Colleges taking rankings seriously

The student lounge at the Indiana University Kelley School of Business could have resembled any campus hangout where masses gather most every year to await their beloved Hoosiers' seeding in the NCAA basketball tournament.

Only this was in October, not March.

But for the roughly 400 graduate

To create even more buzz this year among campuses, the publication added a bit more suspense to the event by revealing the selections one by one during a Web chat, before they appeared in print. At IU, students and faculty projected the results onto a lounge wall while nervously awaiting whether the university would at least retain its No. 20 ranking of 2002. Business Week publishes new rankings every other year.

As the list narrowed from 30 to 20, a moment of uncertainty engulfed the room. Had the school of business improved its standing, they wondered, or had it been dropped from the list altogether? Jubilation erupted from the room when the school popped up at No. 18.

"There was a huge cheer and people were extremely excited," said Terrill Cosgray, IU's MBA program director. "My hunch is that [similar scenes] took place at every top MBA program in the United States."

What transpired at IU illustrates how critical rankings have become to a university's image.

Climbing just a few notches can spark increased interest from prospective students, faculty members and donors. Lose a few spots and the phones may not ring quite so often.

The rankings "play a role, whether we like them or not," Cosgray said. "They have an impact on just about everything we do."

A strong showing can have more of an influence than a slick marketing campaign, minus the expense. Purdue University, for instance, received national TV exposure in late September after The Wall Street Journal named its Krannert School of Management tops among colleges catering to Midwestern corporate recruiters.

Rick Cosier, dean and Leeds professor of management at Krannert, milked the honor for a live, five-minute appearance on CNBC.

"That was fantastic," Cosier said. "Any kind of exposure Purdue, Krannert and the state of Indiana can get from a big interview like that is tremendous."

Top surveys

Business Week and U.S. News & World Report publish the two most respected surveys, according to Cosgray, using different methods to arrive at their conclusions.

Business Week's rankings are based on how satisfied corporate recruiters are with their hires and students are with their academic experience. Cosgray views the survey as the most credible because it measures the two factors that are of greatest importance to prospective students, he said.

U.S. News & World Report bases a portion of its survey on faculty assessments of either colleges. 'Me magazine sends two surveys to each business grad school in which deans and MBA program directors rank the universities in one poll and their academic programs in the other.

It's impossible for faculty members to know enough about every MBA program on the 10-page printout to fairly assess each college. Surveyors can check the 11 unfamiliar" box for those they don't know enough about.

But that doesn't stop many universities from flooding the mailboxes of their competitors with an array of marketing materials in an attempt to boost their stature. Both Cosgray and Cosier bristle at the practice, which is becoming more prevalent.

The institutions want to encourage their peers to rank them as highly as possible, so many colleges have large press offices that campaign aggressively to improve public recognition of their accomplishments.

"I frankly think that is rather inappropriate," Cosier said.

Cosgray said the mail he receives from some of the same schools every day never sways his decisions. For that reason, he said, IU doesn't do much marketing. Surprisingly, though, there are schools ranked among the top 30 that promote themselves regularly, Cosgray said.

"MBA programs are investing huge sums of money to improve their rankings," he said. "We receive marketing materials from universities that have a reputation and don't really need to build one."

Credibillty debated

While educators agree the rankings can be influential, their credibility has become a sore spot among some college officials who argue the surveys ignore crucial characteristics and rely too heavily on reputations.

U.S. News & World Report changed the formula it uses to determine which colleges it deems the "best" in the nation. The publication no longer considers a college's ,,yield" ratethe percentage of students admitted who actually attend.

High school guidance counselors long complained colleges try to increase their yield numbers artificially-by accepting more students under early-admissions programs-in an attempt to raise their rankings, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education in Washington, D.C.

Harvard University and The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania announced last month they would no longer provide information for publications that want to create rankings. Concerns over the validity of the rankings led to their decisions. the schools said.

Stan Jones, commissioner of the Indiana Commission for Higher Education, said rankings can be biased.

"We view them as important," he said, "but be we also recognize that they're subjective."

For instance, Business Week ranked IU's Kelley School three spots higher than Purdue's Krannert School. But the survey by The Wall Street Journal named Purdue the top school in the Midwest region while placing IU 13th.

The Art & Science Group in Baltimore, a consulting firm that helps colleges and universities with market research and strategic planning, has studied the effects of the rankings. The firm's findings paint different pictures of importance at the undergrad and graduate levels, principal David Strauss said.

Potential graduate students scrutinize surveys more closely than undergrads because MBA rankings include vital statistics about job placement, Strauss said.

Still, Strauss admitted the criteria for which institutions are judged is arbitrary and not always forthright, a fact not lost on the campuses. Cosier at Purdue said rankings are one piece of information that should be used as a starting point when researching a program.

"As much as colleges and universities recognize the rankings are fundamentally flawed," Strauss said, "they still feel pressured to participate in them."