Persistence of perception.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)

I was most interested in the article, "The Validity of the 2004 US News &World Report's Rankings of Schools of Social Work," by Robert G. Green and colleagues (April 2006) regarding the evaluation of schools of social work, specifically by US. News & World Report (USNWR). Of particular interest was the observation that there were "conspicuous differences across the groups when comparing the rankings of individual schools by NASW members to those of faculty members and deans," (p. 140) singling out Smith College as noteworthy for being ranked 19th by USNWR but being ranked first by the practitioners. My experience has allowed me to observe a curiously similar phenomenon.

As background, I will tell you that I am a 1987 graduate of the George Warren Brown (GWB) School of Social Work at Washington University in St. Louis (ranked #2). I will confess that coming from another field entirely I was woefully unaware of neither rankings (if they even existed) nor the respectability of the program upon my entrance to GWB. And in working two jobs while attending grad school, I didn't have much time to reflect on the education I was receiving. Following graduation with my MSW, I worked in a counseling agency in St. Louis for five years before relocating to Connecticut, where I have been in private practice for the last 14 years.

I must say, however, that I was immediately struck upon my relocation to Connecticut (a state that is home to a large number of graduates from nearby Smith) by the fact that most practitioners, overwhelmingly, had not even heard of Washington University and were generally dismissive of the University of Michigan program (consistently ranked #1). More remarkable was the assumption that Smith College's program "must" be ranked first. I should note that at some point I gave in to my curiosity and looked up the USNWR rankings and discovered the disparity that Green and colleagues recently cited.

Over the years I have pondered the persistence of this perception. Given the large number of Smith grads in CT, I have informally inquired about the ...