If you took your cues from the Trustee and Student Assembly Elections last spring, you’d think Cornell’s real problems include improving “campus diversity and understanding,” strengthening “Greek-University relations,” and creating “a forum representing different corners of the community.” The never-ending litany of meaningless slogans might lead one to believe that Cornell doesn’t face any serious problems. But we do. And nobody in a position of power seems to be doing much about our biggest one.

Cornell is currently ranked by U.S. News and World Report as the number 12 university in the country. Back in the 1990s Cornell regularly ranked in the top ten, but after U.S. News changed their system, we fell substantially. Cornell is heavily penalized for its large classes, relatively high admittance rates and the low test scores of our matriculants. The administration would have us believe that this ranking doesn’t really matter — what really matters are the quality of our professors, physical infrastructure and other University resources. And in the short term, they are mostly right. The U.S. News ranking really is stupid — we know we’re better than Washington University in St. Louis, so why get defensive.

The reason is that, while the justification for the ranking might be foolish, its effects are very real. When high school seniors decide which universities to apply to, and when accepted students make their final choice, they look to the widely published rankings. Cornell comes short of every Ivy save Brown, and does worse than other non-Ivies such as Duke and the University of Chicago. Because the best students prefer other universities, Cornell is forced to accept more students, lowering our selectivity rating, which further reduces our ranking. It also reduces the actual quality of our enrolled student body.

After four years, these inferior (on average) students graduate into the real world. When they get there, they’ll find that employers are less impressed with Cornell and are less likely to even have heard of us. The graduates themselves will be less impressive people, because they were (again, on average) inferior when they first went to Cornell. They’ll make less of a good impression on employers, make less money, provide less job connections for current students, and in the future contribute less when giving back to the University. Employers will be less inclined to recruit here, and it will be harder for Cornell students to get internships. All of these things will further push our ranking down, leading to a self-reinforcing spiral.

And in the end, it will be impossible to insulate our superior infrastructure, libraries and professors from the effects of our ranking. Professors and grad students, especially in the social sciences and humanities, will tend to prefer working in more prestigious universities. Reduced alumni contributions will begin to harm the ability of the University to maintain the top-notch research facilities necessary to get and keep the best professors and grads in the hard sciences. And these things will further contribute to lower University ranking.

Cornell ought to take the steps necessary to push us back into the top-10 rankings. One first step is reducing class sizes, and especially reducing the number of classes with more than 50 people. This could be accomplished fairly easily by simply capping more classes’ enrollment at 49. Hiring more professors would also help increase the course selection.

Another necessary action is to directly increase selectivity. This means accepting fewer students, and making these cuts almost entirely based on SAT scores and GPAs. It may not be politically correct to say that we need to have a smarter student body, and that “roundedness” isn’t the be-all and end-all, but it’s true. Rejecting some of the least-qualified students will improve our rankings, and needs to be done even if this means cutting some of the colleges more than others. This should also help to reduce class sizes.

Cornell also needs to offer no-loan financial aid. Most other Ivies offer far more generous financial aid packages, enabling their students to graduate without crushing debt. This helps them attract the best students regardless of family income, and makes it harder for Cornell to compete. And we ought to offer more generous financial aid not just because we need to compete, but because it’s right. Recent graduates shouldn’t feel unable to take lower paying jobs in non-profits or other relatively selfless professions because of their massive debts. A recent story by Cornell Alumni Magazine reported that it would cost only $17 million per year to match Harvard’s financial aid policies. There are also rumors that $750 million of Cornell’s newest capital campaign will be dedicated to improving financial aid, matching the other Ivies’ policies. We should all wish the University the greatest success with this plan.

Taking these steps would lead to a small increase in Cornell’s ranking, which would make it easier for the University to attract better students in the future. Instead of a spiral of decline, Cornell can choose a virtuous cycle of success. The University administration, after facing prodding by the Image Committee, has taken small steps in the right direction, such as improving our viewbook and changing our logo. But the limits of improvement due to better marketing and recruitment have likely been reached, and improving financial aid will only keep us from losing more ground. Unless administrators are willing to make some tougher choices soon, Cornell may never reach the top-10 again.

Perhaps the saddest thing is that nobody in power seems to recognize this as our most serious problem. While the administration spends billions of dollars building new science buildings that won’t do anything for our ranking, students contesting elections complain about CourseEnroll times and minor fees. But after you graduate and you’re looking for a job, rankings will matter to you. Unfortunately, by then it may be too late.

Mitch Fagen is a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences. He can be reached at maf63@cornell.edu. The Never-Ending Battle appears alternate Mondays.