The following opinion page column by Peace College President Laura Carpenter Bingham appeared in the News & Observer on Aug. 22.

RALEIGH - Lost in all the media attention, analysis and recent boycotting of U.S. News & World Report's college rankings is a story of greater significance. It's the annual results of a far-greater barometer of the education of college students. This is the National Survey of Student Engagement.

Where the U.S. News rankings are based on data collected about students as they enter an institution, NSSE collects data from the front-line beneficiaries of college experience -- enrolled first-year and senior students.

NSSE, an initiative of the Pew Charitable Trusts and the National Center for Higher Education Management and the Center for Postsecondary Research at Indiana University, obtains information about student participation in programs and activities that institutions provide for their learning and personal development. It surveys undergraduate quality, providing far more valuable information about institutional quality than measures of reputation.

The survey consists principally of items that are known to be related to the most important college outcomes: student-faculty interaction, supportive campus environment, active and collaborative learning, level of academic challenge and enriching educational experiences.

The results indicate what current students think of the quality of the teaching and learning environment. In 2006, the survey asked 316,000 students at 610 colleges and universities how the institutions are doing on the things that really matter -- those that affect success outcomes.

The insights gleaned from this survey are meaningful, equitable to all and probably for most enlightening, maybe even downright unexpected. Better yet, it's safe to say there can be little, if any, monkey business or gamesmanship played with these rankings, since a third party is asking 18- and 22-year-olds their opinions of the value of their college experiences. As parents, professors and peers know, the opinions of college students generally flow freely and are unencumbered by expectations and external influences.

Take, for example, one of my alma maters, Peace College, where I serve as president. We're small, but our results are mighty from our students' perspectives. This year, Peace seniors scored the college in the top 10 percent in all five NSSE categories. This is the sixth consecutive year that Peace has ranked in the top 10 percent of the nation's colleges and universities.

Contrast those salutary results with U.S. News rankings, where Peace traditionally landed in the second -tier of regional colleges, but this year dropped to the fourth tier after being moved to a much broader classification -- the national liberal arts category for undergraduate colleges (the change was precipitated by a five-year assessment by the Carnegie Foundation).

Because of our expanded curriculum and graduates' disciplines, Peace arrived in an overall better neighborhood but is now being evaluated by college officials across the country who likely have never heard of us. This peer assessment counts for 25 percent of the U.S. News ranking; it is among the most controversial indicators used by the magazine.

So, while we have been bouncing around in U.S. News rankings, our students have been consistently ranking small Peace College in the top 10 percent of positive student outcomes.

As college students return to campuses this week and next all across the United States, and their parents reflect on real value as they pay tuition bills, and as a new crop of prospective students and parents start "shopping" for colleges, they would do well to listen to the voices of those enrolled rather to those of far-away colleagues, financial analysts and ranksters engaged in an expensive contest of statistical gamesmanship.

Finding the right college fit is about what's real -- not perception and finances. Loren Pope, a former education editor for The New York Times, wrote in his book "Looking Beyond the Ivy League," "Assuming that the purpose of college is to educate, the good college is the one that has an effect on the students. It should be judged by the kind of people it turns out rather than by the kind it takes in. Judging colleges by the academic records of its acceptees is like judging hospitals by the condition of their admittees."

Peace College will continue reporting data to a variety of research forums, with a commitment to be transparent and broadly accountable, but we are convinced that the value of data is much greater when it points to outcomes -- real ones.

(Laura Carpenter Bingham is president of Peace College.)