Nowadays, university rankings are a familiar phenomenon in higher education all over the world. But how did rankings achieve this status? To address this question, we bring in a historical-sociological perspective and conceptualize rankings as a phenomenon in history. We focus on the United States and identify the emergence of a specific…

Since "U.S. News & World Report" first published a college ranking in 1983, the rankings industry has become a self-appointed judge, declaring winners and losers among America's colleges and universities. In this revealing account, Colin Diver shows how popular rankings have induced college applicants to focus solely on pedigree and…

While college enrollment has more-than doubled since 1970, elite colleges have barely increased supply, instead reducing admit rates. We show that straightforward reasons cannot explain this behavior. We propose a model where colleges compete on prestige, measured using relative selectivity or relative admit rates. A key comparative static of the…

Past decades witnessed increasing background checks via social media conducted by postsecondary education institutions' admission offices and human resources departments for many companies. As the most active users, adolescents may be tempted to share their personal lives on social media without fully understanding the long-term consequences. The…

There have been articles about the competitiveness of elite colleges and universities and the need to provide courses or partial courses or seminars in failure. The idea is legitimizing failure; it happens to everyone after all. But, since some college students have never experienced failure, the colleges need to include instruction on how to…

World university rankings use the weight-and-sum approach to process data. Although this seems to pass the common sense test, it has statistical problems. In recent years, seven such problems have been uncovered: spurious precision, weight discrepancies, assumed mutual compensation, indictor redundancy, inter-system discrepancy, negligence of…

Karen Gross, former president of Southern Vermont College and author of "Breakaway Learners: Strategies for Post-Secondary Success with At-Risk Students," writes of the impact the recent March for Our Lives at hundreds of locations around the globe had on her. As she stood in the middle of hundreds of thousands of protesters in…

Being distinctive has not always been critical for universities in the U.K. Until recently, significant economic and political forces--largely public funding and regulation--had pushed higher education institutions as a whole toward homogeneity. What is distinctiveness? For some, it's synonymous with being unique. What makes an organization…

These days, branding is everything. Marketers go all out to position their product, control its image, and spin the message. For marketers at the nation's colleges and universities, the stakes are especially high. After all, they are entrusted with the image of institutions that have, in some cases, spent centuries building up their brand…

Fiscal responsibility matters at institutions of higher learning, especially when they are public and supported by taxpayers, but colleges are not businesses. The consequences of fiscal irresponsibility profoundly affect students, faculty, and staff, as well as teaching, research, and service activities. This essay gives a brief history of the…

Grades are the fundamental currency of our educational system; they signal academic achievement and noncognitive skills to parents, employers, postsecondary gatekeepers, and students themselves. Grade inflation compromises the signaling value of grades and undermines their capacity to achieve the functions for which they are intended. We challenge…

Colleges, universities, and independent schools use branding to attract students, keep alumni close, and unite faculty behind the institution. That last bit is key because one can't box and ship global perspectives, personal attention, flexible programs, campus traditions, innovative research, and the limitless other qualities that make…

Soon after news of the child molestation scandal involving Jerry Sandusky, a former Pennsylvania State University assistant football coach, broke in November 2011, the development and alumni relations staff gathered for a town hall-style meeting. "The Penn Stater" has tackled controversial topics before: student riots, a faculty member…

Educational institutions understand the importance of having a positive image among their target audiences, but the process of creating, enhancing, and managing that image remains challenging to many. Confusion over what branding is only adds to the challenge. Consultants define "brand" as promising an experience and delivering on that…

In the era of globalisation, competition has also become global. In higher education, countries worldwide are attaching increasing importance to international ranking exercises and subscribing to the "world-class universities" paradigm, complemented by various strategies to benchmark with leading universities in order to enhance the…