trying to judge a school’s worth on the basis of “intangibles.”

It doesn’t make it any better to know Crow wants the magazine survey to figure in his bonus. “I agree that those rankings are subjective,” Crow told Gabrielson, “but within their subjectivity, there is an element to them that we feel bad about.”

Fine. Feel bad about the elements that directly matter to students and taxpayers. We’re not sure what they would be beyond freshman retention and the six-year graduation rate, which are already performance goals. The others include faculty resources, per-student spending and alumni giving rates, where the significance lies in how well the money is spent, not how much. Unfortunately, the latter figures in some of the regents’ other performance goals for Crow.

Feel bad if students and taxpayers aren’t satisified with the results, not magazine editors and researchers who appear to be almost as confused about picking a college as the average incoming freshman.