NSSE does not support the use of student engagement results for the purpose of ranking colleges and universities.

NSSE's National Advisory Board believes that reducing student engagement to a single indicator obscures complex dimensions of student behavior and institutional performance. For this and other reasons, numerical rankings are inherently flawed as a tool for accountability and improvement, whatever the information on which they are based. Such comparisons become even more problematic in the case of institutions that differ with respect to mission, resources, structural features, and student characteristics.