Rankings Impact EnrollmentKNOXVILLE –- Media rankings of colleges and university MBA programs matter to students, faculty, alumni and donors. They influence the way colleges and universities do their work. And, while some academics question the validity of rankings, most believe them to be correct.
Those are among the findings of a research study done by Nissa Dahlin-Brown, assistant director of the Howard H. Baker Center for Public Policy at the University of Tennessee.
"I set out to discover and describe the impact of the U.S. News & World Report rankings on ranked and unranked public MBA schools," Dahlin-Brown said.
She interviewed 45 faculty and administrators. Those officials represented eight unnamed colleges and universities -- three in the Tier 1 (ranked 1-25), three in Tier 2 (ranked 26-50) and two unranked institutions.
Four themes emerged from the research, according to Dahlin-Brown.
- Rankings matter.
- Rankings impact policy and practice.
- Rankings may be based more on appearance than substance.
- Rankings are generally thought to be correct, i.e., top-ranked were the best.
"College rankings have become a point of controversy in the higher education community," she said. "While some think rankings are helpful to prospective students, others think the rankings are time-consuming endeavors that have little or no constructive value."
4 comments:
I think it was a good idea to include the bullet points for the different research points.
Great post. Paragraph lengths are great and article is much more condensed. My only question, can you change the inline links from lime green to a standard blue? It was hard to read that text.
I agree that the green links are a little too bright, but otherwise you condensed the story very well.
Good use of photo, numbered list, links and short paragraphs(!).
Yes, a different color of the links may look better.
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