Each attempt to rank universities rests upon an opinion about what constitutes academic quality and a presumption about how to measure it, notes Marilyn Knepp, director of academic planning and analysis. What follows is Knepp’s description of the methodologies used by some of the better-known publishers of rankings:
US News and World Report’s undergraduate rankings are devised by combining measures of an institution’s academic reputation, student selectivity, faculty resources, financial resources, graduation rates and alumni satisfaction.
The Gourman Report rates undergraduate and graduate programs overall and by field. The author, Jack Gourman, does not specify what processes he uses to compile his rankings.
The National Research Council Graduate Rankings is a reputational survey that asks more than 8,000 faculty to rate programs in their fields.
Business Week ranks business schools by surveying graduates of prominent business schools and executives of companies that recruit graduates of these schools.
Money magazine’s Best Values Rankings uses quality indicators, such as the graduation rate and student-faculty ratio, to predict a university’s tuition rate and then calculates the differences between predicted and actual tuition. The more tuition falls below the predicted rate, the higher the school ranks on the scale of value.
Knepp advises readers of rankings literature that in interpreting them they should: understand whether a ranking is aimed at describing overall quality as opposed to other objectives, such as best programs, best buys, etc.; consider whether your own views on quality agree with the designers of the rankings; view ranked institutions in groups rather than relying on absolute numerical order (“Institutions ranked within a dozen places of each other are probably very similar in quality”); and look at the consistency of an institution’s ranking over time and across studies—JW.
. . . October 1995