This morning’s Chronicle of Higher Education (subscription required) reports that an anonymous website critical of Missouri Valley College‘s administration — and the school’s fourth-tier ranking in U.S. News‘ annual listing of America’s Best Colleges — “has students and professors on the Marshall, Mo., campus buzzing.”
Like several similar Web pages that have popped up in recent years, Missouri Valley College: A Different View appears to be written, pseudonymously, by a frustrated professor or administrator. The site’s author — who goes by the nom de plume “W.H. Black,” the name of Missouri Valley’s first president — lambastes the college’s president and trustees, accusing them of corruption, lack of vision, and an unhealthy obsession with the institution’s athletics program.
Unfortunately for the campus, this news breaks the same day as the college’s “first-ever Senior Day Employment Symposium” (according to a PDF newsletter from MVC president Bonnie L. Humphrey). Funny how these things seem to happen at the worst of times.
Andy writes! 
Today’s reporting on The Chronicle’s Web site about the
US News rankings of colleges does NOT require a subscription. The package of several
articles, database, and a how-to-win the rankings game is available to anyone
and everyone.
Sincerely,
Alvin Brockway
Associate Publisher, Circulation
Thanks, Alvin!
Readers may access this package of articles at http://chronicle.com/